Being Unbothered Isn’t the Goal or a Flex

Ever notice how “unbothered” became the internet’s favorite personality trait? We take a clear-eyed look at why detachment is praised as power, where it slides into numbness, and how to tell the difference between grounded regulation and quiet shutdown. Drawing on years of coaching and somatic practice, I lay out a practical roadmap: feel your emotions, process them, then choose your response without collapsing or exploding.

We unpack the nervous system mechanics behind the unbothered pose, from anxious activation to avoidant shutdown, and why calm can sometimes be a mask for reduced capacity. I break down healthy detachment versus dissociation, spotlight the red flags of spiritual bypassing, and explain why anger, grief, and disappointment are not “low vibes” but essential signals. You’ll hear why intimacy requires impact, how ghosting erodes connection, and what real boundaries sound like when they’re anchored in truth rather than performance.

For empaths and sensitives, I share regulation tools that help you stay open without drowning: titrating input, setting containers for hard topics, orienting, breath work, gentle shaking, and naming feelings out loud. The goal isn’t to be untouchable; it’s to be resilient. Real strength sounds like “I was hurt and I handled it,” not “nothing affects me.” If you’ve been tempted to wear “unbothered” as a badge, this conversation offers a kinder, braver path back to presence, connection, and self-trust.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find these tools. What part of “unbothered” are you ready to rethink?

Embodied Psychic Portal

Transcript

Unbothered Becomes An Online Flex

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Hello, it's Dr. Donna and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. Today we're talking about something that has become a personality trait online. That phrase is being unbothered. I remember seeing this um a couple years ago and I thought, what are people doing? Um why do they feel like that's an accomplishment? And how did this turn into a power move to be unbothered? And for us who are empaths, we're like, how does that even work to be unbothered? And I've even seen people who are psychic try to control their emotions. And you know, I want to really break this down today because I do do podcasts on topics that I see on social media that I consider to be concerning. And I still see this floating around. It's like with all this information about talking about trauma and healing, why are we trying to be unbothered in life? And I know life can be uncomfortable and overwhelming, and you know, you get what it rid of one problem and another one comes about, but being unbothered is never the goal, it should not be the goal. And when you say I'm unbothered, that doesn't affect me. I don't care, I'm detached, you know, they can't trigger me. You know, these are all coming across as wanting to be power moves, right? And it is presented as power, as um being emotionally mature, as enlightenment, as growth. But I want to gently challenge that because sometimes being unbothered is strength. And sometimes it's shut down, and sometimes it's regulation, and sometimes it's bypassing. So today we're gonna unpack the difference when it's good to be unbothered and when not. You you know there's too much of this, don't let people shake you or break you or make you feel bad or make you feel weak. We have things going on inside of us that we need to heal. And yes, I've been fortunate over the years after doing a lot of work where some things don't bother me as much, but I don't walk in the world unbothered, and I am an empath 247-365. So I am bothered. I am bothered by world events, I am bothered by life, and if you talk to a true empath, they are bothered. So let's start why it feels like a flex to some people. It's when you've been hurt before, when you've been reactive, when you've cried, chased, or overexplained. Becoming unbothered feels like growth, right? You think I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not reacting, I'm not giving them energy, and that can be healthy. And if it comes from regulation, it's healthy. But there's a difference between I don't need to engage and I refuse to feel. Notice the difference. It's like you can feel it and choose not to engage, but refusing to feel that's a concern. The nervous system can become so tired of being hurt that it swings to the opposite extreme, from anxious to avoid it. That's why there are these avoidant attachment styles because they've been in a reactive stage, they've been bothered and they're shutting down, and then you can go from emotional to numb, from expressive to detached, and that's really a trauma response, right? And numbness can masquerade as empowerment, but it is not empowerment to be numb. And sadly, with everybody having access to social media and you know, especially when they go on Instagram, even more so than TikTok, you just get it's like you know, one-minute videos one after the other after the other, and everybody's got advice, and they're telling you how to be and how to feel. And if you're a person who isn't in therapy and you're trying to figure life out, you're gonna be like, Well, what should I be feeling? What should I believe? Should I be bothered? Should I be unbothered? Am I weak for being bothered? You you know, you start questioning yourself and what you should feel, and you know, sadly, a lot of people who are out there giving advice are not in a professional, you know, environment to be doing that. And there's a lot of this. Well, I was talking to my therapist, and my therapist told me, and and we don't know if they're really talking to their therapist, and their therapist really gave them that advice, but people gotta get views, they gotta get clicks, right? They gotta get clicks, they gotta get views, they're making money, nothing wrong with that online, but we don't know really the source if their therapist really said it, because then I see a few videos from a therapist and they're saying something just the opposite, and then I know from coaching all these years, and yes, I've taken psychology courses, I just chose not to be a psychologist. Um, I've learned that you know, talking to people is how you learn and how you get information. And the people who want to be unbothered are hurting, they're trying to bury pain, and that's really what it means. It's like I don't want to hurt anymore. That's what I'm bothered really is, you know, going on with these people. It's not about I feel this, but I'm not reacting. I'm able to not react. I mean, I felt insults, I felt pain, but I've gotten to a place where I don't react because I've done the work, and that's really the goal. So healthy detachment does look like this. I feel my emotions, I process my emotions, I choose my response, I don't overreact, I maintain boundaries. See that? Healthy detachment is still filling your emotions. You don't want to ever shut down your emotions, they're you. You know, and it's not about you know trying not to be hurt, and if you feel hurt about something, you're human. You know, it comes from somewhere, you know, to feel hurt. So let's talk about dissociation. Dissociation looks like I feel nothing, I shut down quickly. I withdraw instead of communicate. I tell myself it doesn't matter. I minimize my hurt. So on the outside both can look calm, right? But internally they are very different states. One is grounded, so healthy detachment is grounded, one is disconnected, dissociation is disconnected, and disconnection is not healing, it's protection. Protection isn't bad, but it's not integration, and it's not doing the work to heal, you know. If we're bothered by something, and you know, I see the spiritual calls. Well, if you're bothered by somebody or something, you have work to do, yes, but let's not turn it into a bad thing to have to work on ourselves. That's a good thing because we peel off the layers and we get to our true self. And so it's always a good thing to heal and do the work, even if there's painful moments in it. And trust me, there'll be painful moments. So let's talk about spiritual bypassing. And this is a very important topic to me because when I entered the world of spirituality, I was about twenty-eight, twenty-nine, you know, I was in chiropractic school and I was being exposed to different people who were very spiritual. I went to I transferred to chiropractic school in a Bay Area, and so it was like woo-woo central at the time. The Bay Area has changed since then, but everybody was trying to be spiritual and be unbothered and healed and enlightened, and you you know, I thought, wow, after all these years, maybe something's changing. No, it's still here on the surface. People are still not able to cope with their pain, with their trauma, even with all these resources and professionals who can help them. So in spiritual communities, especially being unbothered becomes spiritual language, which gets interpreted as I don't match low vibrations, right? Being bothered is all of a sudden low vibrations. I don't entertain negativity, they can't affect my energy. I'm protecting my peace. I really oh you know, it's get it's oh, that comment is said so much online on protecting my peace. Are you really? And I'm gonna do a whole podcast on that, protecting your peace. But sometimes what is actually happening is avoidance of accountability, you know, for what you're feeling and how you've affected others, avoidance of vulnerability. People don't like being vulnerable, they see it as weak, they can't stand being vulnerable because it feels unsafe and being triggered. Um, avoidance of conflict. Yeah, a lot of people just don't want to have conflict, so they just choose to love everybody and forgive in a bypassing way. Avoidance of emitting hurt. Somehow feeling hurt has become weakness. How in the hell did that happen? I don't know. But being hurt is not weakness, but it could be triggering, right? Especially if you were hurt a lot growing up as a child. And it feels safer to say I don't care. And sometimes we don't care about something. There are some things I truly don't care about. I'm like, whoa, I actually don't care about it, and it's coming from a healthy place. We all have some of that where we healthy don't care about something. But it's harder to say that hurt me because it's admitting to vulnerability and being fragile. But it feels safer to say they're beneath me. We we use that a lot than to say I feel rejected. And if you feel rejected, although I p believe that rejection really doesn't exist, but if you feel that way, well, you want to go to the place to find out why. So spiritual bypassing happens when we use higher language to avoid lower feelings. But real healing requires feeling the lower ones. And I even hate to say lower feelings, but it's a good way to explain this, you know, in particular. You know, what I'm trying to get across because all feelings are valid. Anger, rage, hurt, sadness, you know, not just happiness and feeling good and feeling positive. All of it is part of the human experience. And as you know, I'm a big fan of anger. Because anger tells us the truth about who we are and where we're at. So let's talk about why being bothered is not weak. Because being bothered means you care. Yeah, you care about something, you care about how you feel, you care about what's going on, you care about the situation, you care about the person who's hurting you, or you feel hurt by, you know. And it also means you're invested. It's good to invest in something in life. We're having human experiences, and so you want to be bothered, and you're connected, right? If you can be bothered, you're connected to yourself and to others, to source, to the world, and that's a good thing. You know, some people they just go, Well, the world is tough, so I'm not gonna watch the news, I'm not gonna read current events, they're not gonna know what's going on. And you know that's happened throughout history, right? But that really isn't the way to go. The way to go is to say, I can deal with the world, some things bother me, some things hurt me, but I can lean in and I can take a break from it, but I can lean in and allow myself to feel. But you know, everything turns into I don't want to feel powerless, I only want to feel powerful, and that's where we get into trouble. If someone disrespects you and you feel something, that's information, right? That's information, is telling you something that you feel is telling you about how that person perceives you and how you feel about the situation in yourself and to look for does this come from a deeper source, right? If someone leaves you and you grieve, right, from a breakup, divorce, betrayal, abandonment, a death, right? That's attachment that is healthy. We are supposed to attach. It's not always easy, right? If someone crosses a boundary and you feel anger, that's self-protection. You should feel something when someone crosses your boundary, because it's like then the information is they don't really respect me, or they think their needs are more important than mine, and and you know, you start getting to dig deep. Our feelings are signals, they're information. You know, people always talk about how they want a sign from the universe, and I really think they want that burning bush sign, like in the Bible, how God spoke to people through the burning bush, but it's not gonna happen that way now. We get signs from each other, from people. There's eight billion plus people on the planet, and we're learning from each other, and so the signs are gonna be different, and you know, we have to interpret them, and we interpret them based on the level of our personal growth. So the goal is not to eliminate reaction. You don't want to eliminate reaction. The goal is to regulate it. There's strength in saying that affected me. That disappointed me. That hurt. There's maturity in responding without exploding, but it's okay to respond. But pretending you feel nothing, that's not power. That's suppression. And watch people who go, they feel nothing. You could tell they're really trying to bury their emotions. And you you know, there is a lot of apathy in the world. And maybe because we're the zone is always flooded and there's so much information and so much to focus on, and we have our personal lives and personal issues and bills and rent and stress, but you still want to feel, you don't want to suppress. You can put things in compartments and say, I think about this issue at this time and that issue at another time. If I'm not gonna try to think about everything all at once, yes, you can do that, but be bothered, but feel. So let's talk about how the unbothered person often struggles because they do. People who pride themselves on being unbothered often avoid hard conversations, they're not having hard conversations with their partners or friends, with no one, and guess what? Their relationships aren't gonna move forward, they're gonna be in denial in their personal relationships and wonder why. You know, their relationships aren't growing, aren't healthy. They end things abruptly instead of repairing. They ghost a lot of people, right? So they end things and they just like I don't want to discuss it no more. I remember in my early twenties I dated someone like that. But you know, we were in school together, so he couldn't really avoid me, but yeah, he was shut down a lot and one day I just told him, I said, You've got some real issues that you better face. You know? And some people will, they're just like, I'm done. You know, and and usually I believe in trying a few times before being done. You know, because if you're just done and act like nothing never mattered, you're suppressing, you're burying emotions. Okay, let's talk about ghosting without clarifying. Ghosting is so common, and there's even posts on social media saying, Well, it's okay to just walk away, to just disappear. You don't only want an explanation. Okay, so say you take that approach and you do that enough. Guess what? The universe won't bring you anyone to be with, to connect with, you end up alone, and you even come across people that you want to get close to and they ghost you. So it becomes very karmic. You know, don't just disappear, and I know there's these posts saying, Well, the person knows what they did, you don't have to confront them or explain it. Yeah, sometimes people know what they've done, and sometimes it may be safer to ghost, but it's being overused and it's not cool. And labeling others as traumatic so that you can stay unbothered. No, they're not being traumatic. They have needs, they have feelings, they have wants, they have desires, they have issues. You know, people who pride themselves on being unbothered often struggle with emotional intimacy. They're never fully in. They may good at be good at wanting to have sex. You think, oh, they want me, they desire me, they want intimacy, but that's not really intimacy without the communication, the connection, right? And people who are unbothered, they struggle with emotional intimacy. They are not having close relationships, you can't. And because intimacy requires impact. An unbothered person doesn't want to feel impact. So if no one can affect you, no one can deeply connect to you either. And you just won't have deep connections. Emotional closeness requires vulnerability. Vulnerability means someone's behavior will matter to you. Yes. If nothing ever matters, you're not powerful, you're armored, you are walking in armor, you are way too armored up, right? And armor protects, but it also isolates, and you end up alone. And sometimes there are seasons where we need to be by ourselves and do our inner work. But if you don't want to be alone and you're like walking around unbothered, you will end up alone. There's no way you can be with people and not be bothered. So let's talk about the nervous system truth of it all. From a somatic perspective, chronic unbothered energy often sits in the dorsal shutdown, which means you're just flat toned. You know, just you're tone, you're just your personality's flat. Minimal emotional suppression, low visible activation. You you see those people, they're walking around like a shell of a person. You know, it's hard to wanna like even say hi to them or talk to them. And so you won't have partners like that. That must be tough. And it looks calm, but it's actually reduced capacity. True regulation allows, and I am gonna do a podcast on what it means to be regulated and not, because people are confused by that too. But true regulation allows for joy, yes. Anger, absolutely, desire, sadness, excitement, and disappointment. Regulation is filling all of the emotions. That's what we do as a regulated being. Flexibility is health. Rigidity, even calm rigidity is not health, is not healthy. So if you're truly unbothered because you've integrated the lesson, you won't need to announce it. You have to go, oh, I'm unbothered. No. If you're unbothered because you're numbing, you will feel it in your body later. You will. You will get triggered because we're meant to feel. We are here on this earth to be present, and part of being present is feeling. Think about that. So in loneliness and resentment and sudden emotional floods, suppression will leak. A lot of people don't know why they're lonely or why they don't have anyone in their life. That's because they haven't been connecting. The universe will just stop sending you people. It will pull your family, your friends way, your romantic partner away if you choose to be unbothered. So let's talk about what real power looks like. Real emotional power sounds like I was hurt, but I handled it. That disappointed me and I communicated it. I felt angry. I felt angry and I set a boundary. I felt rejected and I processed it without chasing. It doesn't sound like I never care. Nothing affects me. I'm above it. Nobody's above it all. The strongest people are not unbothered. They are self-aware. They are responsive, not reactive. But they are still connected. They allow life to touch them and they trust themselves to handle it. And for the people who are empaths, um sometimes we look very sensitive and very emotional. I know I was growing up. And if you are a true empath, because I think there's variations of being an empath, where you have the psychic gifts of reading other people, not just reading their cues because of trauma, um, you're gonna be bothered. You can't walk through this world. No, you have to shut off your gift, and that will take a lot of work to shut it off. And you are gonna be bothered in relationships and triggered and you you know affected, and that's part of being an empath. And so a lot of people want gifts, but they don't understand what it comes with to have psychic gifts. You're gonna feel the weight on your shoulders sometime, you're gonna feel overwhelmed, you're gonna feel like you need alone time, but then it's because you are being human and connecting, and that's not a bad thing. Then you could come back to the world after just decompressing a little bit and doing some regulation exercises. I work with healers of all kinds to regulate their nervous system. And so remember, if you are empath, you must regulate your nervous system so you can feel the emotions without wanting to be unbothered or overwhelmed by them. And really that goes for anyone, right? But you know, as empaths, we're we're sensitive and we can be messy at times because of it. So I want to close this out. Being unbothered is not the flex the internet makes it out to be. If it's grounded attachment, beautiful. If it's shut down, that's bypassing. Healing is not becoming untouchable, it's becoming resilient. Know the difference. It's allowing yourself to feel fully without losing yourself in the feeling. So the next time you say I'm unbothered, pause and ask, am I regulated or am I disconnected? But the real power isn't feeling nothing, it's in feeling everything and still standing steady. Remember, we are here to feel. So I want to thank you for listening and see you in the next episode.