Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / How Do You Know When You're In the Wrong? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: How do you know when you're in the wrong? Honestly, it's a question that's tail as old as time. Maybe it isn't about being wrong at all. Maybe it's about noticing the moments when you stop responding from your values and you start reacting from the parts of yourself that only learned how to survive. I think a better question is What does it feel like when I'm no longer acting like myself? Not the version of me other people expect. The version of me I recognize. I don't think we always know we're in the wrong because someone tells us sometimes We know because we don't recognize ourselves anymore. We become more reactive, more resentful, more controlling, more passive, more afraid. We stop acting from our values and we start acting from our survival. Have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking that wasn't me? Maybe you yelled, maybe you shut down, maybe you became someone you don't even like. I don't think that's where the conversation ends. I think that's where it begins. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me, Kimberly. Before we go any further, a quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's great areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns, we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to offer frameworks that help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. Growing up, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people were upset with me. I wasn't taught what authenticity even was. I wasn't taught what it meant to be aligned with yourself. Like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I was taught to do the right thing. The problem is the right thing always seemed to change depending on who was upset with me. Felt very subjective. People would cherry pick Bible verses at me. The rules were inconsistent. there was doubled standards. Somehow I ended up being responsible for everyone else's emotions. This resulted in me becoming obsessive with figuring out what I had done wrong. The confusing part is Sometimes our behavior does affect other people and how they respond to us. People mirror us all the time. Sometimes we mirror them. That's only part of the story. What happens when you genuinely are having a good day and someone resents it? What happens when someone twists your words because that's the story they need to believe. And they need you to believe it too. What happens when someone feels threatened by your peace, maybe even envious and seeing and thinks, hmm, no, they don't get to have a good day. They don't get to have peace. You can't spend your whole life believing every negative reaction is evidence that you've done something wrong. I've lived it. It was terrible. I realized something uncomfortable in the process of healing. I had become a reactive person. I wasn't a reactive person because that was my character. I was a reactive person because I lived in environments where I couldn't relax. I literally would host a party back in the day my fertility treatment journey. as soon as I sat down, I had someone make their journey of not wanting to have kids to somehow Be a reflection of my fertility issues. To give context, it was, I don't want to upset you, Kimberly. I'm sitting over there on the couch thinking, what are you talking about? Well, I want to get my tubes tied. Why would that upset me? Well, because you're going through fertility treatments and me not wanting to have kids somehow makes you upset. What do you mean? it was wild my feelings weren't even allowed to be my own. My feelings came last oftentimes where criticism wasn't an invitation. It was constant where I was being mocked, nagged, pressured to become someone I wasn't. And looking back, I don't think I was reacting to life. I was reacting to environments. Once I removed myself from those environments, bad relationships, dysfunctional, toxic, the noises started to disappear. I could finally tell the difference between a real threat and a familiar one. I used to think I had to win every disagreement because winning felt like the only way I could ever be understood. Every different opinion felt like an attack. Every criticism felt like a verdict on my worth. Not because disagreement is dangerous, because that's what I had been conditioned to experience. Eventually I became exhausted. I became so tired of defending myself that attacking the other person's character became easier than examining their argument. Looking back, I don't think that made me a bad person. I think it made me a tire person. I think it made me an overwhelmed person. Now I recognize something I couldn't see then. when I feel the need to attack a person instead of an idea, it's usually my own ego trying to protect something it doesn't know how to defend. labels that other people have created good or bad, those aren't me. I spent years thinking, why are people upset with me? That question kept me focusing on everyone else's internal world. Today I'm asking something different. Am I responding from my values? Or am I reacting from the conditioning? Because our survival responses aren't the problem. They developed for a reason. the problem is when they become the loudest voice in the room, when they take the wheel somewhere along the way, it convinces us that surviving is the same thing as living. The way I coped was becoming labels, the fixer, the peacemaker, the caretaker, the perfectionist, the invisible one, the achiever, the rescuer, and even the scapegoat. Those weren't my identities, they were my armor. They gave me a shield. A buffer between me and the possibility of being wrong. Looking back, I think my brain was trying to help me survive. I couldn't simply just be Kim, even at that party, just sit down and enjoy my drink. No. I had to be Kimberly struggles with fertility. every time I showed up as myself, curious, expressive, vulnerable, I felt like There was a consequence. I was mocked. Or nagged, corrected, pressured, misunderstood. Somewhere along the way, I learned that being myself was not safe. In the end, I did what many people do when they're trying to survive. I became who I needed to be to fit in environments I was in. the heartbreaking part is eventually I saw my own identity as a threat. Not because there was anything wrong with me, because I had learned that authenticity came with a cost. Looking back, that part that breaks my heart the most. I became my own enemy. Not because I hated myself, because I had spent years. many years protecting myself from becoming the person I never had the chance to know. I had to wear a mask for so long that I couldn't tell where I ended and I began. I think that's also why my ego bruised easily my worth was tied to the labels. If I wasn't the good person, the helpful person, the responsible person Then what had all of this been for? Who was I without those roles? Maya Angelo says, do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. I love that quote because it allows me to look at past versions of myself with compassion instead of contentment. I can see how hard she was trying. I can see that every survival response had a purpose. She wasn't broken, she was adapting. Those versions of us were doing everything they knew to keep us emotionally safe, keep us alive. The goal wasn't to erase them. the goal is to thank them for getting us where we needed to go. then gently letting them step out of the driver's seat. you're not your survival responses. You're the person underneath them. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is recognizing when I'm explaining something from clarity and when I'm explaining it with fear. I used to overexplain constantly. Not because I love talking my way out of problems, because I was trying to survive. I believe that if I could find the perfect words, if I could provide enough context, if I could anticipate every misunderstanding before it happened, maybe I'd finally be safe. Maybe no one could accuse me of something I didn't mean. Maybe they'd finally understand me. That's the thing about survival when you fawn. It convinces you that if you explain yourself one more time, you'll finally earn peace. Sometimes that isn't communication. That's simply just self-protection. I've also noticed something else. When I'm grounded in what I know to be true, I don't feel the same urgency to convince someone. I can explain, I can clarify, I can answer questions. If I regress, I will try again, especially to people who make me feel safe. I don't feel my entire identity depends on whether the other person agrees with me. That's a very different kind of conversation. For me, overexplaining in the past was never about the facts. It was about trying to manage someone else's perception of me, to not be misunderstood, trying to prove I wasn't the villain they're trying to claim me to be, trying to prevent rejection before it happened, trying to outrun a fear that has been following me since childhood. And that's exhausting. Because eventually you realize there is no explanation perfect enough to convince someone who has already decided who you are, who they need you to be, and who they want you to become. Freedom came when I stopped asking, how do I make them understand me? I started asking, Am I communicating honestly and in alignment with the person I want to be? Those are two very different goals. How do we begin to take the wheel back? For me, it started with curiosity, not curiosity to prove I was right. Curiosity to understand. I read books, I listened to podcasts, I researched psychology, family systems, communication, and trauma. At first I thought it was healing looking back. my obsession. was becoming a survival response. I believe that if I could understand people well enough, maybe I could finally explain myself in the right way. Maybe I could finally say the magic combinations of words that would make people see me bippity bobbity boo. That was still survival talking. And resentment was also building. Healing isn't about finding the perfect explanation. I know. For the fellow perfectionists out there, I understand. Sometimes it's accepting that no explanation could ever change someone who never wanted to understand you in the first place. One of the hardest realizations was accepting that some of the people who raised me also became some of my earliest critics. I spent years trying to reason with them into treating me differently, trying to earn empathy, compassion, understanding, permission to simply be myself. some investments never pay off. to invest in people who are committed to misunderstand you often costs you the relationships you're supposed to have with yourself. For a long time, Kimberly didn't even have the seat in the car. Fear had the seat. Anger, people pleasing, perfectionism, hypervigilancy, self-doubt. None of those parts are bad. They all showed up because they thought they were helping me. The problem wasn't that they existed. The problem was that they were driving too often. They needed to be the passenger. healing for me has looked like Inviting someone else to the driver's seat. Curiosity. Compassion. Courage. Peace. Playfulness, boundaries, authenticity, nuance. Those are parts of myself I want making decisions now. Not because fear no longer exists or any of those feelings. Because fear doesn't get to decide the direction of my life anymore. I've also learned to take my emotions seriously, to explore my feelings, not because my feelings are always correct, because they're always information. They tell me to slow down and ask questions. why did that interaction leave me feeling small? Why am I suddenly anxious? Why do I feel resentment? Why do I feel peaceful around one person and constantly on guard around another? Sometimes the answers are surprisingly ordinary. Maybe today I don't want to go to Chick-fil-A. Maybe I actually want sushi. Maybe I don't want to go to the party. Not because I don't love the person hosting it, but because I know I don't enjoy how I feel around some of the people who will be there. Those moments matter because every time I listen to myself in the small things, I become a little bit more capable of trusting myself in the big things. I also had to rethink what I value in conversations. Sometimes we ask ourselves, Was that person nice? Before we ask, were they honest? We focus so much on how something was said that we never stop to consider what was actually being said. sometimes kindness and honesty exist together. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes people deliver a hard truth with compassion. Sometimes people hide cruelty behind a smile. Sometimes someone says, I'm just joking, but the joke tells you exactly what they believe. I've learned to pay attention to both the message and the delivery, not because tone doesn't matter. It absolutely can. sometimes focusing only on tone Can sometimes distract us from the truth that's sitting right in front of us. Sometimes our body notices the truth Before our mind can explain it. We feel tense, we feel dismissed, we feel ourselves shrinking. Our nervous system is gathering information long before we've put words to what's happening. learning to trust someone has meant slowing down long enough to ask. What is this feeling trying to tell me? not so I react, so I can choose how I want to respond. I think it's important to pay attention to your emotions because a lot of times resentment is built when we ignore them. I don't think resentment is something to be ashamed of. I think it's information. Resentment can look like loud anger. It can also be much quieter than that. it can look like dreading spending time with someone, feeling annoyed every time their name pops up on your phone, hoping they cancel plans. Feeling emotionally exhausted after every interaction, avoiding difficult conversations because they feel pointless, over explaining yourself in hopes they'll finally understand. Trying to diagnose someone else's behavior so you can explain away the hurt they've caused. Becoming a therapist in a relationship instead of it becoming an equal participation. Continuing to self-sacrifice while secretly wishing someone would finally notice how much you're giving. Feeling guilty for wanting space, Finding yourself replaying conversations over and over, Thinking of everything you wish you would have said. Sometimes resentment doesn't sound like I hate this person. Sometimes it sounds like I don't want to keep living like this. That leads us to two important questions. Why am I feeling resentment? what Is this feeling trying to protect? Growing up, I think many of us were taught to ask, Would you like it if someone treated you that way? And that's an important question. I have found another one just as revealing. If someone treated your child that way, would you tell your child to stay? Would you tell them they're overreacting? Would you tell them to keep this relationship going? Would you expect them to keep sacrificing themselves to keep the peace? Or if you're a parent, if you watched your own child treat your future grandchildren the way you're treating yourself today, how would you feel? Sometimes it's easier to recognize harm When we're looking at someone we love than when we're looking at ourselves. I think resentment is often a signal that we've been suppressing something for a long time. Maybe we've been ignoring boundaries. Maybe we've been disconnecting from our emotions. Maybe we become so used to surviving that we've stopped asking what we actually need. Our bodies often notice that misalignment before our minds know how to explain it, at least from my experience. Maybe it's the pit in your stomach every time someone's name comes up, like to the point that the name itself is a trigger. Maybe you avoid eye contact because something feels unresolved. Maybe you feel dread whenever a certain conversation is mentioned. Maybe your shoulders tense before you even realize why. Your body isn't always telling you exactly what the problem is. It might be inviting you to become curious. And sometimes not every situation is the same. Sometimes people we resent don't actually have the power over us anymore. Sometimes we've carried old patterns and new relationships. other times the person we're dealing with still holds real power. Financial power, social power, emotional power, community power. In those situations the answer isn't always just have an honest conversation. Sometimes the safest response is creating an escape plan. Sometimes escape plans take years, years to build financial stability, years to rebuild confidence, years to create a supportive system, years to convince your own nervous system that safety is possible. I want to leave room for the reality because not everyone Can leave the moment they realize something isn't healthy. Sometimes people stay because they're afraid of retaliation. Sometimes because they've been isolated. Sometimes because they're afraid no one will believe them. Sometimes because they've learned that speaking up comes with consequences, and sometimes they're not safe. Healing isn't pretending those risks don't exist. It's learning to honestly ask. What power do I have today? Maybe it's a conversation, maybe it's a boundary, maybe it's asking for help. Maybe it's quietly preparing to leave. Maybe it's simply admitting the truth to yourself for the first time. It's also worth asking another difficult question. when I have been made to feel powerless, Do I ever seek power over people who have less power than I do? do I unload my frustration onto someone who feels safer to confront because pain doesn't disappear? If we're not careful, it looks somewhere else to go. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is this resentment often whispers, I've been abandoning myself. Not always. Often enough, instead of asking, why am I such an angry person? I try to ask, what promise to myself have I been breaking? What boundaries do I keep ignoring to keep the peace? What boundaries do I feel I'm not allowed to have because I'm afraid of being punished? Sometimes simply understanding our resentment doesn't immediately change our circumstances, especially if we're not safe. give it something incredibly valuable, a roadmap. Not what needs to change around us, what needs to change within us so we can begin living in alignment with ourselves. At some point, we also have to become curious about our own character, not The labels we've collected are actual character. I think those are two very different things. It's worth asking, have I been acting in alignment with the kind of person I want to be, or have I been protecting the identity instead of practicing the values I claim to have? It's one thing to call yourself kind. It's another thing to ask whether your kindness has quietly become self-abandonment. it's another thing to ask whether you're using honesty as permission to be cruel. It's one thing to call yourself patient, it's another thing to ask whether you've been avoiding difficult conversations because conflict makes you uncomfortable. Character shows up in relationships. A manager might genuinely believe they're a supportive leader, while their employee feels like they're walking on eggshells. A spouse might think they're simply passionate while their partner is anxiously monitoring their moods because they never know when the next outburst is coming. A child may become the emotional caretaker of a parent believing that if they keep their parent happy, maybe they'll finally feel safe themselves, or they'll finally get the care they want, or the care they need. An older sibling may feel responsible for raising their younger sibling instead of simply being allowed to be a child. A younger brother may hold more physical power than the older sister as they grow, changing the family dynamics in ways that aren't always acknowledged. Religious communities can sometimes confuse obedience with emotional maturity. Mental health struggles can explain behaviors without excusing harm. Every relationship has different balance of power. Understanding the balance matters. I've also noticed that people have become deeply attached to labels. The good parent, the provider, the empath, the peacemaker, Sometimes those labels reflect reality. Sometimes they become shields against accountability. I've seen parents who care deeply about being seen a good parent While dismissing their child's emotional experiences. I've seen people define themselves by being providers while overlooking the emotional presence their family was asking for. I've seen people insist they're incredibly empathetic while rarely slowing down long enough to understand another person's perspective. That made me ask myself, do I care more about being seen as a good person or becoming one? For me, empathy isn't simply feeling someone else's emotions. It's making genuine effort to understand the world through their eyes, even if I don't agree with them. sympathy, at least the way I think about it, often Starts from my own perspective. It's looking at someone else's through my experiences. my beliefs, my judgment, and trying to understand them from there. Both have value. Empathy asks me to become curious before I become certain. I've realized a lot of us are quick to adopt labels without ever studying what they actually mean. Maybe because labels feel safe. Maybe because it's easier to say, I'm an empath, than ask, Am I really listening and trying to understand the other person? Maybe it's easier to believe we're already emotionally mature than it is to discover that there are still parts of ourselves we need to grow. Humility can feel painful, especially if you grew up in environments where every mistake became proof that you were a bad person or difficult for having emotions. When that happened, accountability doesn't feel like growth, it feels like danger, danger. That's why I've learned to pause when I notice myself saying things like they always or they never. Those words can sometimes be true. They can also become shortcuts to keep us from seeing the whole picture. I've learned to be careful when I hear myself justifying my behavior with someone else. I only reacted because they always, and maybe they do, their behavior doesn't answer for mine. Me, myself, and I. I still have to decide whether I act in alignment with my own values. I've also come to appreciate the people in my life who can lovingly challenge me. If people I trust, people who are usually honest and supportive tell me I might have missed something, that's worth paying attention to, especially if you value their opinion, not because they're automatically right, not because they know you better than you know yourself. as the legend has been told. they might be seeing something I can't see while I'm emotionally activated. When that happens, I try to become more curious instead of defensive. I ask myself, why did I become sarcastic? Why did I manipulate? Why did I become passive? Why am I nagging? Why did I explode? Why did I disappear? Not to shame myself, to understand which part of me grabbed the steering wheel. And shut up and drive. the goal was to become more aware, more aligned little by little. To let my values drive more often than my own survival responses. And instead, maybe my survival responses are helping me understand the directions we need to go. Back to the question. How do you know when you're in the wrong? I don't think there's one answer. I'm sorry, it's my rambles, and unfortunately, sometimes you're in the wrong because you acted out of anger instead of intention. Sometimes you said something you didn't truly believe and you wanted to hurt someone because you were hurting. Sometimes you projected an old wound onto a new person. Sometimes you made assumptions instead of asking questions. Sometimes you became sarcastic, manipulative, passive, and controlling because survival responses grabbed the wheel and started steering and told you to shut up and drive. Sometimes you broke a promise to yourself. Sometimes you ignored your own boundaries you have been trying to intentionally put in place because resentment convinced you that everyone else was the problem and sometimes You're not actually in the wrong. Sometimes you're reacting to an environment that taught you to doubt yourself. Sometimes your body is trying to tell you something your mind hasn't been able to put into words yet. Sometimes your resentment is showing you where you've been abandoning yourself. We don't do that here. No, no, no. Sometimes the relationship isn't healthy. Sometimes the conversation isn't safe to have. And sometimes what needs to change isn't you. It's where you are. I've also learned that accountability isn't asking, How do I prove I'm a good person? It's asking, am I willing to be honest with myself? Did I say what I said because I genuinely believe it? Or because I wanted someone else to feel what I was feeling. Sometimes the answer is both. Sometimes I met what I said, and sometimes I wish I had said it with more kindness. Sometimes I realize I owe someone else an apology. Sometimes this relationship isn't worth fighting for. Sometimes it's realizing it's time to let it go, as Elsa told us from Frozen. When I discover I'm in the wrong. I try to remember that accountability Isn't about shame. It's about repair. If I can admit my mistakes early, I keep resentment from growing. If I own my actions without adding a but, I leave room to trust and rebuild. if I've caused harm, I ask, what can I do to make it right? And then follow through. Because change isn't measured by apologies. It's measured by what happened afterwards. Maybe the question isn't how do I know when I'm in the wrong? Maybe the better question is What happened that made me abandon myself on who I was trying to become or who I always was? Or maybe an even harder question is, which version of me is making the decision, the person I want to become or the part of me that learned surviving matters more than being myself. Because our protective responses aren't the enemy. They're evidence that at one point in our lives they helped us survive. The work isn't getting rid of them. It's learning how to thank them for trying to help. Then gently taking the wheel back. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever been humbled by realizing you might have been in the wrong? What helped you find your way back to your humanity? Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with those questions yourself, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thanks for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. And remember, alignment isn't about becoming someone new. It's about making enough room for the person you've always been to finally drive. I'll see you in the next episode.