Why You Over-Explain When You Feel Misunderstood

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After having my children, I came to realize that one of my kiddos is a highly sensitive kid. And it turns out I myself am a highly sensitive person. Now the research around HSPs has actually been dated back to the '90s when Arthur and Elaine Aron started researching the highly sensitive person. There's some great research out there. And I was talking to a friend recently, and something just landed. And it explained so much, and I wanted to share it here. So you too, can maybe connect with this and to understand Oh, that's me. If you haven't yet, I recently shared this online. I have a highly sensitive parenting episode with Greg where we talk about what's it been like to parent our child who is highly sensitive and for us to even have this reflected back to us as parents and even having some of these experiences within ourselves. So here's what my friend said that just completely shook me. And when I told Greg, he also had one of those, whoa moments. My friend said, and the struggle with highly sensitive children is that they don't like being perceived.

Whoa.

That was this unlock for me that I just had never realized was actually something that I deeply struggle with. I do not like to be perceived, but as an adult, there's another layer on this. That's actually for me. So I'm curious if this is your experience. So let me know if this lands for you. It's not just that I don't want to be perceived because I think I have grown out of that in some ways. When I think of my highly sensitive kiddo, definitely this one struggles with being perceived, but there's a layer in here that I think is even stronger about this, which is the— we don't want to be perceived wrongly. The idea of being misunderstood, it just absolutely breaks me to my core. It actually freezes me and leads me to be stuck, to freeze. It's like a complete nervous system shutdown. And so what I mean by this is it is absolutely incredibly difficult at the idea that someone could see me as being mean. That someone could see me as having ill intent, that someone could see me and perceive me as doing something to hurt others. And it's also really interesting because then I think about all of these comments that I, with good intentions, have made on Instagram and whether I've made jokes or et cetera. Then when someone comes in and says, oh, look, here's the therapist doing XYZ. I freeze. I have deleted hundreds of comments, well-intentioned comments that someone else could see and have help through it. I've deleted them because this idea of someone misperceiving me just absolutely crumbles me. Okay, because then here's the thing. If we carry this core piece inside of us, guess what we do? We all have coping strategies to protect us, to look after us when something hard happens. Here's some that might happen for you. So I'm curious if you connect with these, but I want you to think about the conversations with your partner where you're afraid of being misunderstood with your friends, where you don't say things with coworkers, maybe it's even with your in-laws or your own family. Do you reread the text? Do you text more and try to over-explain yourself and convince them of where you're coming from? Do you defend your intentions? So then you're spiraling and throwing more things in. Do you over-explain? Do you go to the research? Do you try to defend and say, look, see, I'm actually really good. And I think what ends up happening is we believe that if we just communicate more, they will understand. When what we're really doing in those moments, what is at our core, is we are actually trying to protect that more vulnerable part inside of us. Because here's what our body does. Our body, our nervous system says, this is dangerous. Get out, escape, run. This is so dangerous. And maybe as a kid it was. Maybe as a child when you said something and it didn't come out the way you wanted it to, because kids say things the way they do, or if you said an expression of a need or a desire or opinion and you were made fun of for that, then you actually learned that it is dangerous to share things. But the catch here is that today our work— our adult self needs to show up in these moments and to be able to remind ourselves that being misunderstood is uncomfortable. It actually really is. Yes, that makes complete sense. But the piece here is that being misunderstood is actually not dangerous. And the key here is you knowing who you are and knowing yourself. The way I described it to a client recently was actually around building a moat around that person. Like they can't get you. No way. They're not coming in because you know exactly who you are, because the reality is that people, may not understand me. People may get my intentions wrong. And at the end of the day, this doesn't mean that I have to abandon myself trying to change their mind. And that is what so many of us end up doing in relationships. We learned it early on. We learned it with caregivers, a previous partner, with friends, that in order to be connected, you abandon yourself so that you are not misunderstood. And that is not the way forward. So I, I really wanna hear from you. How does this land? Are you fearful of being misunderstood? Are you struggling with this idea of being perceived? Do you see this in your highly sensitive kiddo? I'd love to know, but I wanna leave you with a question. So there's not so much here of what should we do? What's the next step? This is just me getting to share something that I learned about myself and I think is so powerful, and I hold it in mind now when I'm parenting my kiddo and also when I'm working with my clients. So here's something I want you to ask yourself: where in your life are you trying to control someone else's understanding of you? And what might change if instead of you trying to convince them, you instead comforted the part of you that is afraid of being misunderstood? All right. Thanks for clicking play. I'll see you next time.