[haswell]

> Giving a fuck about other peoples opinions is a choice.

When you grow up in an environment where other people's opinions mean the difference between receiving care and not, or of getting hit with a stick and not, or of being told you're going to hell or not, it deeply ingrains the belief that other people's opinions are a matter of life and death.

It trains the developing brain to automatically become hyper-vigilant of the emotions and opinions of others, and these bedrocks of thinking carry forward into adult life where they either lead to a life of anxiety and worry about what others think, or a life of unwinding and replacing it with better ways of thinking.

When that kind of thinking gets embedded at an early age, at a time when the victim has no choice in the matter, it's absolutely not correct to say that this is a choice.

[halfcat]

Not to mention, for the vast majority of human existence, one’s survival depended on not being ostracized from the group.

It’s very much hard-wired into us.

[x86x87]

I don't think this was the intent of the GF comment.

Of course that if you've been conditioned for something that is no longer a choice.

If you have a broken leg and someone tells you to walk it off you're going to think they are clueless. If you literally have a [chemical] imbalance and someone tells you that you should be happy instead of being sad it's not as clear cut observing it, but it's also as infeasible as walking off a broken leg. Btw: being conditioned for something literally alters the chemical your brain/body releases.

As with the broken leg, you need help to figure out how to walk until it heals. Realizing that you need help and seeking and accepting the help is critical. Part of that help can be reframing how you view your interactions to transform what used to be implied and automatic to now being a choice.

[haswell]

If you're the kind of person who cares about what someone else thinks, you are by definition conditioned to be in that state. Some people are more deeply conditioned than others, and to their psyches, the stakes are much higher than average (i.e. the trauma example). The broader point is that framing this as a "choice" doesn't make sense.

I agree that a person can make a choice to counteract their conditioning (if they even realize it's something they need to counteract). But this is quite a different thing than having a choice over the kinds of automatic modes of thought that need to be addressed.

A person who is anxious about what other people think chooses to be so the same way a depressed person chooses to be depressed. By which I mean to say that it's not the kind of choice that it's made out to be.

[x86x87]

We all care about what others think. We are social creatures with that experience real consequences for anti-social behavior. You still have to filter things and pick your battlea.