I’m not a heartless bully and I don’t recommend becoming one. But caring too much is a form of cruelty, albeit one disguised as a virtue. It’s good to care, to an extent. But when you care too much, you end up being unkind to yourself. As a recovering alcoholic, author, and a reformed “over-carer”, here is what I have learned about not caring.

Not Caring Gives You Confidence

Caring too much is a surefire way to drain your confidence. Worrying about whether you’re doing things right, or about what other people might think, is paralyzing. As someone who suffered from social phobia, I know how devastating caring about being judged all the time can be.

Acne: The great leveler.

If you were ever a teenager with a huge zit that persisted for weeks, you probably catastrophized that it would be the end of your life. I did that until my mid-20s. About everything. I was so scared that people were judging my perceived flaws, and that it would destroy me, I became an alcoholic recluse.

When I let go of the idea that people were judging me, I became more confident. By going further, and deciding that even if people were judging me, it didn’t actually matter, I became unstoppable.

I am now a sober, confident person who can speak on stage, and write books about my thoughts. Equally, I can dissolve into a blubbery mess when things are painful without feeling ashamed that I’m not living up to my “strong” image. Neither part is worse or better; it’s just me being who I am. This is called freedom.

We are all just bundles of atoms. Why should we care what one lump of atoms thinks of another bunch? We should be considerate enough to function sanely and intelligently in the world. But laying down other “rules” about your behavior will stop you from enjoying life. Being who you are is all you can ever be. It doesn’t actually matter what any other bunch of atoms thinks about it.

Not Giving a Flying Frig Frees You

I wasted a lot of my life agonizing over getting everything perfect when “good enough” would do. I cared so much about being perfect that I limited myself. Perfectionism is an elevated form of procrastination. If you dither enough, you needn’t risk failing or succeeding. It’s also a fear of showing perceived weakness by asking for help.

Perfectionism: “Everything you’ve ever done belongs here.”

I’m sure you can tell how my first perfectionistic attempts at sobriety went. I was so scared of making mistakes that it took me a long time to give full sobriety a shot. And when I relapsed along the way, as addicts do, I was too scared to ask for more help. When I found a recovery path that worked for me, I adhered to it to the letter, even when doing so wasn’t useful. Luckily, I finally learned the lesson.

Perfectionism is one of those tricky traps that you can justify as virtuous when it isn’t. As an author, I “had to” write a perfect book, or no-one would read it. Funnily enough, my most popular book has the crappiest cover of all of them and its formatting isn’t fab. People love it because it’s incredibly useful and written from the heart. If I had let my perfectionism take over, the book would never have got published at all.

Once you realize that no-one else cares about whether your output is “perfect”, you can stop justifying this crippling habit. Everything will be awful in someone’s eyes, and wonderful in another’s. With such subjectivity, how can anything be “perfect”? Perfectionism wastes your energy and time. Just do your best and ask for help when you need it.

Prioritize Your Caring

Without wasting energy on unnecessary caring, you devote more of your “care energy” to taking action on things that truly matter to you. I stopped caring about what people thought, about being perfect, and about my own image.

What care-free really means.

Gone are the nagging thoughts that I should be doing something differently or better. Gone is the shame of not living up to my ridiculously high expectations. Gone is the bitterness of others not matching my elevated ideals. What a relief.

When you take unnecessary weight off your shoulders, it’s surprising how much energy you have. Now that I have more energy, I can focus on caring about things that do matter. For me, that’s writing, helping others, being myself, staying sober, and having fun. I do my best at the things that truly matter to me. And that is all I need to do to be happy. That’s probably all you need to do too.

Break Out of Your Caring Comfort Zone

Experiment with not caring in any way you like. Do an activity for the heck of it without worrying about the results. Take a class with no thought of how you’ll perform. Go to the supermarket in your pajamas if you really want to challenge yourself (I did this). You’ll soon see that none of these things is a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

You sure are judgy for a bunch of atoms.

Whatever you decide to do, leave your cares and your ego out of it. If you can do that, you might just realize what it is that you really care about. Whatever it is, it’s more worthy of your care and energy than worrying about your image, petty surface stuff, or perceived ideals.

When you figure out what you care most about, don’t let sneaky perfectionism in again. You don’t have to rock the world with your caring; you can care quietly if that’s better for you. You just have to do your personal best, whatever that looks like. And since we’re all just bunches of atoms, no-one else can judge what that is.