Being misunderstood is one of my greatest fears. It's part of why I struggle being perceived at times. There's no mystery to me where that comes from. Being punished for something you didn't even do or say hurts a lot more than when it's something that maybe was deserved0. There is a reason why in the justice system the burden of proof falls on the prosecutor. Because, no matter how hard you argue, a negative cannot be proven. You cannot prove you did not do something1.
Writing these posts is in itself terrifying, because once they're out, I lose control of how they are perceived. I have no issue giving a lecture in a room full of people. Or have a face to face conversation with a person. Because, I can see their reactions, if they understood me or not, and course correct as appropriate. A lot of my posts have nuance, and I do my best to portray that, yet sometimes it does not come across. Or may not come across to one reader, but will to another. Things that I said are just ignored or misinterpreted giving the content I wrote a completely different meaning. We see this very clearly in literature. As anyone who has studied literature in school can tell you, people can insert a lot of meaning into a lot of insignificant details2.
I have identified there are three major types of misunderstanding. This classification is about the way the misunderstanding presents itself, and not its causes. There are many more factors that can cause misunderstandings. Language is not a foolproof communication method, and unless we find a way to transfer our full thoughts to another person it is unlikely we will ever be able to communicate anything in the fullest range that we experience it. This leads to inevitable misunderstandings.
What it is: Curious misunderstanding is probably the best of them all. When we read something we read to understand, so it is only natural that we draw conclusions. Curious misunderstanding is giving space for the possibility that I, as the listener/reader, might be wrong. And where there is missing information, or something that doesn't match my world view, store that understanding as a question that I may research or ask later. That being said, even in this case, I get scared, especially if the listener seems to have gotten a very different first impression. Even if I have the opportunity to explain.
Example: One instance where I got super panicked was in an interview with a company where they brought up my post on UIs vs CLIs, and they seemed to think I claimed CLIs were bad. I was fairly sure I only said UIs are better for the usual developer not that there was anything wrong with CLIs. Just because something is better doesn't make the other thing bad. Neither does it make the better thing good. Nonetheless, I panicked. How could they get it so wrong? Did I make a mistake? Was I not clear? Did this mean I would lose the interview? Are there other interviews I missed out on because of that post?
How I handle it: Obviously all of this anxiety was unwarranted. If it had lost me the interview, they wouldn't have wasted their time being in that video call with me. And they were doing exactly what they should be in case of a misunderstanding. Asking about it. Now, could they have asked a more open-ended question that didn't scare me as much? Absolutely! But most importantly, they were asking, and they wanted to learn. We had a conversation about it. Not sure how good, as I didn't get the job, but I had the feeling they were looking for a different type of engineer anyway. I am slowly learning to appreciate more the discussion that comes from my posts than someone getting them as they are intended. Who knows, maybe I expand my own knowledge too, after all, it's their life experience that lead to the misunderstanding, and that is something to learn from.
What it is: Sometimes people misunderstand because they genuinely couldn't care less. As humans, we do have a need to understand the things around us, to find an explanation. However, when we don't really care our brain will find the first explanation that kind of fits, slap it on, and we walk away happy, without confusion. This is the one that makes me the most uncomfortable, and it's the one I still struggle with.
Example: The most ridiculous one that makes me anxious is when I fumble around in the subway to figure out which side door to prepare to leave at, because I struggle with which is left and which is right. The thought of people thinking it's because I don't know how to say left or right in Korean makes me weirdly uncomfortable. It's silly, I know... Like I want to shout: Yes, I am stupid, but not in the way you think.
How I handle it: I tend to observe a lot around me. I tend to tell fairly quickly the energy shifts as a result. This is what feels natural, and instinctual to me. I do my best to observe as many factors to be able to tell what caused the shift. Maybe because it comes so naturally to me, when others don't do it, it feels like a snub, a choice. But it isn't. Because often it really doesn't matter. Yet, I still start sweating if I misremembered a detail, because they may think I was lying... When it really doesn't matter, and they genuinely could not care less.
What it is: Sometimes people really have no interest in understanding you. You can express it as clearly as humanly possible, over and over again, and they won't get it. For me the default was to try harder. Yet the thing you are expressing very clearly may not be something the other person wants to hear. So they just... don't. I was initially going to name this malicious misunderstanding, but 'malicious' implies thinking the worst of things. That isn't always the case. I thought of times I chose to misunderstand my ex, trying to see the best when it was obvious it was not. Because it was better to hope than to admit I was in a relationship that I shouldn't have been in. So, willful felt like a more appropriate term. Because I was still choosing to ignore something right in front of me, because I didn't want to admit the relationship was abusive.
Example: This was something I am extremely grateful to have been able to clear the air with a friend of mine. She happens to be the ex of a former friend. He had told her that I believed non-binary people did not exist and something else transphobic. It was only natural she was a bit weary around me. This, when I identify as agender, which is a form of being non-binary and therefore trans... was one of the most ridiculous things I most certainly never said. And I had spoken to him to that effect. Yet he chose to portray me as the opposite of my beliefs and identity. All kudos to this friend, because she spotted me as someone gender non-conforming, and she just felt sorry for me instead. She then brought the curious misunderstanding in.
How I handle it: I still default to over explaining. However, working with my couple's therapist after my last relationship the thing that helped me the most, as she was witness to how I was expressing my needs, was her confirming that I was perfectly clear. To be so grossly misunderstood, hurts, a lot. Especially to me. It feels like an injustice. But these misunderstandings tell me more about the other person, than they tell me about me. And maybe the thing it's telling me is to get the hell away. And I admit, that took me a LOOOOOOONG time to learn. When someone chooses to misunderstand me over and over again... maybe they're not someone I want in my life.
Cultural differences put a different spin on the misunderstanding altogether. In her book, The Culture Map, Erin Meyer splits the world onto an axis that depends on whom the onus is put on when communicating. The listener or the speaker. In East Asian cultures, it is more common for the onus to be placed on the listener. Often referred to as high context cultures. Whereas in low context cultures, like the US and the Netherlands, the onus is placed on the speaker, who should make themselves fully clear. If misunderstood, it's the speaker's fault. Interestingly, what she also points out is that, while there are multiple high context cultures, the high context does not transfer from one to another. Brazil and Japan are both high context, but they communicate very differently from each other, leading to inevitable misunderstandings... if one were to assume their contexts matched.
Ultimately, misunderstandings are inevitable. There are so many differences in our lives, and in our lived experiences, that we simply cannot possibly see. How I interpret something is entirely informed by my lived experience. Whether I consider a detail worth mentioning, or even worth registering is, again, informed by my lived experience. Which is notably not my readers' lived experience. So, how could I expect them to read something the exact way I intended it? Coming from a relatively high context culture, where I was already anxious about being misunderstood, going to a low context culture that put so much more pressure to get things perfectly3 right, made me increasingly more anxious about how I explained myself. This lead to me seeing any form of misunderstanding as a failure on my part.
The logical awareness that misunderstandings are inevitable and actually being ok with misunderstandings happening are two vastly different things. I can remember a time when I would go into full panic mode when I'd realise I was misunderstood4. I do still have the tendency to over-explain myself5, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Coaching is one place where I made the most progress in handling misunderstanding. Not just in being coached, but coaching others. The beauty of coaching is that it is an open 1:1 conversation where both parties are open with each other. So, we're in the curious misunderstanding space, the safest of them all. I was terrified of getting things wrong, so I'd over-explain as I usually did. This took the session away from the client, and wasn't useful. I learned a lot about how to say more with less. How to think about the purpose of everything that I said. And by slowly doing that, I stumbled on the good side of willful misunderstanding. I was worried that I may ask the wrong question. But then the client asked me to clarify. I was worried the client got the question wrong. Well, I could rephrase. But sometimes, actually most often, their misunderstanding showed me what mattered to them, what their focus was. And it would take us down much better paths than I may have intended. In coaching, we learn about the power of open questions, because then the client takes us where they need to go, not where we think, as coaches, we should go. And they teach us so much more about our clients.
Willful misunderstanding can be good sometimes. Counterintuitive, right? But, if no matter how hard you explain yourself to someone, they keep misunderstanding you, or misunderstand you in a very unpleasant way and aren't open to discussion, it's actually clear communication. It might just be the signal that we need to step away from that relationship. This is something that took me 30 years to learn, and honestly, I still occasionally struggle with. My default, after all, is to try and give people chances, so that they learn to treat me right. But that is rarely the best solution for one's own safety. I talk about this more at length in my post on justice.
I will always struggle with being misunderstood. I used to go through my blog posts tens of times before posting them. The first short story I wrote had 11 drafts. And I still wonder if I could do better if I edited it just one more time. My feelings around misunderstanding are unlikely to fully fade away. But my actions can differ.
In Kanban, they have this concept called time-boxing. I have introduced to myself the concept of draft-boxing. I get 4 drafts. The first draft is the stream of consciousness, just write whatever. The second draft where I introduce structure, plus any fact checking that my stream of consciousness may have misremembered. The third draft where I read it out loud, hear it out, and I fix grammar so that it sounds right. And the fourth draft is where I go over typos and get an LLM to point out anything I may have missed, just in case. After that I publish it, and once it's live, I promise to myself I won't change it.
In individual conversations, it's a conversation. We listen, we adapt, and hope for the best. I am working on assuming people will tell me if something bothered them, instead of spiraling, thinking of everything that may have bothered them that probably hasn't. Where I still struggle is where there is no chance for a conversation, because being understood, is being seen, and being denied the opportunity is the regret of what may have been.
If someone wants to paint me as a transphobe, a gold digger, or a sociopath who takes pleasure from torturing others, let them. They clearly need a villain in their life, and it's easier to pick me, then play the victim. I know for a fact I am none of those things, and that's what matters. I am done trying to prove it to people who didn't want to see it in the first place. Paint me as a villain if you must. Whatever floats your boat. But don't be surprised if I disappear from your life.
Misunderstandings will happen. Some will hurt more than others. And that's ok. Feelings are meant to be felt. Just use them wisely to inform your actions, instead of reacting.
Does being misunderstood make you uncomfortable? Has the fear prevented you from doing things that you wanted to? Feel free to explore my coaching here and book a free intro call to discuss how coaching can help you.
0 Provided the punishment matches the crime
1 Just think of those hilarious posts when Amazon asks you to prove you didn't receive the package. Which fair, they probably get plenty of scams, but how can you prove it? A photo of your empty front porch? You could have just moved the parcel away...
2 What did the author mean when he said the curtain was blue? Well, it's clearly a representation of the melancholy of the character, and the coldness they experience in the family home. Meanwhile, the author scratches their head and goes... "It's just blue, I like blue..." It is said once a book is out, it no longer belongs to the author. Same with everything we communicate
3 Spot the perfectionist!
4 Which honestly I can't blame myself for, as I wasn't fully aware as to why at the time.
5 In case you haven't noticed, these blog posts are rather long-winded...