The mechanics of our need to be understood.
The need to be understood is a deeply human desire, and the fear that people might misinterpret or judge your actions feels deeply painful for a lot of us. As social creatures, we rely on our close circles to understand and support us, because humans don’t survive on their own, and we feel that in our bones.
You might think that the need for acceptance is no longer a pressing matter in our modern lives, rich in convenience and independence. And you wouldn’t be exactly wrong. Unlike our Bronze Age ancestors, whose rejection by their tribe meant exposure to the elements and wild predators, today’s rejection rarely brings such dire consequences.
However, the need to be accepted and understood has not diminished over the last couple of decades. Our social instincts have developed over tens of thousands of years. They won’t just disappear because we can find food without having friends to hunt with or because women and people of color now have the right to exist without being palatable to the people who had claimed ownership over them.
Wanting to be understood is the need for safety.
Even if modern Western cultures put such high value on personal freedoms and independence, we still need a level of comprehension to live safely and comfortably in this world.
We still require a boss who understands our specific skills and mindset to create a productive workplace for us. We still need a partner who is willing to understand our unique personality to create a healthy relationship. We need people in our governments who recognize the full spectrum of humanity to create safety and opportunity for all. And we still need communities that understand and validate our humanness, especially in times when established human rights are up for debate again.
Every person who is part of a marginalized community already knows this: being misunderstood and dehumanized is not merely an inconvenience when seeking jobs, apartments, or relationships; it directly and dramatically threatens their health and well-being.
Therefore, our survival is, to some extent, still tightly connected to our environment’s willingness to understand us. So, we’re not ready to dismiss the importance of being understood just yet.
The distinction between being liked and being understood.
I deliberately titled the article after the concept of being understood. Not liked, not accepted, not tolerated—understood. Pondering why the distinction was so important to me, I came up with an analogy:
I have a houseplant that I’m not particularly fond of. The poor thing doesn’t scratch my aesthetic itch as nicely as my other plants do. But I still take care of that little succulent weirdo. (I’m sure all crazy plant ladies have one of those.)
So, while I don’t particularly like it, I understand it. I understand a succulent’s need for being watered rarely but thoroughly. Needless to say, this gnarly creature is thriving in my household. And then I had another plant that I loved so much—a Calathea Triostar, with leaves of deep green, white, and pink. An absolute beauty. But I just couldn’t figure her out. So… RIP.
The plant I didn’t like but understood thrived, while the plant I loved but didn’t understand died. That’s why I believe the need to be understood is higher up in the hierarchy of social needs and human longing.
A teacher doesn’t have to like all her students. She only needs to figure out how to support them in their development and education. And while I would argue that a child absolutely needs to be loved by their parents to develop into a healthy adult, the most significant damage in my upbringing came from not being understood.
When the need to be understood becomes toxic.
Most people who struggle with confidence feel a much stronger need to be accepted and validated by their environments than people who live in sync with themselves. Their insecurity often stems from an inherent feeling of not being okay. They outsource their sense of self-worth and internal validation to other people and their approval.
Only when someone tells them that their fear of spiders or their need for a hug is acceptable will they be at ease. Without external affirmation, they cannot accept or even understand their inner workings. And even when their confusion is soothed by someone else’s kind words, the hunger for understanding soon creeps back in, returning even stronger.
This level of insecurity often stems from unmet childhood needs. A child who never received a hug or a consoling word when experiencing pain or discomfort—and was perhaps even scolded for having very human needs—will feel unjustified in their struggles or longings, forever staying dependent on other people’s opinions to feel okay.
That insecurity expresses itself in every interaction they have, often through a constant need for reassurance or by excessively and preemptively defending their own actions. Something that is not only exhausting for the person dealing with the insecurity, but also for those who interact with them.
For me, this intense hunger to be understood manifested as endless rumination about having said something awkward, spoken too much or too little, been too needy in expressing a simple want, or too difficult when pointing out a problem. This constant inner unrest can lead to us becoming people pleasers, overly rejection-sensitive, self-involved, or closed-off and avoidant.
Being understood is like medication; it can help you, and it can hurt you.
Healing came when I finally experienced understanding, and it came in the form of therapy, like-minded friends, support groups, and most importantly, the growing online spaces in which people shared thoughts and feelings that I had considered completely unique to my own deviant mind up to that point.
I know for certain that I would not be here if not for those early pioneers who shared their deepest, darkest thoughts on podcasts and vlogs, thereby normalizing mental health struggles in all their mind-boggling complexity and unflattering reality.
That understanding tended to the pain within me like a pill I didn’t even know I needed. But as with any potent medication, while it can soothe pain, it can also create dependency and addiction. I began craving people okaying my thoughts and feelings, even those who had no insight into my mind or similar experiences. I wanted everyone to understand me. All the time, and everything about me.
This only traded one stressor for another: the pressure to blend in for the pressure of being validated by other people. The worst thing is that I was seeking understanding from people who not only had zero empathy but who seemed determined to misunderstand me.
Understanding is a skill that requires empathy and patience. Not everyone’s got those.
The people who abused and neglected me will never understand. If they were capable and willing to understand, they would have to confront the shame and guilt for having failed me. And most people are not ready to do that kind of spiritual, emotional work. Especially when they had never gotten understanding and accountability themselves from the people who failed them.
It took me a long time to understand, let alone accept that. I wanted to hold on to the hope of my family finally stepping up, wanted to believe that if I could just explain my case and make them understand my perspective, we would all be relieved of the constant tension between us. Understanding was my saving grace, so it would be theirs as well, right? Understanding would make us whole; it would finally make us a family.
But in families grappling with trauma and addiction, things don’t work like that. The understanding never came, and it never will. And only when I let go of this futile pursuit did the confidence that I had started fostering in myself finally take root.
Some people have a vested interest in not understanding you.
There is also a group of people with a vested interest in not understanding you because the misunderstanding serves a purpose for their own ego. In my family’s case, they simply label me as weird, maybe even crazy. That’s so much easier to digest than the reality of them having messed up.
It absolves them of responsibility, reducing my family’s complex dynamics to a convenient label so they can move on. And I even give them that. I moved on, and they have to do that, too.
I’m sure you have at least met people like that—people hell-bent on finding you weird so they can feel better about themselves, stoking your insecurities to soothe their own. You might have met people who claim you’re difficult, so they don’t have to deal with the very reasonable grievances you’re voicing. People who would find it curious that you need to eat and drink multiple times a day, just so they can feel a little better about starving themselves.
That’s where your very valid need for mutual understanding can harm your confidence and sense of self if you don’t manage it carefully.
The need to be understood gives people power over you.
Confidence is something that needs space and sustenance to grow. You need the freedom to make mistakes so you can understand your strengths and weaknesses, to really get to know yourself. To be confident, you need to gain life experience, giving yourself ample opportunities to fail and fumble around a bit to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.
And standing in the narrow bounds of other people’s opinion of you will never give you the space to do so.
If you emerged from your childhood with a lack of confidence or even a broken sense of self, then other people’s guidance and understanding are indeed vital to figuring yourself out. Besides, you would always want someone in your corner who understands you, no matter how confident you get, someone who even calls you out on the things that might be easier to clock from the outside looking in.
However, that external understanding should never take precedence over your own inner logic. Making your internal coherence dependent on how other people perceive and understand you makes you vulnerable and easy to manipulate.
Abusive people and manipulators can spot that insecurity from a mile away, indulging you in their sweet, sweet understanding only to starve you of it later. That whole bait-and-switch doesn’t just erode your confidence; it will also give you emotional whiplash, making you dance to their tune instead of your own.
Neurodivergent and queer people can’t wait for the world’s understanding.
It doesn’t require malicious intent to lose your confidence and power to other people. Making your life’s decisions based on what your peers find coherent and reasonable will make your life small and inauthentic.
If we only pursued things our snobby Aunt Audrey deems reasonable, nobody would do anything interesting ever again. It would constrain our lives and our creative endeavors to people’s limited understanding of the world. Music would never develop further than what you already hear on the radio. No new game concepts would ever be developed. Every writer would just regurgitate what has already been said.
And if you’re neurodivergent, letting random people’s opinions on you dull the unique ways you express yourself will not only make your life unbearable but also suck the last bit of joy and lovability out of this troubled world.
I believe that neurodivergent and queer communities gaining a voice and a place in Western cultures has been one of the greatest achievements of the last century, possibly holding the key to freeing our society from its self-imposed, unhealthy constraints.
The unwillingness of the queer community to live by established rules of acceptability opens up a vital discussion about how narrow our collective understanding of ourselves and each other truly is. And humanity can only benefit from a more nuanced and honest conversation about identity and belonging.
And understanding is a fickle matter anyway.
In closing, I want to add two more ideas to this already quite complicated topic of understanding and building confidence:
Firstly, understanding is a pretty fickle thing. It is not a goal you will achieve indefinitely anyway. You won’t sit down during a weekend and think long and hard about yourself and your inner workings and then have yourself figured out. You won’t finish two rounds of psychoanalysis or earn a psychology degree and then master your inner workings, never to be caught off guard by a dark desire or an uncharacteristic thought again.
Everything is constantly in motion, and a mind thinking about the mind is like a cat trying to catch its own tail. It’s definitely possible, at least for a small, triumphant moment, but also a little silly. And especially people prone to overanalyzing would benefit from trying to understand a little less and live a little more.
Also, I don’t know about you, but my intuition always updates much faster than my cognitive processes. My gut told me to get a new job long before my brain fully grasped how unhealthy my work environment was for my mental health.
Your need to be understood can be a burden on your loved ones.
Secondly, something needs to be said about putting the burden to be fully understood on other people. It is not only impossible to understand the entirety of a person, but it’s also a lot of work.
If you follow this blog for the next couple of months or years, you will learn more about my inner workings than my closest friend, but you will still not understand my full complexity, and I will never fully grasp yours. And I will not place the burden of that futile mission on you, myself, or anyone else.
It would also make life a little dull if my friends never surprised me again, never made me frown, smirk, or wonder what cute little weirdos they are.
In accepting that we never fully understand or are understood, lies my own source of confidence and peace. And I hope you find that sweet spot too—this place between understanding yourself, being understood by loving people, and surprising yourself and others with what’s going on in that wonderfully weird noggin of yours.
