The Exhaustion Of Controlling How You Are Perceived

In this episode, I’m talking about the exhaustion of constantly overthinking how people perceive us. From rewriting texts and overanalyzing conversations to treating captions like graded assignments, it’s exhausting trying to make sure we’re never misunderstood.

I also share how I handled my first mean comment online, why it ended up being more corny than hurtful, and the random moment that gave me some much-needed perspective.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just send the text, post the photo, and stop over explaining yourself.

Transcript

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I spent years perfecting the highlight rail, the corporate title, the Put Together Mom Act. I was the person that everyone leaned on because I was the girl that could fix everything. I'm Lauren Lizzie and I am finally done pretending. Welcome to Just Can't Help Myself. A space for the overthinkers, the deep feelers, and everyone in between. Alright, so I caught myself doing something that I think I do quite often. I was replaying a conversation in my head, and the conversation went seemingly well, but I was still thinking about how I came across. Now I could give you a hundred examples of this, but I'm just gonna mention a most recent one. I had a conversation with my boyfriend, nothing bad, nothing dramatic, just a normal conversation. But after it, I caught myself questioning did I come across the way I meant to? Did I explain that right? Did that land the way that I thought it did? And I wasn't even reacting to anything that he said. It was just me in my own head feeling the need to replay it. Why did I keep thinking about that? And it made me realize how much time I actually spend trying to control how I am perceived. For example, like I'll type a text, I'll read it, reread it, delete it, rewrite it. It's exhausting. I'll even add an LOL or a no worries to soften the tone. Now, on top of that, I've always been hyper focused on spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You know how some people can just type a text or send an email. They don't care if it's misspelled. They don't care if it barely even makes any sense. They just hit send and move on. But I am like the complete opposite of that. I'm over here proofreading everything. I'm over here making sure that the word your and their is spelled correctly. Rob, you know what I'm talking about. You know the difference between your you are? Okay. Like, why am I reading into this like it's gonna be graded? And the same can go for social media posts, posting something and then just overthinking it. Maybe a lot of us do this, I don't know. But it's like we think we're just being thoughtful or careful, but really it's like we're editing ourselves in real time, trying to make sure we're understood correctly. So I of course started researching into why I may do this. And one of the reasons was the fear of being misunderstood, which I related to. Um, it made me think of all the times I felt misunderstood and you know how uncomfortable that felt. It can feel like you're not being seen for who you really are. All I know is it can feel exhausting, constantly thinking ahead and replaying things after they happen. I mean, that's not just communication. I mean, that feels like emotional labor. And I think sometimes we're more drained from that than even the actual situation itself. On reality TV, you see so many examples of this at dinner scenes or at reunions where someone said something simple, it gets twisted, they overexplain, and then it just spirals. And then the more they try to clarify what they're saying, the worse it gets. Because people are going to interpret things their own way through their own lens, and that's in real life too. So I started thinking, what would it feel like to not overexplain everything? And I started thinking how freeing that must feel to accept that sometimes people might misunderstand me. And that that doesn't automatically mean that we did something wrong. I'm not saying don't communicate clearly. I'm saying maybe we don't need to over-correct every single time. Maybe we could just trust that the right people will understand us without us having to edit ourselves constantly. Okay, so a challenge for this week. Try not to overexplain just one thing. Just send the text, save the thing, post a pick, don't look back and just let it be enough. So I do want to mention some wins that I had for the week. My first win was um I caught myself overthinking a post. It felt so vulnerable. And instead of spiraling, I actually noticed that I was doing that and actively fought it and posted it anyway. And that ended up feeling really good. So that was a that was a good win for me this week. Also, I sent a text without rereading it 10 times, which for me, as you know now, is a huge deal. And the third win, of course, is um I showed up here today, even feeling like a little in my head, um, even feeling insecure. Um, and I still did this. So I'm gonna add a fourth win because today I received my first mean comment on a post where I was being very vulnerable. Um, you know, but I guess that means that there's more eyes on me. But you know what? I I planned for that, prepped for that, expected that, and you know, I just know that not everyone is gonna understand me. And that's fine. So it's but I'll take that as a win. So if you're in a place of struggling to find any wins, think of just one thing that you did this week that felt even slightly good, and that's a win. Also, on my way to the studio today, I passed a big car fire on the highway. It was so much smoke, like the firefighters were really struggling to get it out. You know, I had been in my head all morning about doing this, about that stupid ass mean comment. It was so corny too. But it really put things into perspective for me. And so I think that as long as we have our health and the health of our loved ones, then um and I started crying about it, but it really would like made me feel grateful. It really did. So I'm Lauren Lizzie, and thank you so much for listening to episode six. Episode six. Woo! We need to celebrate. Um, and I'll see you next week. Stay tuned for next week. Say bye. Bye, guys. Thanks for joining.