No one ever likes to feel misunderstood. Being Misunderstood is one of those few human emotions we actively strive against wanting to inflict upon ourselves. I don’t want to speak for the group here, but I think its safe to say we all want to be understood, accepted, and wanted. We all strive to cultivate meaningful relationships that inspires love, happiness and growth.
But what happens when you find yourself on the receiving end of being Misunderstood?
We all tend to act differently depending on the significance of the misunderstanding. Some of us may fight back with fire and anger. Often times this is to protect ourselves. We may be truly wounded and instead of tending to our vulnerabilities we feed the need to prove our strength. We demonstrate our strengths in order to shield our weaknesses. We bare our teeth, and snare and snap at anyone who may provoke us. Its affective at keeping your problem controlled but never fixing it. Only managing it.
Sometimes we react in shock and pain. We feel hurt by the misperception. We wonder how the person came to those conclusions. We may try to back track their steps, and try to figure out how they arrived at their wrongful assumption of us. Sometimes we blame ourselves and look for a solution to the misunderstanding in our actions. It hurts, and we wonder what we’ve done wrong, and what we could’ve done better. We may question our own actions and the intentions behind them. We may even question ourselves, and our life’s mottos or true intentions. This way of thinking will only cause us unwarranted pain.
Misunderstandings often stem from misplaced emotions, and if we don’t fix the problem at the very beginning, it can spiral out of control quickly. Misunderstandings can lie dormant in our fears, anxieties, and our general lack of knowledge on any given situation. We perceive everything through our own two eyes, giving us a very skewered sense of vision. It is good practice to often challenge our reality with someone else’s perspective of reality, to help check the actual facts, and not ideas we’ve made up in our head.
This all seems easy and simple to follow but when confronted with a situation where you find yourself on the receiving end of being misunderstood, it can be difficult not to jump straight to emotion, rather than rationale.
Being misunderstood means you’ve drawn the short straw in life, and will be provided a valuable lesson. It means everyone else gets to jump to conclusions, while you are stuck in traffic on the high road. You don’t get to exit early. You don’t get to advance to Go, and you don’t get to Collect 200 dollars. Instead you are gifted with an agonizing tedious valuable lesson of life. These become valuable later on in your life, as they can be exchanged for ‘wise tokens’. So it would be best of you to understand that being misunderstood is a blessing in disguise.
With misunderstandings can also come disagreements, friction, tension, broiling points, and change. Sometimes we’ve out grown our old ways of thinking, and are at a breaking point. We find ourselves in the midst of change, and we can either cling to our ridge old ways of thinking, which got us into this mess, or we can embrace a new perspective, A new way of looking at things.
I’ve always wanted to be seen as I see myself; A kind, compassionate, understanding, caring, altruistic, honest, tender, bubbly, loving, sweet, soft, outgoing, gentle, and positive human just trying to be. Often times I get misconceived as boisterous, obnoxious, flirtatious, eccentric, unintelligent, flamboyant, rambunctious, ’too much for this and not enough of that’ type of person. I often felt utterly misunderstood.
The simplest actions’ of mine could be horribly misconstrued as an act of provocation. I have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way, which often leads to the misconception of my actions. This usually fuels my anxiety, which leads me to believe that there is something undoubtedly wrong with me. I question the foundation of what I believe in and stand for. I agonize over every little thing I could have said or done differently.
In recent years, I have fallen down this path repeatedly and I find myself questioning “what do I truly value in life’? Each time I fall, I rise again, and while doing so I work towards accepting me for who I am, and who I want to become, rather than who I am being perceived as in the present situation. The reality is I am me, and not what others think of me. With the help of some well-trained VA health professionals, I’ve been able to identify the real issues with myself, and I am working towards a more happy healthy mental state of being.
I’ve done all the mental mind work, so I can be the new and improved person I have always wanted to be. I am having more confidence in her day by day. I realize that some people may find my hobbies, values, ideals, and core beliefs to be dumb, stupid, ludicrous, preposterous, and/or a waste of my time. People will just misunderstand me. I have learned not everyone is going to like me, and I am working toward accepting that. I am coming to terms with being different, weird, and quirky.
I will always have time to try and explain myself to anyone who may not understand me fully, but I’ve learned to get up from the table and walk away when respect is no longer being served.
That’s the best piece of advice I can give you when being Misunderstood.