Nobody Cares About You

Image source: My private collection. Me doing funny faces and drinking fancy lemonade at a hipster restaurant in Pärnu, Estonia. The restaurant itself is called Supelsaksad. I don’t have any connection to the restaurant other than I loved our visit there and the food was absolutely delicious. You should go and visit them if You like excellent service and hipsters.

Nobody actually cares about You.

This statement itself might seem big and even cold but I will explain further how this provided me with some much needed liberation from a limiting belief.

All our lives we are taught (at least most of us) to get somebody to love us and care about us. In some extreme cases, even to take care of us. Depending on where You stand in Your own journey, this might look stupid, not relevant or enlightening. But why is this even important is another question You might be asking.

If You take the belief that someone needs to love us or care about us and embed it to someone’s consciousness many things might happen. I will describe a situation that has been an obstacle in many of my close relationships.

You are in a romantic close relationship and at the beginning it’s all going well. Lot of attention both ways, lot of love and care so to speak. The relationship moves on, it grows, it moves to a deeper, more mature level. People have their own stuff they want to do in the world, the immediate attention and care dissolves a little. It is still there but not as prevalent as before. Some problems might now occur, fights, arguments etc. Mostly about the amount of love and care one person shows the other and vice versa.

In our current society there are a lot of ideas how men, women, children should behave in order to show their love and care. And when those ideas are deeply implemented in our consciousness then anything that differs from those behaviors is considered bad. In this case this translates into lack of showing love and care. Or the way people choose to show their love.

All kinds of thoughts might emerge. “They are not good”, “He or she is bad for me”, “I should not be treated this way”. Or whatever the thought is for You personally. Generally directed towards the other person and saying that they are not enough or not doing enough. Or even bad.

When those thoughts are not addressed properly they might start doing a lot of harm in the relationship. For example closing off from the partner, not talking, saying mean things to the other person or in extreme cases cheating, even violence etc.

Now back to my current example, the belief I had. The people who I’m in close relationships (or in this case a specific person) should care about me in a certain way. That way being, physical closeness, deep sexual experiences, listening, touch, desire. These are all good things and are necessary in a romantic relationship but lets face it. In today’s so called modern world they are hardly always there. We all have our different challenges in our day to day lives. It is very hard to put these huge expectations on another person or a relationship.

So what did I do to bring some ease back into my experience?

I first inquired generally “What is going on in this situation for me?” Then a knowing came after that inquiry (because asking questions loosens up or releases energy) “She should care about me!”

Depending on where we look at it, a pretty selfish thought or belief. Which in my personal case was causing me suffering because she was not acting the way I wanted to. Meaning my immediate, selfish needs were not being met. Of course all our needs are not selfish but it is an important distinction to make, we can’t always assume that one person can all the time meet our needs constantly. This is not possible in my opinion.

After that thought came up I thought about it for a while. I questioned it. Is it really so? Now after that question the true magic happened. I realized that this is not actually true and nobody really HAS to care about me. I even took it a little further, hence the title of the article. NOBODY cares about me. And then I sat in the knowing itself for a while. It usually helps when You visualize that as well. In my case I visualized the people not caring about me at all, even being extremely distant. Soon after that I burst out in spontaneous laughter, a sense of ease and freedom returned to me. An understanding came to me.

 I don’t have to control people to care about me or love me. I can just be me and accept their love as it is or comes my way. Whichever way and if they decide to offer it to me.

Ian Altosaar

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