Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

Welcome, welcome, everybody. This is the Gathering Room. It's November 15th, 2020. You can put that on a podcast if you want.

Today's topic is what other people are thinking about you.

Now, when you saw that, if you saw that, did it feel slightly confronting like, oh my God, she's going to tell me what other people are thinking about me?

It may have, even though it doesn't make a ton of sense, because we have an incredibly sensitive response

to the thought of what other people are thinking about us.

In fact, I saw somebody online the other day that said,

we can't even think a thought without thinking

about what other people are thinking about our thinking that thought.

And I really felt this yesterday because I got my hair

cut. I like it. I kind of like it. So I got my haircut and I went in and the cutter of my hair

put the thing around my neck and she said, so what's new new since the last time she cut my hair and I was

like I don't know we got a new president I said and she went it and I was like oh my goodness

she's one of the people who believes it's not a real election and it's contested and everything

and guys if you feel that way I I still love you, but I just don't believe that.

I do not think it was a rigged election.

And I do think we have a new president elect.

And so I sat there in the chair with this terrible fear that she was going to do something ungodly to my haircut, just in revenge

for the election. And I got so, then I spent the whole day, like, tied up in knots worried

about what my hairstylist is thinking about my political position, even though she didn't say anything.

So this got me thinking about how obsessed we are about what other people think of us and

how it is actually driving a huge amount of anxiety and depression in public life.

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