Latest / Adult Child of Dysfunction / E 370: Tammy's Takes #45: What If They Misunderstand You?

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E 370: Tammy's Takes #45: What If They Misunderstand You? · Adult Child of Dysfunction

• 0:00
  good morning, everybody.
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  Welcome back to another episode of Tammy's Takes.
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  So if you listened to my conversation yesterday with Nima Rahmany, there were so many things that we could unpack from that episode, tons of things.
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  But there was one sentence he made that stopped me in my tracks, and he said, when I asked him at the end, "What tip or trick or words of wisdom could you give the rest of the world?"
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  He said, "You need to learn how to expand your capacity to be misunderstood."
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  And I thought, "Damn."
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  Because if you're an adult child of dysfunction, being misunderstood can feel almost unbearable, and I don't think we really talk about that enough.
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  So think about how much energy you might have spent throughout your life trying to make sure people understood you.
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  You explain things, and then you over-explain them, and then you explain your explanation, and then you give them more context.
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  Then you soften what you said because maybe it sounded too harsh.
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  Then you send another text because you're worried they took the first text wrong, and then you replay the entire conversation for three days in your mind.
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  And these are the things you're asking yourself, Did I hurt their feelings?
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  Do you think I'm selfish?
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  Do they think I'm angry?
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  Do they think I'm a bad person?
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  Should I text them again?
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  And then we call that communication But sometimes, that's not communication.
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  That's flat out fear.
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  The fear of allowing someone else to have a version of you in their head that you cannot control, that's what it is.
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  And for an adult child, that can feel incredibly unsafe.
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  Because think about what many of us have learned growing up.
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  You learn to read a room, you learn to pay attention to everybody else's emotions, you learn that someone's mood could affect what happened next.
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  So you kept questioning things like, "Are they mad at me?
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  Did I do something wrong?
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  Are we okay?
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  Do they still love me, and am I safe?"
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  And the list goes on and on and on.
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  And eventually, people's perception of you can become connected to your own sense of safety.
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  So now what happens?
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  Now you're 30, 40, 50, 60, even 70 years old and someone misunderstands you, and your body literally reacts like something is terribly wrong.
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  That's the part I want you to notice.
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  Because sometimes the problem is not they misunderstand me.
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  Sometimes the problem is I don't feel okay unless they understand me, and those are two completely different things.
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  And this is where self-trust comes in, and this is what I work with a lot of people.
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  Because self-trust says, "I know what I meant, I know what my intention was, I know what I need, I know what my boundary is, I know who I am."
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  And someone else is allowed to have a different opinion about that.
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  It doesn't mean we don't care about other people's feelings.
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  It doesn't mean we become insensitive.
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  it doesn't mean we're just saying, "Screw everybody else.
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  I'll say whatever I want and not worry about it."
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  That's not healing either.
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  If I hurt someone, I do wanna know.
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  If I've behaved badly, I wanna take responsibility.
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  And if there's something I need to repair, I wanna repair it.
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  Nima actually talked a lot about repair in our conversation, and he talked about how healthy relationships aren't relationships without conflict.
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  What matters is whether we can come back, listen to the other person's experience, and repair after the rupture.
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  Here's the difference.
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  Repair is not the same thing as abandoning yourself so somebody won't be upset with you, and adult children confuse those two things all of the time.
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  Let's say someone asks you to do something this weekend.
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  You say, "I'm sorry, I can't this weekend."
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  And they respond, "Wow, you've really changed."
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  Ouch.
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  There's the trigger Now, because your nervous system, what it really wants to do is say, "No, no, no, I haven't changed.
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  It's not that I don't wanna see you.
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  It's just that I've had a really long week, and this was on Sunday and Saturday, and I promised myself I was going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
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  You're abandoning yourself.
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  Look what just happened.
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  You went from setting a boundary, which was healthy, a healthy boundary, to building a legal defense for why you're allowed to have one.
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  Why?
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  Because they misunderstood you.
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  Or maybe they understood you perfectly and just didn't like your answer.
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  That's another big one.
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  Someone being disappointed in your boundary does not automatically mean your boundary was wrong.
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  Someone thinking you're selfish doesn't automatically make you selfish.
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  Someone disagreeing with your decision doesn't automatically mean you've made the wrong decision, and someone being angry with you does not automatically mean that you did something wrong.
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  That is very hard concept to wrap your head around if you are an adult child and growing up, you always did everything wrong.
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  Somewhere along the way, we have learned if you're okay with me, then I'm okay.
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  So healing becomes something very different.
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  Healing needs to say, "I can be okay even when you're not okay with me," and that's huge, and it doesn't happen overnight.
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  You're building capacity.
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  That's why I love Nima's wording where he said you have to build the capacity for people to misunderstand you.
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  He didn't say stop caring what anybody thinks.
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  He said to expand your capacity to be misunderstood.
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  And maybe that means that today you tolerate 30 seconds of discomfort without explaining yourself.
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  Maybe next week you set a boundary and don't add six paragraphs explaining why.
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  Maybe someone disagrees with you and instead of immediately defending yourself, you say, "Huh, interesting.
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  We're gonna have to agree to disagree on that one," period.
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  Oh my God, do you know how hard that can be though?
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  No defense, no PowerPoint presentation, no 14 screenshots proving your side, just I understand that you see it differently.
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  And then notice what happens inside of your body, because that is where the work begins.
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  That is where it starts, my friends.
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  Your chest might tighten, your stomach might turn, you might feel the urge to grab your phone and send one more message.
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  You might feel guilty.
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  You might feel selfish.
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  You might feel scared.
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  And instead of immediately doing something to make that feeling disappear, see if you can stay with it for a moment.
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  Put your hand on your chest, slow down your breathing, and just ask yourself or tell yourself, "I can tolerate being misunderstood.
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  I don't have to fix their perception of me.
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  I'm allowed to know exactly who I am when someone else sees me differently."
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  Can you do that?
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  can you say those things to yourself and be okay with that?
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  Because here's the question I really want you to take with this week.
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  How much of your life are you spending trying to control other people's version of you?
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  Their version of you, not yours.
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  Because every time you change yourself so somebody else won't misunderstand you, every time you don't say what you really think, every time you say yes when you wanna say no, every time you shrink a boundary because someone doesn't
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  like it, you may be protecting the relationship with them, but I want you to ask yourself this.
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  What is it costing with your relationship with yourself?
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  Nima said something else in our conversation that connects perfectly with this.
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  He said, "The ultimate freedom is when your sense of okayness is no longer conditional on another person changing."
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  I would add something to that.
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  Your okayness doesn't have to depend on somebody else understanding you either.
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  That is self-trust.
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  That's authenticity.
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  That's freedom.
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  So here's your little Tammy's Takes challenge for this week.
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  Catch yourself the next time you start over-explaining.
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  Just notice it, and ask yourself, "Am I explaining because this information is actually necessary, or am I explaining because I'm afraid of what they'll think about me if I don't?"
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  And if it's the second one, see if you can say a little less, let the discomfort be there, let them have their opinion, and keep reminding yourself, "I do not have to abandon myself just to make sure someone
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  else understands me."
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  Because maybe healing isn't getting everybody in your life to finally understand you.
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  Maybe healing is getting to the place where you understand yourself enough that you don't need everybody else to.
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  So guys, that's my Tammy's Takes for today.
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  Love you guys.
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  I will see you next time.
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  If you wanna reach out and ask me any questions about this, I always offer a complimentary calm and clarity call where we can get online, we can talk about whatever's going through, what patterns you have, what questions you
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  have, and we can meet you right where you're at.
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  So go ahead, book that call, and I will see you soon.
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  Take care.
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  Bye-bye.