Know Thyself So Others Can't Confuse You

How to navigate naysayers, negative vibes, and those committed to misunderstanding you.

Imagine my surprise when I was going about my Sunday evening, journaling in bed, preparing for the week ahead, and I received a text message outlining exactly why I am a horrible person. This message came by accident. It was meant only for one person but ended up, perhaps in a stellar twist of fate, in a group chat that I was part of. At first, I didn’t think it was real. As my eyeballs scanned over the words I felt the blood rushing to my heart, now beating out of my chest. I read and reread. My hands started shaking along with the rest of my body as I sat, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It made absolutely no sense. What this person had said was untrue and my brain was trying desperately to comprehend the incomprehensible. This person was attacking the core of my being, my character, my work, my family, and my spirit. I didn’t respond. No one did. There wasn’t anything to say. I didn’t sleep at all that night and for the past week I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions ranging from blind rage to gratitude…yes, gratitude. Let’s get into it.

Now, let me start by saying that I’m not going to reveal anything about the person who sent the message or the details of what they accused (though, I am currently writing a memoir and this particular character just earned a new chapter). I’d rather focus on the dark place it sent me to and how I swam out of it. The next morning I got out of bed around six, heart still pounding, anxiety at a level I hadn’t felt since my mom was dying in the hospital. The tears came easily. I spent much of the morning telling myself not to look at the message again and then caving and reading it over and over until I was blinded and nauseated from sobbing. It’s hard to describe the pain that I felt. It was as if someone had jumped out from behind a tree during an otherwise lovely family bbq and proceeded to bludgeon me over the head with a tire iron, expecting no one to intervene. It was a surprise attack. I was not prepared. I had considered a plethora of things that could go wrong, could send me to a relapse or mental breakdown. I had taken measures to ensure I was fortified from the inside should one of life’s promised sorrows arrive on my door and challenge my sobriety, but I hadn’t considered this. More specifically, I hadn’t considered how this would affect me. I always feared that it would be the death of someone I loved that nearly pushed me to drink again, one of those unavoidable consequences of being human, but when I sat by my mother’s side as she left this world all I felt was an intense desire to be present, to stay, to not let her down. This unhinged text message sending me off into the deep end was not on my bingo card.

The next few days are blurry, not because I drank, I didn’t, but because I think I was in an ongoing panic attack. I didn’t eat a proper meal for about four days, subsisting on random potato chips left in the pantry and fruit snacks I had bought for my niece’s visits. Oh, I think I ate a strawberry pop tart at one point on Monday or Tuesday, I can’t be sure. I had some scary thoughts. I thought about how I could go rummage through the booze my little sister had left in the garage refrigerator, I thought about how great it would be to stop the pounding in my chest for twenty minutes. I thought about how, according to this message, everyone would be better off without me around. I thought about people secretly hating me, talking shit about me every time I walked out of a room. I questioned my own reality, wondering if I’d actually been fooling myself for the last four years by thinking I was becoming a better person. I questioned the loyalty of the other people on the text chain, imagining them joining the angry chorus, demanding my head on a stake. So many scary thoughts.

I pushed through the work calls, the emails I had to respond to, the podcast interview I’d agreed to weeks before, and even went for a couple walks, albeit slow, sad, little walks. (I hope the image of me, pop tart crumbs on my puffy face, dramatically walking through my neighborhood as if I were in a funeral procession on foot, can make you giggle just a little bit.) Eventually, I spoke to my people. My people who were also on the text thread, my people who tell me all of the time that I can count on them, my people who really know me. That’s where everything shifted. It’s easy to start believing you’re a piece of shit when that’s the only message you’re feeding yourself. You need people who remind you of who you are, people who bring you back to reality. After those conversations the rollercoaster took me from the anxiety and fear to anger and defiance. Of course, I thought about sending a lengthy reply, outlining all of the discrepancies in their account of me, but quickly understood that it would never matter. This person was committed to their misunderstanding.

Ultimately, I settled on being happy and unmoved and still sober as the best rebuttal. After all, this person clearly has no idea who I am. There is no compromise with a person like this, no way to relate. When a person makes assumptions instead of making an effort to understand-they have no interest in growth or learning. They are stuck in their ways, a brick wall. I began digging deeper into why I would even be so affected by the opinion of a person who for years has refused to get to know anything about my life, my history, or my future plans. Why was this the thing that brought me closer to throwing away my sobriety than all the other, much more difficult, challenges I’d faced since getting sober? Then it hit me. We have no idea how the right comment, the perfect mean word, the precisely timed blow will rock our foundation just so, setting off a shockwave of internal explosions. It wasn’t this person. It wasn’t this message. It was just the right insecurities being targeted at the right time. It was the exact location of the knife, jabbed into just the right spot and twisted just so. There is no way to know, no way to cover absolutely all of our bases. All we can do to protect ourselves from this kind of ambush on our emotions is to know who we are.

When someone is committed to misunderstanding you, double down on your truth, and above all else, protect yourself from their negative vibes. Energy is powerful and real. If you low-key want me to fail, I will high-key distance myself from you. These words were hurtful to see, but a blessing in disguise to become aware of naysayers and pessimists. The vision that I have for my life these days requires a certain level of incubation, protection from spiteful eyes-warm, favorable conditions to thrive. When I was drinking and very mentally unfit, I reflected that chaos outwardly. I have empathy, but I can’t allow myself to be swept away in the current of someone else’s problems. At a certain point, after years of working on oneself, one simply cannot afford to entertain people who are hellbent on seeing the worst in them. The risk is too high, the cost too much. This is why the path of self-realization can become quite lonely and isolating. The healer knows the power and importance of filtering what enters her mind and body, she knows there is no benign poison. She knows the pit she clawed her way out of and returning, even to defend the way she did it, could be the trap that captures her once again. It is out of the question.

The saga will continue, conversations will eventually be had, perhaps lines will be drawn, but for now I remained focused on what I can control which certainly does not include the opinion of anyone else. At the end of the day, I didn’t drink. I didn’t self-implode. I didn’t let this steal what I’ve fought so hard for. I hope that if you are faced with a similar situation you won’t either. Instead, maybe have a pop tart, maybe go on a long, slow, dramatic walk, maybe remember who the fuck you are, and let that shit go.