Feelings of rejection and being misunderstood cut very deep

They don’t get me. They don’t understand me. They don’t know who I am. 

This experience is probably the one I hear the most about from my clients in therapy. It’s also a feeling I know myself and have for as long as I can remember. The experience of being told who you are; how you should think; how to handle the voices in your head (“just ignore them” or “don’t think about it”); what you are like; what is wrong with you. These are the experiences which millions have every day and can leave us feeling alone; isolated; unloved; unwanted; rejected. It is not just feeling misunderstood, but undervalued. Not good enough.

It is of course hard enough to truly know yourself and be comfortable with who you are, let alone walk in someone else’s shoes and feel their feelings. But it is also not as hard as we often make it. 

It starts with no assumptions based on what we see. There is no insight to be found in just saying what you see (despite Roy Walker’s advice), because so many of us wear masks and disguises to protect ourselves.

These masks become our shields. Our body armour to keep out painful feelings and the reminder of painful experiences. We act confident, outgoing, happy. We smile when we are crying inside. We chat when we want to be quiet. We go along with a suggestion when it it the last thing we want to do.  

Assumptions make an ass out of me and you (thanks David Brent). So, if we want to understand each other more, we should focus more on listening, asking, listening again, thinking, and listening some more.

Since my breakdown - which started in earnest nearly eight years to the day of writing this post - I am dedicated, in an almost obsessive way, to being honest about my feelings and my needs. There is no coincidence that I am writing about them now in such a public way. I am clear about my boundaries, what I am about and what I am not about. That shift comes from a place of deep pain and sadness. A place of feeling like the real me was totally ignored for years; not seen; not heard. Years of being seen as something I wasn’t; being left alone because my mask was on and my guard was up. I was communicating that I was ok - leave me alone - when I was drowning and desperately needed help. I was feeling unloved and unloveable. 

It breaks my heart to think that even today - heading towards my 45th birthday - I am still dealing with the feelings of rejection I experienced throughout my life; feelings that started when I was a little boy. This makes me hypersensitive to experiences which could trigger these old feelings, even over forty years later. It’s why I spend so much time alone; have a very small number of people I really trust; and even fewer that I know how I feel day to day. It’s why I love my wife so much. She truly sees me. She really does know me, masks and all. She gets me.  

The irony is not lost on me that I now do work where I have people who want to see me; who value me and my help; who are therefore not rejecting me. Like everything we do, the seeds are sowed years before, shaped by our childhood experiences and how we handle the traumas we faced. My wounds - my response to the trauma of feeling rejected as a child and throughout my life by people who should have wanted me - have been to protect myself with masks and shields, and then seek out reassurance that everything was ok and to find work that met that need to be wanted.

Anyone who has dealt with family break-up; divorce and/or relationship breakdowns; has being bullied; experienced friendship fractures; setbacks which we internal as being because of who we are not what we did; adapted to a new family dynamic, and more experiences besides, may have been down their own version of this journey. It can cut very deep. It can leave a big scar. It can really hurt. 

My breakdown was the turning point for me. The subsequent years of therapy (which continue today) helped me to process what happened to me and why I had driven myself so hard at work and at home to be someone who was wanted, needed, valued. It took me a long time to understand that - to really get me - to really understand myself. Now that I know who I am (and understand and accept that I still need to feel wanted and needed), I feel more able to manage the feelings. I also feel able to love myself. By doing that, I have the chance of knowing and loving others.