The Urge to Fix How People See You And How To Let Go Of It

Why does it feel so uncomfortable when someone completely misunderstands you?

In this episode, Martina dives into the emotional tension behind being misread, mislabeled, or emotionally reduced by other people — and why we often feel such a strong urge to correct their perception of us.

After receiving a message from an old acquaintance that deeply triggered her, Martina explores the psychology of identity, emotional boundaries, social perception, and the exhausting need to explain ourselves to people who don’t truly see us.

Inside this episode:

•  Why being misunderstood can feel so emotionally activating 
•  The psychology behind wanting to “correct” people’s perception of you 
•  “Identity freezing” and why people struggle to update their view of you 
•  The hidden emotional labor of overexplaining yourself 
•  Why not everyone deserves emotional access to you 
•  The freedom that comes when you stop trying to manage how others see you 

This episode is honest, reflective, psychologically deep, and full of those “wait… that’s exactly how I feel” moments.

If you’ve ever felt irritated by someone confidently getting you completely wrong — this one is for you.

Follow Martina on Instagram @femmagical for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and more!

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.

Transcript

Why Misunderstanding Hits So Hard

Martina 0:00

In today's episode, I dive into why being misunderstood can feel so deeply irritating to you and why so many of us have this almost automatic urge to correct people's perception of us. We're gonna talk about identity, emotional boundaries, outdated version of ourselves, and the exhausting emotional labor of trying to explain who we really are. And most importantly, what happens when you finally stop needing everyone to fully get you and understand you. Also, quick heads up before we really dive into the first 20 minutes. My mic apparently decided to take a vacation. I didn't turn it on. So the audio quality isn't the very best, but I promise you the last 15 minutes we are back to the good old quality. So apologies for that. And yeah, without further ado, let's get into this. Happy Thursday! I am recording this on a beautiful Thursday. It's very sunny here in Miami, and it's the first week of May, and April flew by like nothing, so I don't know how you feel about it, but I always feel like every month is passing so quickly, and I always wonder how I can best hold on to every single day as if it was my last, so then I can slow down time. And I found something that really helped me, and I will record an episode about it, I guess. So, like, we I feel like that is worth definitely a full episode. So, but today we will speak about something else other than time and that it flies by like nothing. We are talking about why we want to control so much how other people see us and all the efforts that you and I put in to sometimes correct people's perceptions or thoughts around us or how they view us. And this episode is very well connected to the previous one, which is called Access Denied, Why I Revoked Emotional Access to Me and You Can Do. So this was recorded on the 1st of May, just in case you listened to today's episode month later, or maybe even years later, too, when I recorded it. And I thought I would record an extra episode for this. As I noticed I used to have this very strong tendency to wanting to control how other people viewed me, not just online, but also in my everyday interaction with people. And today I'm at a point where due to kind of training myself to let go of you know whatever someone thinks of me, I have still moments when I, for example, exchange voice notes with my bestie, which we do

The Urge To Correct People

Martina 3:05

every day. Bunch of voice notes. I I belong to the generation where I think WhatsApp voice note is the highest in demand. I really, really love voice noting with my bestie and with other people because just to sidetrack here a little bit, I feel like it's so flexible when we can respond, when we can respond, and when we can reply. So, anyways, I still sometimes have these moments where she reflects something back to me that I shared with her, and I feel like that is completely wrong how she got me. And then I have this urge to, oh, I need to correct that and need to correct the picture that she has of me, and that's my bestie, you know. So, still, this is a tendency that I have, and then I either, you know, have these two choices to to let her know that maybe I misrepresented what I was thinking or what or you know, said explained her, described her something that I did, but maybe didn't provide more context. That's why she got the wrong picture, or I just let it go. Not everything I feel like is worth going into again. So obviously, after many many years of really training myself to let go of always correcting people's perception, it still sneaks in here and there. This message uh this episode today really ties into, as I said before, into the previous one with revoking the emotional access. So if you have not heard that episode, I highly recommend it. But just for context, to you know, kind of give you an entry point into why I even came up with this topic today to discuss with you. It is I received two weeks ago, I think it was, from an old acquaintance who I don't really know well, and I might have met this person on one of my previous trainings in the year 2017 or 18, so it's been almost 10 years, so you know, not not don't know much, you know, when I met that person, but this person actually wrote me a message saying something along the line like they are happy to see me, so happy as I am right now because they remember me from a time where I was burned out and depressed. And I felt like and this this message came out of nowhere. It's not that we have been in constant communication or contact, it's not a close friend who I allow to make such assumptions or statements because they know me well, they know my history, and that message really triggered me. So in my previous podcast, I really went in deep into that message, how it triggered me, and then how I responded. So I also gave other options how to respond to such messages, but I decided to revoke emotional access, I said with my feelings, my emotions, and then decided this person, and I say this with my with my heart, but that person is not worth my time and my energy and my emotional input to kind of socially educate that this message is completely off, and that the person is not supposed to write something like this. I just ignored it and let it go, and I'm not responding to this person at all anymore. So that was where I said I revoked my emotional access. This person has no access to me anymore. Not that I'm blocking this person, it wasn't something really, really bad or malicious that they wrote, and I know the intention was maybe not bad, but for me, this was done. So, and this is where we are diving into and where we kind of you know tied today's episode into the story from last week. So I'm pretty sure you have noticed the uncomfortable feeling when someone describes you, and it's just not right. So it's not something offensively wrong, there's nothing like dramatically bad that they wrote, but it felt just off. And then suddenly something in you reacts and you kind of want to correct it, you want to explain it, you want to explain it away, you want to clarify, or you want to update their perception and the thoughts that they have. Maybe someone tells you, like, oh, you seem distant, or you used to look much more happier, or you have changed, or you seem cold because you have now boundaries in place that you used not to have. So, and today's episode is about this more or less invisible invisible tension that you might have encountered in your past, or maybe even currently. And why do we care so much about how people see us and why it can feel strangely like irritating when people in our life lives don't get us right, and what's happening psychologically in those moments? So I just wanna, you know, dive really deeper into this, as I said before, invisible tension that occurs. So, as I said again, it wasn't a big moment when I received this message from that person, but you know, it still felt like yeah, it felt it gave me an ick, to be honest with you. And for you, maybe you got also an old message once from an acquaintance or a family member might have made an offhand comment, or someone at work was reading your mood wrong, or afraid some a friend says something

A Message That Triggers The Ick

Martina 8:55

about you that sounds kind of true but not actually accurate. So, and that's what it makes it sometimes so tricky because not all those messages are very direct or kind of like too direct or sent in a way that's just not really okay. And sometimes sometimes things are just more subtle than you know, yeah, just more subtle. And this can then stay with us even longer. And to me, when I got that message, it wasn't so much about that comment itself in the first place, it was just that feeling of being completely misrepresented with quite some confidence, I must say. So, you know, someone is describing your experience from the outside, and you know, I mean, obviously, I lived it from the inside, and I could not relate to that message. That's not how I experienced myself in this time frame I met this person, 2017 or 18. And that is what is important because the discomfort is not necessarily don't say I struggled or I was burned out or I had a hard time or I was depressed. It's just like it's just deeper than this. It's like more along the lines of don't define my internal reality of or for me. Because that is also this loss of authorship that you might experience when you when someone describes you in a way that you know 100% is not true. And that is someone, you know, suddenly stepping into a narrator mode when they only saw a specific face or maybe one moment or scene of your life. And that feels irritating, and that felt irritating to me. And you know, I mean, back when I think I met that person, yes, I was at the precipice of my career. I, you know, got promoted, I suddenly got so much responsibility, I was thrown into the cold water, and it was a very, you know, it was a very challenging environment because at the same time a family member that is very close to me was at the brink of suicide. So there was there was lots going on, a lot of going, and this was not just something, you know, someone my family had issues. That was me having to take in action, moving in with that person, taking care of that person while I sat, you know, on my laptop and juggling a big promotion with a big team that I sadly had to manage. But that's not just about the past, it's also about the present, too. So this is also where it gets even more interesting because it's not always people freeze you in an old version, it also happens in that very moment right now. So it could be that you know you're in the phase of your cycle, of your menstrual cycle, where you are just more withdrawn, where you maybe a little bit more cranky, or you know, just don't want to socially interact as much, and then someone calls you you're a distant, or you're a B I Tch, or you're just like odd. Or, for example, as I said before, you set a boundary and someone calls you a cold person, you might be more selective with your energy, and someone says that you have changed, and that's not in the best way, obviously. Or you know, you are more calm or more inward turned, and someone reads you as oh, you are just interest disinterested, or you're reflective, you are collecting your thoughts, you're really deeply thinking, and someone assumes that you're judgmental. So and you are thinking at the same time that's not what's happening in me, and that creates this double friction because, first of all, it's an outdated identity that they give, and also an incorrect presentation of who you are, and this present misinterpretation often hits a little harder because it happens live in real time, and it's like being emotionally translated incorrectly while you're just standing here and living your life. And I have dug into this a bit deeper because I wanted to understand the psychology behind it, and number one, what I found is that why it grates us so much, or me in that in that incident, was this loss of authorship or identity ownership. So we

Losing Authorship Of Your Story

Martina 14:10

humans don't want to live our lives, we also want to make sense of our life. We we want to form and shape our story. We have our story about us, but we also have stories about other people. And when someone says, you know, oh, you were depressed back then, you were burnt out, that's and saying kind of like that's who you were, in my case, for example, in my story, that can feel very intrusive. And not because that person was intentionally malicious, but because they are flattening a whole season of my life. One of the most challenging, most shaping, the most experience where suddenly I had to juggle a lot of things at the same time. Someone just, you know, labels one part of my life, yeah, with one bait with one label or two labels, depressed, and what was the other one? Oh yeah, burned out. You know, and most of us, I mean, you know, our lives are not that simple. You can't just use one or two words to describe someone's challenging moments or phase of their life, you know, and yeah, maybe I was struggling, but at the same time I was hopeful, I was ambitious, I was excited, you know, or maybe you were exhausted in a specific incident, but at the same time excited, or you were grieving a loss of someone, at the same time you were growing, because as we know, loss or grieving or very challenging moments, they really shape who we become that later down the line. Oh, yeah, maybe you were overwhelmed with maybe a new career move or becoming a mother, right? This is also like being a becoming a mother that I have to step into still at some point, you know, is for many, many women the most overwhelming time of their lives, but at the same time, they are deeply alive. They find suddenly their life becomes way greater than them. They feel suddenly so purposeful, they have something to take care of that's beyond just them and maybe their partner. And life is messy. Life is also never black and white, it's not just one thing. You know, if you see someone have super, super happy online, that doesn't mean that life is only rainbows and butterflies because we never know what's really going on in someone's life, in someone's inner world. And reducing that complexity can feel so confusing, disorienting. And I know that we have this mental shortcut sometimes to describe or make sense of someone, of an interaction, of our own lives, right? It's we know we do those shortcuts, but you know, life is so much more complex. This world is so much more complex that this just doesn't fit into one label. And another thing that I read is that there is a mismatch of social attunement. So, as you might be aware, that we as humans we are so wired for social interactions and social attunement, and in more simple terms, obviously you feel safer when you feel accurately seen or met. But when someone misreads you, your nervous system noticed that. That's why sometimes a comment can stay with us, with you, with me for hours on end. And not because it wasn't necessarily dramatic, but because you something in you felt like that's just not what's happening inside of me, or you know, that's not the phase of my life where I would ever, you know, say that this was depressed or or burned out, and that small mismatch, sometimes it's small, sometimes it's bigger, creates a subtle internal friction. And that also it's I I am I am aware, and I remind you of it if you have forgotten about it, or maybe you have never heard about it, but our brain hates inconsistency. So cognitive dissonance is something really, really big that our brain absolutely abhors. So when your internal experience, for example, says one thing and someone someone's external interpretation of you says something completely else, your mind automatically wants to resolve the dissonance, the gap between what you feel or see and whatever someone else interprets about you. And that's why you suddenly want to explain, overexplain, defend yourself, you want to clarify, you want to just correct things. Even if the moment or what was said is subtle, small, not a biggie. Your brain is trying just to restore coherence, and that is how that is innately in our biology because we just also don't want to be rejected by someone. We want to be seen in a good light because we are good, you know, and sometimes someone gets us completely wrong, and then again, this gap we want to bridge. And yeah, and that brings me to my other part, which is this what I call identity freezing, meaning why people don't update you. And this part matters very much because people often don't relate to who you are now, they relate to the version of you they met years ago, the the version of you they could better understand, or the version of you that made sense to them in a way. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad, malicious, or have like not the best interest of you in mind. It's often more or less mental efficiency, and we all do this. The brain stores a stable model of someone and then keeps it running over and over. But then what happens in the meantime, you evolve, you change, you have different values, you have, you know, you're sticking to different principles, but someone else is still interacting with an old internal file of you. And then you realize, they're not talking to who I am now, or like, or who I used to be, they're talking about to who they remember, but remember on their terms, in the way how they see it. They have their classes on that maybe

Misattunement And Cognitive Dissonance

Martina 20:55

distorted certain things about you in the past or present moment. And I wondered why this irritates me emotionally or irritated me emotionally, because it does not anymore. And their irritation is usually not so much that they are wrong, it's more like that this picture they have or had is incomplete, it's oversimplified, or it leaves out so much more of what's going on. Because yes, this time of the person refers to was challenging challenging and it was hard, and I had not many hours of sleep sometimes. But you know what? This was one of the best times of my life. I was excited, I was ambitious, I had all the energy and time in my day to tackle everything that came my way. Or, you know, it also doesn't match the complexity of what I've lived. Because we are not always generating every single thing, every single thought or what happens inside of us with everything. Everyone. And that is why people who are thoughtful, reflective, and self-aware often feel this very deeply. I felt that very deeply when someone just misinterpreted the like one of my highlights of my life. Because you know, I value nuance in life. I know there is more behind what I see in someone's life. And you value nuance too. That's why it's sometimes hard to be defined in simple, non-nuanced terms or like labeled, like, oh yeah, label burned out, label overwhelmed, label depressed. And also the words chosen are so strong. Because there is there are obviously people who are clinically depressed. This is a severe disease. This is not something to say lightly about someone. Burnt out is something, you know, those are heavy terms. So this is also why it was grading on me, because I would never call someone burnt out or depressed in that way. Unless they tell me that they have been diagnosed or they feel like they are, whatever. Then yes, but I would never just say that to someone, especially not someone that I am close with. Anyway. Yeah. So and my reaction definitely points out something super healthy because it means I care about accuracy, about that there is more to life than just simple terms, that there is complexity in our lives, and that I don't like being reduced to simplistic labels that are 100% inaccurate and also strong words, as I just said. And I have just a very strong internal relationship with my own truth, and I know that you have that too. And that is not that you're fragile, that is because it's a it's it's a the integrity that you have with your own identity. So, whatever reaction you have, because I just had an interaction with my bestie on a voice note two days ago. She was telling me about something that really annoyed her, really upset her. So she sent me a voice note, and then uh immediately she typed, like, listen to this immediately. So I listened to this, and then she told me something that really irritated, annoyed her. And at the same time, she's told me, I hope I'm not like oversensitive and over-dramatic. And I responded back to you. Your reaction is justified, it's absolutely healthy to be annoyed, to be irritated. These are legit feelings, and they are signposts of that there is something deeper within you that is, you know, that you are able to release, that you are listening to, and you know, it's it's it's perfectly fine to sit with those emotions. It's not fine, maybe to go to someone and just unleash your wrath on them and be like, oh my god, you know, but it's perfectly fine to send your bestie or the person that you trust, a voice, not a message, or you know, you can meet them and then telling them about something that deeply upset you. Because, first of all, that's how you regulate yourself. And then second, you feel you're getting more insights out of you by letting your emotions be just valid and letting yourself just seen in this moment, you know. I would not like text her back or send a voice note back saying, Oh my god, you're so exaggerated. I always always very encouraging. I'm like, yes, do that, yes, let it run free for you. Express yourself and complain to me 1000 times. I can hold that. I will never come and say, oh no, you shouldn't, or I'll correct your behavior now, or you shouldn't feel this way. No, no, no, no, no. Be sure that what you feel is valid. It might be then later on when you self-regulate, you might see things clearer, maybe not as heavy or more irritat or irritating anymore, but still always your initial reaction is a reason why it is happening. And what I want to go also into is as my next point, the these impulse, like what we try to do

Identity Freezing And Emotional Maturity

Martina 26:25

next when we receive, you know, a message or when someone says something to us, because I immediately started to mentally draft a response. I wanted to explain the context, correct the framing of that person, update their past perception of me, and just kind of fix this internal file this person had about me. Because underneath, you know, there are very human needs such as coherence. I I want how I feel inside to match how I'm seen outside. There's also this human need of recognition. I want my growth and nuance to be visible, and also autonomy. Oh my god, I think that is so important for us that we want to author our own identity. But here's where it gets uncomfortable, obviously, because you cannot manage everyone's internal version of you. I can't either. Of course, no one can. Because if we then try to do it, it can become so exhausting. Because in the end of the day, everyone will think and feel what they want to think and feel. Sometimes, if it's a close person in my life, I give more context. And then this additional context sometimes changes the way how they think and feel about me. But sometimes it's not worth doing this because there are also people who just again want to see and feel what they whatever they want to see and feel about us. And this is more about them very often than it is about us, because maybe of their past experience they think we have this they project onto us. Or maybe their lens through which they see the world is more Yeah, it's not so sharp. It's it's not liking the word that I want to say, but it's like distorted. It's distorted is the one I say. It's just not, you know, but I can't just take someone else's glasses off and change the vision that they look through. Some people are stubborn, can't do it because they are stuck in their own life, and not because they are bad people, because sometimes people are where they are in life. And I think that's when emotional maturity changes everything. So to me, instead of asking how do I make that person understand me or my past version of me, I started to ask myself those questions. Do they even get the access to interpret me? Is this person close enough to require this precision of my past? Or do I actually need to emotionally participate here? And this is actually the shift that changed everything for me because you know, no, I don't need to correct them, I don't mind how they saw my past, I know exactly how I felt back then and what was going on. So it's like I'm going from automatic correction of like, okay, I have this urge, now I go and correct that, to just intentional selection. And the intentional selection for me, that person, however they saw my past, is it's it's not worth for me to invest and trying to correct first of all how they see me, and then obviously letting them know that this is socially a little bit immature to send such strongly worded message. And that's what I call selective emotional investment. Because for me, that's just not worth going into. I let it go. That person can think what they want to think about back back then. I let it go. I know exactly what was going on. I'm very proud of the person I was then, I'm very proud of the person I am now, I'm also proud of the person I've been in between those identities, and that's all that matters, and all that should matter for you too. Know who you are today, know who you were back then, and yeah, of course, we could have all done things better differently in the past. And some people remind us where we fell short or where we haven't met the expectations, the standards, whatever. But you know what? Never mind. No one does, you know, we are all better in hindsight, we are all not perfect human beings, and good, good gods that we are not. So, you know, in my last episode, and maybe you listened to it and then it's a reminder,

Silence Or Boundaries And Real Freedom

Martina 31:05

but I just wanna let you know you have two, you have kind of three options that I found, but maybe you have more that you come can came up with. The first one is the silence one, the one that I chose, the not correcting, the not explaining, no emotional labor here. And this is not avoidance. I want to be very clear because some people might just say, Oh, that's avoiding. It's like, no, it's just this does not disturb more access to my energy, to my emotions. Point blank. Point fucking blank. Okay, silence is not avoidance in some cases, in many cases, and you get to decide whether you stay mum and let that go because you are emotionally selecting your energy is the best investment, and also sometimes no response is the most powerful response. The other one would be you put a light boundary, you know. You can say, hey, that's not how I would frame my past version. But maybe I get what you mean, or maybe from the outside it might have looked like this. That is also very clean and mature approach. I didn't want to go there because again, I just decided I will just ignore what that person said, or you can just say that's not how I see that part of my life, point blank, no need to overexplain, defend, or it's just clarity. And this is also where I'm coming now to the end of this episode. And I hope that was useful. You could relate, maybe you came up with an own example in your life, and maybe you have handled it differently. I'm very curious to hear how you handled it. But I do believe that, and I know when I coach my clients, it comes off comes up often that we have this urge to correct how other people see us. But you know what? At the end of the day, this isn't about controlling perception, it's about something way deeper. It's about deciding. It's about like who gets emotional proximity to you today. Because not everyone has always the full story, the updated version, or has earned interpretation rights, right? I mean, you also get to decide who is allowed to interpret you. And yeah, real freedom for you starts when you kind of realize you do not need everyone to see you correctly. And I know it feels good if someone gets us. And I know you have people in your life who see you, who gets you, who get you exactly the way you are. But you know, sometimes not everyone can see you that way. And you also don't need to stop giving anyone full access who just don't bother to see you more clearly. Ah wow, that was a mouthful. So we are now 33 minutes in, I will close today's episode. I wanted to keep this episode short

Closing Thoughts And How To Reach Me

Martina 34:05

and spicy. I mean short is is kind of like subjective, right? But I wanted to do a part two. I think that was something that I announced in my previous episode, and I thought this is worth going into. And I hope that was useful to you. You could, as I said before, relate. If you have any questions or anything you want to share with me, ping me on Instagram for magical. I'm always love to hear and get some feedback. And otherwise, I'll see you next week. And yeah, thanks for tuning in today's episode. Love you. Bye.