When People Don’t Understand You | Protect Your Peace | #143
What do you do when people don’t understand your illness, struggles, or life situation? In this Daily Dose, resilience coach Dawn Super shares how she learned to navigate misunderstanding while living with narcolepsy. This conversation explores emotional resilience, self-support, and how to respond when other people’s lack of empathy threatens to derail your day.
Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below
If many doctors don't understand narcolepsy, how can I expect my neighbor to? This Dose talks about how I deal with that inside of myself.
So, this video is for anyone living with something that's hard for people to understand so that their lack of understanding doesn't get in your way.
This is the daily dose of Dawn at Dawn videos designed to expand your thinking.
So why do you want to think about this?
Well, you might not have narcolepsy, but there will almost always be people who won't understand something about you.
Dealing with being misunderstood often happens when we're little. Our parents are there to help us accept if our ears stick out or if we have big nose. They explain our illnesses and what we need to do to recover. If we're missing limbs or something inside of us doesn't work right, our parents are often there to help us still see ourselves as whole people.
It's a wonderful thing when that happens, but not everyone gets that. Some have parents who don't help. They also make things worse. That's where I was for most of my life. Not out of maliciousness, but out of capacity.
What does that mean? I had a lot going on as a kid. I had health issues. I was being bullied. I had bad eating habits. My mom was not equipped to deal with any of that. Raising three kids by herself, working three jobs to keep the house. And it made me a mess for a good portion of my adult life.
So, if you're not cheering yourself on every day all day, if you're tired of trying to be someone you're not, if you're ready to be your own best friend, take my 14-day challenge and get the skills you need to get on your own side.
Living in a meatsuit that's got so many things working against it, my goal is just to get through a day. I help myself achieve that by doing things that support me and not doing things that go against my best interest.
The challenge, and this is why coaching is so valuable and why working with someone who gets it is so valuable, is to pull back a thousand feet and realize when you are not acting in your own best interest.
So me getting upset because someone else doesn't understand narcolepsy doesn't serve me.
We disguise it under righteousness. They said something. They ruined my day. They should love me better. They should know what to say, what to do, how to feel.
Okay. But they don't.
So now what?
Now what?
Life isn't what happens to us. It's how we respond. And someone being insensitive or mean or dismissive because they don't know better. Now, what do you do?
First, let's look at if we care about whether or not the person understands us. If we don't care about the person, just let it go completely. If we do care about them, did we explain ourselves in a way that a sixth grader could understand?
So, give it a good effort. Explain it at a level that they can understand. Bring in an authority from the internet to help explain things to them. And if they still choose to not get it, you need to accept that they lack empathy and give yourself grace and excuse yourself.
A lot of people are mortified by the thought of walking away from certain relationships, but understand that if you don't put yourself first, you're stepping on yourself for the rest of your life.
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