You Can’t Understand Me Until You’ve Been Where I’ve Been
And that’s okay
I believe one of our strongest desires in life is to feel understood.
We want to know that people see our good intentions and not only get where we’re coming from but get us.
We want to know they see us. They recognize the thoughts, feelings, and struggles that underlie our choices, and they not only empathize but maybe even relate. And maybe they’d do the same thing if they were in our shoes.
Maybe, if they’d been where we’ve been, if they’d seen what we’ve seen, they’d stand right where we are now, in the same circumstances, with the same beliefs, making the same choices.
Underneath all these maybes is the desire to feel validated.
We’re social creatures, and we thrive when feel a sense of belonging. That requires a certain sense of safety, which hinges upon feeling valued and accepted. But those feelings don’t always come easily.
There was a time when one of my relationships felt incredibly unsafe. I never felt understood or validated, and worse, I often got the sense the other person didn’t care to understand me.
When you’re the one withholding the comfort of understanding, it can imbue you with a sense of power. And it also creates a sense…
