The Therapy Edit - On how to feel more comfortable with being misunderstood

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

In this, the seventh of a special ten part series of The Therapy Edit, Anna talks through The Uncomfortable Truths; People Misunderstand Me.The Uncomfortable Truth: Change Your Life By Taming 10 of Your Mind's Greatest Fears is Anna's 5th book was published on the 8th August.Order your copy hereHere's a teaser from Anna about what to expect in this long-awaited, transformative book.‘Some people don’t like me”“Bad things will happen to people I love”“I’m going to fail”… these words underpinned my anxieties and nightmares. I bet they feature in yours too.Our fears are anchored in the unavoidable truths of life; all things reach an end, bad things happen, and we lack the control we crave.As an experienced psychotherapist, who’s had years of therapy, I realised that ploughing endless energy into trying to control the uncontrollable is keeping us all tired, wired, and worried. Ignoring fears doesn’t make them less true, it makes them more powerful. I decided to try a different tact and it changed my world.Instead of doing everything I could to ease and avoid life’s uncomfortable truths, I sought a deeper acceptance of them. Through using this approach, my clients and I discovered that fear began to loosen its grip. We were living more intentionally and peacefully.So, face your fears one a chapter at a time, and discover who you are without worry, doubt and people-pleasing holding you back.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi everyone. Welcome to today's special episode of the Therapy Edit where I am working through in 10 episodes all of the different uncomfortable truths of life and how we can become a little bit more comfortable with them. And as a result, live more fully and wholeheartedly and authentically and most importantly with less fear. So these uncomfortable truths are taken from my brand new book, which as I record this episode is not yet out, but it will be very soon. And I'm counting down the days to see this book in your hands because I'm so excited. I don't think I've ever been so

excited, although maybe I have with the other books. It's hard to remember sometimes, isn't exactly how you felt? But I wrote this book fervorantly. I think that's the word in two weeks. And it just poured out onto my laptop with a real desire to share some words that have just really sat with me in more recent years. So, yeah, here goes. Today, we are talking about the uncomfortable truth of being misunderstood. And I'm going to read you a little bit of an excerpt, as I have been doing in the other episodes. And then I'm going to share with you a tip or two on how to get a little bit more comfortable

with this uncomfortable truth. But this is such a big one for me. I've got to be honest with you, being misunderstood over the years has caused me so much pain. So much, oh, just that. that sense of not being got, that sense of needing to be seen. And I know that there will be so many of you who just deeply relate to the words that I'm about to share with you, but to give you a bit of an insight into what we're going to talk about, I want you to listen to the words that I write at the beginning of

the chapter. This is the uncomfortable truth of it, right? Plain and simple, written down, read out. You will be misunderstood. People will misunderstand you. You will feel misunderstood at times when you actually really deeply most need to be seen. You will painstakingly fight your corner. You will desperately try to explain yourself and people will fail to get you.

Feeling misunderstood can make you feel dismissed and ashamed. I know times when these emotions have been so quick to rise up when I have felt not got or overlooked. or unseen. It can feel as if life has rewound by decades in a flash and you're just a child crying out to express a need perhaps or a feeling that just isn't being met. You will feel at times like you're banging your head against a brick wall trying to be understood in circumstances where the cost of being misunderstood might mean losing an opportunity, a relationship or even a second chance those times and we are just desperate to be understood. You will share your truth with someone with your heart racing and your hands ringing and they'll say something that indicates

that they just, they don't get you at all, they do not get where you're coming from and in those moments you will feel absolutely alone. Feeling misunderstood can prompt a sense of hopelessness, it can prompt that rage that rises up in us and it can even prompt grief. grief that perhaps the relationship isn't, as you hoped it would be, that that person isn't able to be what you need. It can drive friends apart and it can separate families and it can leave you hauling up that drawbridge of your inner world and swearing never to let anyone step foot inside it again. It's not safe. Nobody can be trusted with your secrets, your vulnerability or your hurt. You might just think it's not worth the risk.

You felt like that. It's not worth the risk of talking about this and opening up about this. As you grow to accept the truth that you will be misunderstood, fact, in life, truth. Instead of inspiring you to add some extra bolts to your emotional armour, it can actually do the opposite. It's amazing. This is what accepting these truths can do. it can just really open life and relationships up a little bit. Accepting that you'll be misunderstood by some people helps you to realize that in the same way, there will be people who do understand, hear,

validate, recognise and resonate with how you feel. You'll start to become aware that some people won't get you because they simply can't see where you're coming from and that's not necessarily to do with you at all. This is so important, this recognition. It's such a light bulb moment, I think, sometimes. Sometimes it's not to do with you at all. It's not that you didn't verbalise it clearly enough or use the right words.

It may well just mean that that person's life experiences or the lens that they see the world through, haven't given them that insight yet. So that's a little excerpt, a little sneak peek. And in the book, I also share five reasons as to why you might find it hard to accept this truth. So some of those are to do with childhood, perhaps, some of those to do with experiences you've been through. But I'm just going to top line a couple right now. Number one, you silence yourself. So you hold some of that vulnerability in to avoid losing something or someone. Because it might be that actually you know that if you really explained how you felt, if you really shared your needs and you were misunderstood, you might actually risk the relationship changing as a result.

you might worry that actually the relationship cannot withstand your honesty. Maybe you take that brave step of telling a friend that when they make a certain kind of joke about you, it actually hurts. It's not funny even though you laugh. Maybe they take offence and instead of recognising that you're actually trying to protect your friendship, they deflect your words, they manipulate your feedback and maybe they say, well, you should just have a better sense of humour. Was this sense of humour gone?

I don't mean anything by it. And as a result in those situations that arise, sometimes we feel misunderstood and we just start slowly stepping back from spending time with that friend. Maybe we decide that, you know, next time a similar situation comes up, it's just not worse saying anything, I'll just suck it up. And it's that slow erosion, isn't it? It's that slow retreat of being able to be authentic in relationships. And yeah, it's hard.

It can be really hard some of these situations. maybe you really fear being misunderstood because actually sometimes being rejected legitimately impacts your survival because we're social beings right and we need other people in order to survive and thrive and this is a real reason that language is formed to help us understand each other and communicate so the need to feel understood and like you belong isn't just so you get that like nice warm and fuzzy feeling when you feel got but it's actually historically so that we stay alive and looked after in community so. So therefore, on a really deep level, being misunderstood can spark this sense of discomfort,

even if it isn't actually linked to any trauma that feeds into that drive to please other people. Maybe you recognise that you do almost anything you could if you're understood, liked and accepted, even if it comes at a cost, maybe of your time and your energy. So what are some tips? So you're like, yes, this resonates with me, Anna. What do I actually do? I find it really hard to be misunderstood and I've got a bit more of an insight into why, but what do I do? So here are two of my tips.

Number one, know that some people need to misunderstand you. They need to. It might be that it's really helpful for you to reflect on times that you've wanted to avoid hearing other people's truth to protect yourself in some way. maybe there are people in your life who struggle to accept a certain part of your identity or your lifestyle or your personality because maybe it challenges something in them that they're not actually ready or able to explore it this time maybe you have to have a gentle conversation with someone about this but sometimes you have to wait until they're ready and open to challenge their own stories and truths and as we know sometimes that just doesn't come but knowing that some people just need to misunderstand you, that it serves them somehow in a way that you might be able to identify or not can be really, really helpful. And then the second tip that I have that I want to share with you from my book today is seek to understand yourself. This is so important. Now, as a therapist, light bulb moments are my actual like favorite thing in the world whenever

a client says, oh, I've never thought about it like that. Oh, that really makes sense. It makes me so happy because it's just so helpful to seek that understanding of how you are the way you are and why, because the more you realize what drives your thoughts and your actions and emotions, the more kindness and self-compassion you can offer yourself. Now, we all need to feel understood. We all do. It's a deep human need to feel, to feel seen. So that's why we can, we're never going to not need that. But if we find it hard to see and approach ourselves with compassion and acceptance, then it's so hard to believe that other people might be able to do this too. And the more we are able to understand and know and accept ourselves in our messy,

unfinished state with our, you know, our blind spots and our toxic traits and the things that we're working on, the things that will never be ever fully tied up. There are things. I'm going to be working on forever, I'm sure about it. But the more we approach ourselves in our messy states with acceptance, the less urgent it feels that other people need to do that too. And the more that we're able to invest in those few relationships, and it does come down to the few sometimes with the people that get us. And it might just be that actually they get certain part of us that others don't.

So it can be a bit of a mishmash of people in our lives who get us on different levels. the more we invest in those relationships, again, it takes the pressure of our wider kind of network really to get us. So, yeah, we need to feel understood. So understanding ourselves and having that insight does go a really good way to meet that need. Never all the way because we need it from each other. We're creatures of community. But I hope that gives you a little insight into that uncomfortable truth of the fact that people will misunderstand you and how actually coming to a greater sense of comfort in the uncomfortable truth means that yeah there's less fear you're more likely to open up and speak out and connect with people and less likely to fear that

absolute heart-dropping gut-wrenching feeling when someone just doesn't because at the end of the day you do the people close to you they get you and really those are the relationships that is the perspective that deserves the power that we so often just give out to to everyone else. So I hope that's been helpful and grab a copy of my sunny yellow book and The Uncomfortable Truth where I will, yeah, we dive into this in a deeper way. Sending you love. I am so excited to announce that my brand new book, The Uncomfortable Truth, Change Your Life by Taming Ten of Your Mind's Greatest Fears, is available for pre-order now and is out on the 8th of August. And in this book, we tackle some of life's big,

unavoidable, uncomfortable truths such as some people don't like me. I am going to fail. Life isn't fair. Bad things will happen. And in this book, we tackle these big uncomfortable trees that rob us of so much headspace and energy as we try and control and avoid them. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones in Amazon and we can celebrate together.