WISE ASS WEDNESDAY

The FOPO Trap: Breaking Free from the Fear of Other People's Opinions

Let’s be honest for a second. How many times today have you played out a conversation in your head before it even happened? Or maybe you didn’t post that thing on Instagram because you were worried that one person from high school, you know, the one you haven’t spoken to in fifteen years, might think you’re a "try-hard"?

It’s exhausting. It’s a literal drain on the battery of your soul.

We’re talking about FOPO, Fear of Other People’s Opinions. It’s a term coined by Dr. Michael Gervais, and honestly, it’s one of the most pervasive, invisible hand-cuffs we wear in modern society. We’re so goddamn obsessed with what everyone else thinks that we’ve forgotten how to think for ourselves. We’re performing. We’re wearing masks over masks, and eventually, we lose sight of the face underneath.

At Breathe N Bounce, we talk a lot about the raw side of mental health. In Michael’s chronicle, The Struggle, he talks about the deep holes we create for ourselves and the "shovels" we use to dig them deeper. FOPO is one of the biggest shovels there is.READ MORE