Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
November 1, 2021 · 8 min read
Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. ~ Lucille Ball
Most of the suffering you go through comes from caring too much. Inability to find the right balance leads to sleepless nights, constant worrying, anxiety, and much more.
Nearly everything that comes in a form of ‘too much‘ has a negative impact on your both mental and physical health.
While caring is generally considered a good trait, caring also must have certain limits.
Understanding why you care too much allows you to control your mindset in such a way that you won’t be bothered with caring almost at all.
Here we will mainly focus on how to recognize your patterns when you care so much and how to stop them, so you can finally have peace of mind.
10 Signs of a caring person
Here are 10 signs that a caring person might relate to:
- You think ahead.
- You are emotionally attached to people.
- You worry about the past.
- You are aware of your public image.
- You are fearful of things going wrong.
- You avoid conflicts.
- You feel the need for consistency.
- You want to be acknowledged.
- You define your self-worth based on others‘ opinions.
- You neglect your own happiness.
Does caring too much gets you hurt?
Excessively and constantly worrying about everything will likely result in getting hurt. Caring too much about others provoke an obsession. The very least it can do to you is to disturb your peace of mind.
More severe outcomes may translate into anxiety, stress, and even depression. That means you will experience long-term negative consequences.
To answer the question directly – yes, caring too much gets you hurt.
Is it better to care too much or to not care at all?
The amount of energy you should spend on caring wildly depends on the situation. Neither of these options are optimal. You have to find the middle ground.
Let’s take a very rough example. Imagine your relative or family member got diagnosed with cancer. There’s no doubt that you should rather care too much that not to care at all.
You have to provide everything you can for your close one so he’d feel precious, appreciated, and loved. Life is very fragile and it needs to be treated with a lot of respect and care.
Let’s take another example. Imagine some rumors are spreading about you in your workplace. In such scenario, you need to care up to a point. The most important thing in workplace is to prove your professionalism and ability to deliver the tasks. The other things in professional environment don’t matter as much. The results speak for themselves.
The consensus is to find the sweet spot and not to overwhelm yourself. If you care too much, you’ll suffer from anxiety, stress. If you won’t care at all, you will fall out of your emotions which will become a problem to communicate with other people and to understand and get to know yourself.
How to care less about everything
You need to strengthen your identity and presence to start caring less. Caring about everything comes from insecurities, fears, and worries. You need to counter-attack these feelings with courage, faith, confidence, and trust.
It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t completely stop caring about anything. It simply means you need to care up to a point that you find meaningful and doesn’t overtake your mind and sanity.
10 disadvantages of caring too much
- People will start exploiting you.
- Your self-worth may suffer.
- You invest too much time into caring.
- Your self-esteem declines.
- You are way too emotionally attached.
- You sabotage your happiness and worry-free mind.
- People will feel resentment towards you.
- Your feelings get hurt.
- You’re afraid to fail.
- Your mental health declines.
12 Reasons why you care so much
1. You feel that it contributes to a positive life
Generally speaking, caring is a very kind and courageous characteristic to have. Not everyone can take care of someone or care about others’ opinions. A good portion of people tend to be ego-centric and revolve the world around themselves.
All in all, if you are caring in any kind of way, that definitely contributes to a positive life. Again, that is only true until you reach a certain point. After that, you will experience the negatives and pain.
2. The need to be acknowledged by other people.
The most important person to acknowledge you is yourself. Chances to be acknowledged by others if you trust your strengths, skills, increase dramatically.
Trusting yourself results in a boost of confidence which translates to a better critical thinking and performance.
You know what truly attracts people? Self-esteem and ability to be exceptional.
There are a lot of people pleasers. Some exaggeratedly try to adjust themselves to other individuals to gain their acknowledgment. However, the only thing that they gain is being exploited and making themselves a joke.
3. You are afraid of conflicts
You are not only afraid of arguments, but also to say no. You are afraid of getting a negative reaction and to be hurt. This comes from being too sensitive.
It’s always a better idea to say a straightforward “no” than to sabotage your time, energy, and happiness. While it may be unpleasant, it will set a proper foundation for you to stop being a people pleaser.
4. You are a perfectionist
While perfectionism is not a bad thing, excessive perfectionism can lead to short sightedness and anxiety. It means that you don’t see the whole picture of the situation and worry too much.
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. ~ Mickey Mantle
Cooked vegetables are too mushy? Irritation.
The exam wasn’t aced? Disappointment.
You don’t have the perfect public image? Anxiety.
Every little thing that’s not perfect freaks you out. Such point of view is unhealthy and leads to excessive self-criticism. High standards are praiseworthy, but they shouldn’t overtake your mind.
5. You have a fixed mindset
Fixed mindset doesn’t allow you to open your mind and experience different ways to approach a problem. You religiously believe that it’s the only way to solve a problem and you’ll try that method until it works out.
This approach doesn’t allow you to ease your mind and you only worry even more. It becomes a loop of worrying that doesn’t seem to get better.
6. You don’t trust yourself
Not trusting yourself happens because of dwelling on past events. They’ve made a big toll on your self-worth and your ability to cope with problems.
If you can reflect your past events and come up with solutions not to make the same mistakes again, that’s actually very good. However, when you fall into overthinking without proposing any solutions, that’s when the real problem begins.
Self-esteem is a powerful tool that can help you get through difficult situations.
7. You need to feel in control
Life can be disappointing and not go to the direction that you’d want it to go. Sometimes, our ability to change a certain aspect in life is uncontrollable. Yet, some people still are over caring.
I don't care what people think or say about me, I know who I am. ~ Jonathan Davis
Caring about everything gives us an illusion to feel in control. You can’t control everything. It’s very complicated to control others’ opinions. The worst part is not living in the present and living in your mind that thinks about the past or the future.
When we care too much, our minds can easily distort the reality. In a lot of cases, our problems that we think of don’t even happen.
8. Insecurity
Insecurity comes from uncertainty and not feeling good enough about yourself. Insecurity can come in a lot of forms, such as jealousy, procrastination, self-doubting, and more.
If you are insecure about your relationship, you will care about it a lot and will try to make sure that nothing goes wrong. However, this approach doesn’t address the root problem. It addresses only prevention of the possible negative outcome.
9. You have too big heart
Having a big heart means to be kind and loving. But when you add a word “too”, it becomes a problem.
People think of you as gullible and that they can push you in any direction they want. The reality is that there are only a handful of people who treat big hearted people appropriately.
It’s a plausible trait to have, but you also must set limits and stand up for yourself when needed.
10. You need the consistency
You worry so much because you are afraid to fall out of routine. You like to feel secure, doing the same thing, even if it causes you pain. This is very similar situation when people dislike their jobs and keep working in the same positions for years.
The fear of unknown causes you not to take a step further and only to stay in the same position or even to take a step back. In a sense, caring so much becomes a place for comfort.
11. You are a prey
You have a belief that there’s nothing you can do about your worrying and that’s just the way it is. Such belief causes you to suffer more and to never break out of this cycle.
Blaming the environment is the easiest thing to do. What’s not that easy to do is taking personal responsibility into your own hands and breaking out of this pattern of caring that much.
12. You seek for comfort
While caring too much might hurt you, it’s something that you practiced for a long time. It’s hard to break out of the habit even if you’ve been struggling with it for a long time. It’s similar to having a job that you dislike – even if you hate it, you still do it, because you are afraid of the unknown.
Comfort zone is one of the main reasons that destroy your full potential. It makes you stay in a fixed position and not to take any risks or changes in life.
5 Ways to stop caring so much
1. Put everything in a perspective
If you really think about it, you are one of the billions of people in the world. There are worldwide problems, such as clean water deprivation, starvation, living very densely and unhygienic. All of these problems are linked to dangers to health.
If you look even further, we live in a galaxy that is called The Milky Way. It is still not fully explored. Theoretically, there are 125 billion galaxies in our universe.
So, the scheme goes like this:
Your problems -> National problems -> Worldwide problems -> Mysteries/problems of a galaxy -> Mysteries/problems of an universe.
A lot of people might say: “First, we should take care of our own problems and the problems that occur in our world”.
That’s true. However, when you put everything in a perspective, your problems don’t look that significant. You should approach your problems in a more relaxed manner and think of them as obstacles that always can be conquered.
If you always believe that you have the biggest problems compared to everyone else, you will have a hard time overcoming and you will care a lot about them.
2. Choose the battles you must fight against
Not every battle is important. Some battles that you will win against won’t matter after a day or a week. Instead, you need to focus on long-term problems that will matter after a year, 5, or even 10 years.
Basically, you have to choose the problems that are necessary to solve and that you are in control with. You must prioritize the problems that are significant in terms of uneasiness of your mind. Whatever bothers you most, tackle with it at first.
Try to ask yourself these questions:
- What is my problem precisely?
- Where did it come from?
- What will happen if I won’t tackle with it?
- Will the problem matter after a year or two?
- Can I spend my time better somewhere else?
Small problems exhaust us mentally and drains our energy. We have only so much time on Earth. Don’t waste your precious time on small problems.
3. Everyone interprets feelings differently
Just because you care doesn’t mean that the other person cares.
That’s the reality. See, if you show affection to the other person, it doesn’t mean that he will appreciate that. Oppositely, he might feel resentment. People resent you because you are too caring.
He might think of you as gullible person that can be taken advantage of. Of course, that’s not always the case but keep that in mind.
Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself. - Bear Bryant
In either case, you are unique and no one will interpret feelings just like you do. There will always be a minor difference at minimum.
Besides, people are very self-centered. Majority of people only look after themselves and play in their minds scenarios that other people are judging them.
Understanding this phenomenon is especially important to care less about what people think of you. Be the best version of yourself and don’t try to please anyone for the sake to be acknowledged.
4. Focus on fulfilment over the social status
It’s not uncommon that people are seeking to prove their worth through showing their social status which might not reflect their reality. It means that people buy new cars, boast about their new perfect jobs, crazy life experiences, partying, etc.
The problem is that people want to show how exciting their life is despite the happiness that they don’t feel. Perhaps you truly got a job that pays superb salary. However, does it make you happy? Is 10% increase in salary worth long working hours, more responsibilities, stressful projects to complete worth it? Perhaps it is.
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. ~ Dolly Parton
It depends on what makes a person fulfilled. While on the surface it may look amazing for other people, digging down deeper to the subject is not as great as it sounds like.
Nevertheless, people care too much about their social status. They feel a need to represent themselves as best as possible through demonstrating their expensive lifestyle and other things that are not that important in life.
The truth is, we don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. If you only live for the weekends, you only have so little time to enjoy the life, probably only a few years. it’s inevitable that you will have to do some things on the weekends that you don’t want (chores, fixing something, etc.), and it’s likely that our health will decline as we get older and we won’t be able to do what we want to.
Take a look at this video if you’re interested more about this topic:
That’s why it’s important to care less about what others think of you. The only thing you should care about is how to find your life fulfillment and enjoy life as much as possible. Don’t be a pleaser of your ego. Please your heart instead.
5. Find the middle ground
We can all agree that caring too much leads to exhaustion of a mind. It’s simply not sustainable and doesn’t benefit in a way that you’d like to.
To make things simpler, you have to find a balance between sensitiveness and ignorance. Don’t be too sensitive and don’t be too much ignorant.
This means that you shouldn’t take every word from anyone as a matter of fact. On the other hand, you shouldn’t neglect everyone’s opinion too. You need to differentiate what matters and what to prioritize.
So, for example, if someone says, “You should stop yawning so much, it makes you look stupid”. Does it really matter? Is it something that you should really care for? It’s your natural behavior of your human body and there’s little you can do if you didn’t have enough sleep last night.
Instead, you should focus on more important things, such as exercising, eating healthier, living an abundant life, and similar.
When you care too much about everything, you might adopt the “all or nothing” mentality which is slowly draining your energy and self-esteem. By the time you finish addressing all problems, you will have even more important problems.
The Pareto principle says that about 80 percent of consequences come from 20 percent of causes. That means you should invest your 20 percent of energy to cope with 80 percent of problems that you face. The rest 20 percent of problems are low priority and don’t have that big of an impact to your life.
Don’t let low priority worries trouble you. Sometimes, they shouldn’t even be addressed at all. There are more important things to cope with.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
Caring about something is absolutely okay as long as you find the middle ground. You shouldn’t neglect others’ opinions, but you also should evaluate them critically.
Majority of positive changes come from mindfulness. The sooner you realize that you are the creator of your own life, the better outcomes you will experience from your own actions.
Don’t be afraid to change your life a little bit. Diverge from your usual path and explore for a better one.