Why you can’t build a life trying to be unhateable — the ghost audience effect

My neighbor hates my guts. Not fun at all. But what if being disliked by the wrong people is a clear sign you’re doing something right?

My neighbor hates my guts. Not fun at all. But what if being disliked by the wrong people is a clear sign you’re doing something right?

He wanted me to close up holes in my garden fence. Keep my cats (one particular menace) from pooing in his garden. I agreed at first. When I realized: this just shoves the problem onto my other neighbors, I told him, “I’ve changed my mind.”

“But we’re your neighbors too,” he said.

“Absolutely. And doing something to solve what you think is a problem by piling it onto someone else—regardless of what they think about it—isn’t okay with me.”

It stings when someone you live next to decides you’re the villain. But I could have his approval OR I could have my boundaries. Not both. I did provide them (he’s married) with information on how to keep cats out of your garden and offered to help with doing it.

And I strongly felt the urge to win him back, appease him.

But: “Why am I giving him so much power over what I think, feel, and do?”

Turns out, I’m not alone in this.

Justin Welsh—entrepreneur with 175,000 newsletter subscribers—recently confessed he’d been doing the same thing. Except his “neighbor” was a handful of critical emails.

Are you performing to a ghost audience?

Justin Welsh can recite a harsh email from 2.5 years ago word-for-word.

Yet he cannot remember recent compliments verbatim.

What the...?

After writing a vulnerable newsletter about “micro-freedoms” that resonated with thousands of readers, he obsessed over a handful of negative replies. And then started writing safer, less engaging content.

The irony: those critics had moved on, unsubscribed while he was reshaping his entire newsletter for an audience that wasn’t even watching anymore.

Ok, that’s different perhaps, my neighbor is still my neighbor, but this pattern shows up everywhere.

Welsh mentioned a consulting friend who redesigned her entire service offering around ONE difficult client despite having 50 satisfied clients still working with her.

I did it too with that initial agreement to my neighbor’s request.

I don’t like digging up cat poop when working in my garden either. And I prefer us—me and my animals—not to “bother” others. But I caught myself trying to manage his comfort at the expense of my boundaries.

And I did it again.

A year or so later my neighbor returned my house key in an extremely foul mood, spouting judgments left, right, and center about me never having weeded the path between our gardens in 35 years. At first, I said I’d ask my gardener to do it. Later, after processing what had actually happened (including he’d never spoken to me about it before), I set a firm boundary around his behavior and told him not to expect me to suddenly do it now.

When you reshape your life around critics who have already left the building, that’s the ghost audience effect. You’re performing to an audience that has tuned you out.¹

What fuels this?

Negativity bias.² Our brains are wired to remember threats (criticism) more vividly than rewards (praise). I was an advantage: remembering the tiger that attacked you kept you alive. Now it’s a disadvantage: worrying about and accommodating a neighbor — or anybody — who disapproves keeps you small.

You dilute your authenticity to avoid hypothetical disapproval (you probably imagine everyone disapproving of you). You let your actual supporters—the people who DO appreciate you—and the appreciative comments fade into background noise. And before you know it, you’re building your life around phantom critics and not showing up for your real audience: your community.

If you’re a woman, you probably are 🫢

Women pay this price more. As a woman, you’re socialized from childhood to manage everyone’s comfort. “Good girl” equals likeable, pleasant, non-threatening. By midlife, you’ve spent decades reading rooms, smoothing over, making ourselves smaller.

The muscle memory of people-pleasing is strong.

What makes it worse: As a women, you’re punished for “difficult” behavior. Called bossy and aggressive. You’re rewarded for accommodation, pliability. Called nice, easy to work with, team player.

The patriarchal system trains you to prioritize others over your own existence.

By the time you hit 50+, you’re exhausted. You’ve contorted ourselves for so long you’ve forgotten what your actual shape is. And you’re still always worried about what the neighbor, the ex-friend, the critical family member thinks.

You don’t need my permission, you don’t need anyone’s, but just in case you can’t give it to yourself yet: Being disliked by people who want you small is not a problem.

It’s proof you’re no longer shrinking. Celebrate it.

Who are your ghosts?

Question for you. Actually, multiple questions.

• Who are you still trying to win over?
  For years, I kept trying to “make up” for (perceived) wrong doings. Going as far as avoiding repeating them with people who hadn’t been there and would probably not have been fussed over it.

• Whose disapproval keeps you up at 3am?
  My math teacher at high school, who once told me he wasn’t too pleased with something I did. Can’t even remember what it was, but the memory haunted me for at least a decade.

• Whose hypothetical judgment stops you from speaking up, setting boundaries, saying no?
  Too many to mention.

And some hard(er) ones.

• Are they even in your life anymore?
  Most of them aren’t.

• If they are, do they respect you? Not “are they nice sometimes”—do they respect you? Really, see _you_? Acknowledge and consider what’s important to you?
  Probably not.

• What would you do differently if their opinion didn’t matter?
  I wouldn’t inhibit myself. Definitely not “in advance” or “just in case”.

My neighbor doesn’t respect me. He never did. He liked my compliance and pliability. When I stopped accommodating him, the “relationship” evaporated. In hindsight, it wasn’t a relationship at all—it was a one-sided accommodation arrangement.

I can’t control whether he likes me.

When I first realized I couldn’t control what other people think of me, whether they like me or not, it took time for that to sink into my bones. To fully accept that trying is futile at best and detrimental to me at worst. I can only control myself and whether I let anyone’s disapproval dictate my choices. Or their approval for that matter. Acting one way to gain approval is just as big a trap as to avoid disapproval.

Because you know what?

“Your opinion of me doesn’t change who I am or what I can do.”

And, his opinion of me is not my task.

Their opinions are not your task!

This “not my task” thing? It’s from Adlerian psychology’s concept of separation of tasks. Fancy name, simple idea: you have your tasks, others have theirs. Trying to control their tasks—what they think of you—is what keeps you trapped.

I wish I could say I’ve mastered this.

Nope. I’m still on the journey, still catching myself trying to win over ghosts.

But I’m getting better at asking: “Are they even watching? Do I even want their approval? Do I really need it?”

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Next time: The uncomfortable truth about whose task it is to manage other people’s feelings about you.

Spoiler: it’s not yours. But your brain will fight me on this.

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Ready to stop shrinking for people who don’t respect you anyway? Get the Women Over 50’s Unmasking Kickstart Guide.

1. And yes, that includes my neighbor. After another “incident” (in his eyes), he refuses to talk to me or even greet me on the street.

2. Research shows our brains process negative information more thoroughly than positive information—a survival mechanism that helped our ancestors avoid danger but now keeps women trapped in people-pleasing patterns they don’t need.