Letting go of our need to be understood

As human beings, we naturally desire to understand and be understood.

This means that whether or not we are going through a challenging time, we may subconsciously demand that others, especially those closest to us, intimately feel what is going on with us.

Deep inside, we crave for people to just 'get' us. Yet without noticing it, we can spend decades trying to translate our spirit, often struggling to accurately communicate what it is we are going through in the first place. 

With our feelings constantly changing, we seek to be understood in different ways. But that doesn't always happen. So we try to express ourselves better or find new words to describe our felt experience only to discover we are setting ourselves up for further disappointment.

Suddenly, seeking to be understood gets so frustrating we just want to shut-down.

But sharing what's in our hearts doesn't need to be hard: if we forego our desire to be understood, we can stop suffering unnecessarily. 

Now this does not mean we wall ourselves off and stop communicating how it is we feel to others. Connection is such a vital aspect of human flourishing and showing our humanness and authenticity to the world is what keeps us anchored to our deepest truth. 

But as we embark on a self-awareness journey, we begin to realise that no matter how close people are to us, nobody on the planet can fully and completely understand us. It just isn't possible and that's ok. 

Although we can certainly come across kindred spirits, or even meet a soulmate we viscerally relate to without ever having to explain a thing, we cannot expect others to 'read' us as if we were some kind of open book.

Our inner world is a vast, multi-dimensional realm, the unfathomable depths of which cannot be touched. 

That is also to say that people that deeply love and care about us might not have the energetic bandwidth needed to be able to feel into the fabric of our spirit. They simply may not be equipped to tune into our emotional landscape. This doesn't mean we need to switch off or push them away. On the contrary, we can meet them where they are without expecting anything from them. 

For here is what this boils down to: at the root of our need to be understood lies a profound longing for self-recognition that we mistakenly believe others can confer. 

Once we recognise and see ourselves for who we truly are, we can finally release others from having to understand us. 

Without us being entangled in hopes and expectations, communication with others  then becomes constructive, honest and meaningful. As we become less reactive and more capable of owning our emotions, we learn to honor who we are no matter what others make of us. 

Whether they 'get' us or not is no longer vital to sustaining our happiness and peace. And as we let go of our need to be understood, freedom finds us.

Step by step, we see that the gift of self-understanding is not something that can be given out or sought in others. We must be willing to unwrap it ourselves. 

We also begin to realise that our self-worth is not attached to anything external. We know our voice matters even though we are not wholly comprehended.

With greater self-awareness, we learn to cultivate wholeness regardless of people's approval, understanding, or validation.