BTW - If you didn't already know, I'm Sarah - Drink Less; Live Better founder, best-selling author, expert speaker, life coach and, as you already know, podcast host!
We don't have to hit rock bottom, we're allowed to want something different and we can CHOOSE to improve our lives from this point onwards.
I work in the magic space where doubt, hope and action meet... oh.... and
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Transcripts
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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Drink Less Live Better podcast. I'm your host Sarah Williamson and I'm really glad you're here with me. Let's talk about the everyday experience of feeling unseen by people who care about us, work with us, live beside us, or scroll past us. Online.
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People generally don't understand a life they don't live. And why would we expect that they might do? This feels true in so many different directions. Someone who's never struggled with alcohol might not understand why moderation feels exhausting. A person in a long marriage may not understand the loneliness of starting over again in midlife. Someone with financial security may genuinely struggle to imagine the mental load carried by a person counting every pound before the supermarket checkout.
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Most people are looking at life through a keyhole, and we only see the corridor we happen to be looking in. Most people are looking at life through their own experiences and knowledge. Of course they are. They are. And newsflash, We are too. I think that's one reason human beings misunderstand each other so often. We assume our experience is more universal than it really is. The brain loves efficiency. It creates shortcuts and patterns and conclusions because that all saves energy.
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Being curious and interested in other people takes a lot of effort. Listening properly takes time. Understanding another person often requires us to loosen our grip on certainty for a moment, and many people will find that uncomfortable. There's also the fact that modern life rewards quick reactions more than thoughtful reflections. Online conversations can feel a bit like bumper cars at a funfair. Everyone collides, ricochets away, and leaves feeling slightly battered. Very few people pause long enough to ask, "I wonder what it actually feels like to be this person?"
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Being misunderstood can feel surprisingly painful because most of us carry a little wish to be known, to be accurately seen, to be understood deeply, not superficially. When somebody misunderstands our motives, our choices, or our personality, it can create a tension. You want to correct the record. You mentally rewrite conversations in the shower. You imagine the perfect explanation while unloading the dishwasher. 2 days later. Sometimes the pain comes from feeling reduced. A whole complicated person becomes a simple story in someone else's mind.
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I remember years ago listening to someone who had stopped drinking after decades of social drinking. She told me the hardest part wasn't giving up the wine, it was hearing people describe her as boring. They weren't trying to wound her or get at her, they were trying to make sense of a change they just didn't understand. Still, she felt flattened by it. Her rich inner world, her reasons, her growth, all condensed into one lazy label: boring. Who was that woman I was listening to? Oh, dear listener, it was me.
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A working mother gets called distracted while she's carrying the logistics of 5 different people and a dog in her head before 7 AM. A divorced woman gets described as selfish for choosing peace over her pain. A quiet person gets mistaken for coldness when they simply feel safer observing rather than joining in and speaking. Misunderstanding often says as much about the observer as it does the observed.
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I also think it helps to remember that nobody receives the full version of us. Even the people closest to us only know fragments. There are thoughts we never voice, fears we can't quite articulate, private negotiations happening inside us every day. Human beings are walking libraries where most of the books remain closed to other people and sometimes to ourselves. This idea used to bother me. I wanted for people to fully get me.
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And these days I'm not so sure that a complete understanding is realistic. There's a huge difference between being misunderstood by somebody who is curious and being misunderstood by somebody committed to their own assumptions. I know who I'd rather be in the company of. People who are interested in us sound like, "Ooh, tell me more about that," or, "Mm, I suppose I hadn't thought of it that way," or "Well, that's an interesting perspective," and those types of phrases give us space to open us up and tell somebody else more.
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There's a freedom in recognizing that another person's misunderstanding of you may sit completely outside your responsibility. You can clarify your intentions, you can communicate honestly, but beyond that, other people filter you through their own experiences, insecurities, beliefs, memories, and emotional reality. You cannot control the story another person thinks about you, and honestly, that may be a part of becoming more peaceful, allowing some people to misread the chapter whilst you carry on living the book into the future.
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At the same time, I think this conversation invites us to become gentler observers of ourselves, Every stranger has a context we cannot see. Every person carries invisible history. The woman snapping at the pharmacy counter may have spent the night beside a hospital bed. The friend withdrawing socially may be feeling quietly overwhelmed. The colleague who snaps may just have had a really bad review. And none of this means that you have to tolerate other poor people's behaviour endlessly. It simply means remembering that understanding another human being is usually on a longer journey than first impressions allow.
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People generally don't understand a life they don't live, and maybe that's unavoidable to some extent, but remembering the world feels slightly softer when we are aware of that and can accept it might just be a nicer thing. Sometimes the greatest relief comes from understanding yourself clearly enough that somebody else's confusion no longer feels okay enough.
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Thank you for being here with me today. You can find me online at drinklesslivbetter.com where you'll find lots of supportive resources. Check out today's podcast show notes for a link to a hidden episode that will help with your 5 PM cravings and details about my one-to-one life coaching and sober coaching programmes. And P.S. I believe in you.
