It was a really bad week. Every morning, I was so exhausted it took everything I had to get out of bed. I didn’t know why I was so tired, and I didn’t have anyone that I trusted enough to talk about it. I wanted more than anything to feel better – to have more energy, to feel relaxed, to find relief for my anxiety and depression – but I just didn’t know how. It was on my mind every minute of every day.
I started to get desperate, so I decided to try something different. My gut was telling me that somehow I needed to let go, to stop trying so hard, so instead of trying to ‘figure it out’, I started to give myself the opposite message, that I didn’t care. I would say to myself ‘I don’t care if I get better. I don’t care that I feel this way. None of this matters’.
And strangely, it made me feel better.
This was an interesting moment for me. Up until that point, I believed that I should care deeply about everything. I should care about how I look to others, my goals and outcomes, my self image, and my relationships. I believed that caring at all costs would help me feel safe and more in control.
If you are trying to find relief for your chronic anxiety or depression, you know this well. You know the exhaustion that comes from trying to fix, manage, and think your way to peace. The constant spinning of “what if” and “what now.” The fear that if you stop caring so much, everything will fall apart.
It took me a long time to be convinced that caring could be making me feel more anxiety. Even as I say that now, it feels wrong. How is it possible that caring can lead to anything but warm, cozy love and joy?
Because within caring, there is grasping, and anxiety thrives on that grasping. It feeds on the illusion that control equals safety. So what if the opposite were true? What if healing begins not with holding tighter—but with letting go, even in the case of caring?
Caring vs. Clinging
We’ve been taught from childhood that to care deeply is noble. Work hard. Try your best. Make people proud. Care about what people think of you. Never stop caring. But no one teaches us where caring ends and clinging begins.
Caring is love in motion. It’s presence. It’s engagement. Clinging is fear disguised as care. It’s the desperate need to control outcomes – to make sure everything turns out right, to make sure no one is disappointed, to make sure we are never hurt again. Clinging burns through our nervous system like friction. It keeps us in fight-or-flight mode – heart racing, breath shallow, body tense.
Letting go, on the other hand, is not apathy. It’s not giving up. It’s grace. It’s learning to care without carrying. It’s choosing to move through life with open hands instead of clenched fists. When we soften our grip, we discover that life has always been trying to carry us.
Trusting the Flow
Imagine a river. Its surface ripples, bends, and crashes into rocks, but underneath, the current remains steady. Anxiety is what happens when we mistake the surface for the whole river. We become obsessed with every ripple, every perceived threat, every thought of “what if.” We care too much.
Letting go means trusting the current. It means realizing that life has an intelligence far greater than our anxious mind. The same intelligence that grows trees and spins galaxies is guiding us, too. This doesn’t mean we stop taking action. It means we act from trust, not from panic. We move with the flow, not against it.
It took me a long time to actually see that caring can lead to panic. It was a big epiphany for me. Once I let go of caring so much, I felt like I could trust that the river knows where it’s going, and that I could rest.
The Marketplace of Approval
One of the greatest sources of anxiety is our need for approval. We trade our peace for acceptance. We spend our lives performing—trying to appear strong, likable, successful, spiritual, worthy. But as long as our self-worth depends on others’ reactions, we’ll never feel safe.
The art of not caring is a quiet rebellion against this endless marketplace of validation. It’s the realization that no one can sell you your own worth. You already have it.
For years, my healing required me to stop performing—even in subtle ways. I stopped trying to sound wise when teaching, to be endlessly calm, to appear as though I had it all figured out. I began to speak from honesty rather than perfection. And that’s when people began to connect with my work more deeply. Because authenticity is magnetic. It’s the soul recognizing itself in another.
When you stop trying to impress, you start to express. And expression—not perfection—is what heals.
Letting the Mud Settle
If you’ve ever looked into a pond after it’s been stirred, you know that clarity doesn’t come from agitation. It comes from stillness. Our minds work the same way. We believe that if we analyze our anxiety long enough, we’ll think our way to calm. But the mind that creates the problem cannot solve it. Stillness is the medicine.
This is why mindfulness, deep breathing, and slow embodied movement are so powerful for anxiety and depression—they teach the body to stop stirring the water. They invite the nervous system back into a state of regulation where healing naturally occurs.
In my courses and retreats, I often describe relaxation not as laziness, but as a return to coherence. When you relax, you’re not doing nothing. Learning how to completely surrender is not nothing. It’s one of the most rewarding and meaningful practices you can do.
The Power of Selective Caring
Not caring doesn’t mean nothing matters. It means you’ve learned to choose what matters.
When you live with anxiety, everything feels urgent. Every email, every opinion, every possibility for failure lights up your nervous system as if it’s life or death. But when you begin to regulate, you start to see the difference between real importance and imagined threat.
Selective caring is a spiritual discipline. It’s pruning the tree of your life so it can bear real fruit. Ask yourself: What truly deserves my energy today? The list is almost always shorter than you think.
When you begin to care more selectively, your energy shifts from survival to creation. You stop living defensively and start living intentionally.
Broken, and Beautiful
There’s a Japanese practice called kintsugi—the art of repairing broken pottery with veins of gold. The cracks are not hidden; they are illuminated. Your healing will look like this.
Every breakdown, every anxious spiral, every depressive season is a fracture where your true nature can shine through. When you stop pretending to be flawless, you allow the gold of authenticity to appear. This is the paradox: when you stop caring so much about appearing whole, you begin to actually feel whole.
Practical Steps to Practice “Not Caring”
- Let go on a regular basis.
Take time – every day, if possible – to learn how to let go; to surrender. If you can train your body to do this, it will reward you immensely. The practice is simple – simply repeat ‘I surrender, I surrender’ and allow your body to respond. - Empty your cup daily.
Whether through meditation, journaling, or a quiet walk, give your nervous system a chance to reset. Don’t fill every moment with stimulation. - Move from your body, not your mind.
Anxiety keeps us trapped in thought. Movement—especially slow, mindful movement—returns us to the body’s wisdom, where peace lives. - Choose your cares wisely.
Ask yourself, “Is this mine to carry?” If not, set it down. Caring deeply about fewer things creates more depth in everything you do. - Let imperfection be your teacher.
When you make mistakes, notice your instinct to self-criticize. Then soften. The gold is in the cracks.
You can learn more about the role that your mind plays in my article When Your Thoughts Become You and What To Do About It. Also, to help you understand how to let go and feel more empowered, try listening to my guided meditation Find Your Inner Power (the 4th track on the album).
Returning to the Still Water
At the heart of this practice lies a simple truth: you are already whole. You don’t need to fix yourself to float. You simply need to trust the water again. Letting go is not the end of passion—it’s the beginning of peace. It’s not indifference—it’s intimacy with life.
When the noise of the world grows loud, when anxiety tries to drag you back into control, remember the river. Trust the current. Have faith that life knows what it’s doing. You are free—free to care when it matters, free to let go when it doesn’t, free to live lightly, deeply, and with a little more trust in the current that carries you home.
I love the analogy of leaving the pond still time to clear!