My Therapist’s Best Advice: Care Less
By: Till Kaeslin
Tags: Tips, Mindset Shift, Anxiety, Therapy, Mental Health

I know what you might be thinking given the title — ‘Care less?? Ya, like I haven’t tried that before.’ [insert mental eye roll here]

I thought the same thing when my therapist first gave me that advice.

What did she mean, “care less”? Didn’t she understand how my anxiety worked? If I could just switch it off and care less, I wouldn’t be talking to her in the first place.

Without context, I think “care less” is so triggering to those of us struggling with mental health concerns because it sounds annoyingly similar to the age-old verbal slap in the face, “just relax”, or even worse, “just calm down”.

*Word to the wise, never (and I mean ever) tell someone with anxiety to “calm down”.

“Care less” doesn’t mean not caring at all.

Think of it as a reminder rather than an impossible order.

As my therapist once explained to me, the phrase isn’t meant to imply that I can (or even should) void myself of any concern or worry at all.

As it turns out, we should be worrying.

According to Kate Sweeny, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside and co-author of “The surprising upsides of worry”, if we were to completely stop worrying, we’d lose not only an extremely effective motivating tool but also a protective emotional buffer. Worry, Sweeny argues, is our mind's way of pointing out what needs our attention most and preparing us for all sorts of bad news.

So, no, “care less” isn’t “don’t worry, be happy” 2.0; it really just serves to emphasize that the things our anxiety fixates on don’t actually require so much of our fixation.

Let’s see an example, shall we?

When my anxiety peaks, am I worried about what my friends say about me after I leave a hangout? Yes. Is a worry like that worth spending my entire subway ride back home picking apart the way I said goodbye? Of course not.

Not only are people probably not talking or even thinking about me (you are always less central to others’ time than you think), but even if they were, so what? You can influence what others think of you, but you can’t decide it; you can’t make up their minds.

The reason our brains get it wrong.

As Psychologist Marcia Reynolds writes in her article Letting Go of Worry on Psychology Today, worry is our brain’s way of protecting us against a perceived threat — only some brains do their job a little too well.

When we’re anxious, our brains are essentially trying to protect us from false, or at least very much exaggerated, threats, Reynolds argues. So, while my social anxiety may be doing an honest job of trying to protect me from the danger of having said something “wrong” to my friends, it ends up blowing the threat way out of proportion. Sure, what you say matters, but it’s hardly ever worth a whole subway ride spent ruminating.

“So care less”, I tell myself. I use it as a reminder that the threat is not as real as it may seem. I take a deep breath, repeat that little phrase in my head like a mantra, and notice as my anxious thoughts lose their power.

“Care less” can be a hard pill to swallow.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent (and continue to spend) a fair amount of your time worrying. Having to swallow the pill telling you outright that a lot of the things you spend your time worrying about are not worth worrying about at all is a tall order.

If “care less” were a physical pill, it’d be a chunky one. Nevertheless, I think it’s important we swallow it.

You may think it’s a futile effort at first, but getting in the habit of reminding yourself that your anxiety blows things way out of proportion — that it makes you invest your energy into caring a lot more than you really need to — you’ll be developing a habit of checking your anxiety.

Anxiety is a state of mind that feeds off of itself in a vicious cycle (illustrated perfectly in this article and diagram here) — without these kinds of mental checks in place, it’ll only run wilder.

“Care less” is not a cure for anxiety (obviously), but it can change the way you see it.

In no world would a simple mantra qualify as a proper “cure” for mental illness.

If you are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, there are many tried-and-true options to choose from that will help you cope, from cognitive-behavioral therapy to psychiatric medicine — a two-word phrase is not one of them.

Regardless, there are many different levels to coping with and addressing anxiety at varying degrees, and in my experience, small mental reminders like “care less” have done a lot to keep me from spiraling.

“Care less” is a phrase I can use when I feel my anxiety creeping its way from the inside out.

As I notice my mind beginning to get clouded with anxious thoughts, I use this little phrase as a reminder that these thoughts are not a reflection of reality.

“Care less” I tell myself, as I sit on the subway. Then, on the best of days, instead of fixating on whatever anxious thought has crossed my mind, I try to focus on the music playing in my ears instead.

With the music washing over me, and the rhythmic bumps and swaying of the subway lulling me half-asleep, I enjoy a peaceful moment — a moment that would otherwise have been wasted worrying and wondering about something never worth worrying and wondering about in the first place.

That’s the power of “care less”.