How to Practice Being Misunderstood

Hi everyone, Dr. Nicola Perra, the Holistic Psychologist here. As always, thank you all for tuning in. Today we're going to talk about being misunderstood and the practice of teaching ourselves how to be misunderstood. I talk a lot about this concept of misunderstanding, especially when we're going through a healing journey for a couple of reasons. As we begin to heal, those of you listening might be engaging in new self-care behaviors, you might be showing up differently in your relationships in terms of boundaries, you might be diving in deep and doing some inner work and uncovering older wounds that we've carried with us. And in the process of doing that, you might start to show up differently in your world and that can cause reactions from other people, not always positive reactions. A lot of us as humans are so driven to be understood, understood by those around us. But sometimes in healing, we're not going to get that feeling of misunderstanding. So two steps of how we begin to practice being misunderstood. The first invaluable tool is observation. This time, we're observing the messenger, the other person. So say for instance, using boundaries as an example. I know a lot of you out there are beginning to experiment with new boundaries in your relationships, especially when these relationships are long-term, sometimes when we show up differently, we do get a kickback or a negative reaction. A lot of us can take that personally, at least I can feel bad my way to removing that boundary completely. What can really help is me stepping back so if I do get a negative reaction from whomever, if I try to put a boundary up in this relationship and they have a negative reaction, whomever that person might be, if I know this person, I can explore within myself, okay, well, how do I imagine this person shows up to their other relationships? Is this a person who understands boundaries themselves? The answer is no, then that can relieve me of the pressure if they don't know boundaries for themselves and aren't using boundaries for themselves, how could I expect them to use and understand boundaries in my world, in relationship with me? I probably can't. This applies to anything. Anytime you're seeing or getting that reaction of feeling not understood by someone, chances are it's because that someone isn't using the tool or the concept or isn't healing in the same way that you are for themselves. So to afford someone else understanding, more often than not, we have to get it ourself and not everyone is going to be living the same journey. So as we practice, this too is a practice, I titled the whole video practice because this doesn't happen overnight, we have to retrain ourself out of our initial reaction to step back and to practice observing the other person, observing the moments of what they're not able to understand, usually we can find the reason why. Again, it's because they aren't using the tool, aren't doing the thing, show up the same way in all of their relationships. Another deep, deep process to practice being misunderstood is cultivating a practice of radical acceptance because most of us start in this mode. We desire this idea of sharing a reality with everyone around us, especially those we love, meaning we prefer to have agreement in our thoughts or our beliefs. We prefer to be able to understand emotions, we really prefer to have the same emotional reactions as a lot of people, that's when we really feel understood. The reality of it is though, we won't ever all exactly share the same reality. So our goal is to evolve ourselves into being able to tolerate differences, tolerate differences in even an intimate partnership and what my partner thinks or believes and what I think or believe, tolerate differences in an event emotionally affecting both of us differently. So I might not always mirror the same emotional reaction that my partner does in the same moment and that too is okay. Again, this is a long-term process. The more we can begin first in ourselves to tolerate different realities, different occasions where I think one thing and then maybe I think something in opposition in another context. If we practice within ourselves first, then we can evolve to this situation where I can tolerate you having different belief systems, you having different emotional reactions to the same event that I'm living and that's okay. A lot of us strive for this for a feeling of validation because if you're mirroring back to me that which I think or that which I feel, I can feel a little bit more secure in my belief or my feelings. But again, if we evolve to, we're all different humans. We actually can have incredibly fulfilling relationships if we can learn how to separate and tolerate within ourselves different realities and within relationships with others different realities. Again, reminder, this is a practice. These two steps don't magically incorporate, they're not magically incorporated into our life overnight and they don't create change overnight. But if we can cultivate a practice of observing the people that are misunderstanding us, we can gain awareness of why they might be reacting as they are. And if we can evolve ourselves from the need to share a reality with those around us to the tolerance and the flexibility to allow for separateness, we can really evolve and tolerate being misunderstood, which is going to be a part of the journey for most of us so much more smoothly. So I hope this video brought value to you and if it did and you're not yet subscribed, it would be awesome if you hit the subscribe at the end. Thanks so much.