Being Misunderstood

[Pallero]

Hi, everybody!

I wonder if anyone here can relate to this problem.

I keep attracting being misunderstood and it's driving me crazy. I have good language skills and I repeatedly get good feedback about my being able to put my emotions into words et cetera. And still, when I explain how I'm feeling to somebody (be it a mental health professional or not), IF I get a response at all, the response is beside the point of what I was trying to say. I explain again and again in different words, but it's no use. People either admit that they don't understand me or they think that they understand but they don't.

I have childhood trauma that is making my adult life difficult when it resurfaces. I need professional help. Only it's really hard to get when people either don't believe me, don't take me seriously or don't understand me at all.

The only ray of sunshine is this one psychiatrist I ended up seeing accidentally once. She said that from the first moment she saw me, she saw that my being "screamed trauma". She sounded very worried as she said that I need professional help and I need it now. That I'm barely hanging in there. In that moment, I felt understood, heard and seen.

But this was a few months ago. I haven't seen her since and no other person has really seemed to understand me like she did.

Can anyone relate to this? Do you have any words of wisdom or relief?

EDIT: I looked up that psychiatrist's information online and she charges 180€ per 45 minute session. I don't have that much money. This is so unfair.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Pallero
added information

[Alicja_]

@Pallero If you need professional help, you should probably just keep on looking for the right therapist. There is definitely someone who could help you, you just haven't found him/her yet.  If you can't afford the one who seemed to understand you so well, find someone who charges less. Just don't give up. 

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Alicja_

[Life Coach]

Your subconscious mind holds a lot of power over you. How about you treat yourself, reprogramm your mind. And while you are at it stop explaining so much to people and caring so much about it. I perfectly understood what you wrote and I can feel pretty good into it, but I have always been emphatic, maybe that's because of it. It's like a superpower and works over the internet just from reading text too. But maybe the other people just aren't very bright or maybe they don't care. But when you simply say "I feel like shit" I think everyone will understand I'd like to know more about your childhood trauma. Maybe it is treatable without wasting much cash. 

[Bodhi123]

@Pallero I agree with @Life Coach that you hold the answers to your own problems.

What is most important is that you understand your own problems because with this understanding you will develop the clarity needed to find the solutions.

However, If it is helpful to speak with a mental health professional in order to process your emotions and thoughts then definitely continue with this type of help. Good luck to you and please be kind to yourself.

Edited February 10, 2017 by Bodhi123

[Pallero]

@Alicja_ You're right and everyone says so. I'm just having a moment of desperation. I'm never gonna find the right therapist! You know?

@Life Coach Do you know Teal Swan's The Completion Process? I just ordered the book, because I've been trying it out a little and it's working. That would be the less costly way to deal with the issues.

@Bodhi123 Thank you. It's just everytime I try to tell a mental health professional that people don't understand me, guess what? That professional doesn't understand me either. It's horrible! But I guess I just haven't found the right person yet.

[Life Coach]

19 minutes ago, Pallero said:

 

@Life Coach Do you know Teal Swan's The Completion Process? I just ordered the book, because I've been trying it out a little and it's working. That would be the less costly way to deal with the issues.

I have of course heard of it before, but never gave it a try (was not sure if it was worth it). I am always open for new good book recommendations, so feel free to recommend it to me when you feel that book is awesome and helpful

[Bodhi123]

@Pallero What is it that you want other people to understand about you? Also, why is it important to you that they have this understanding?

[Scholar]

The question is wether you need a psychiatrist to understand you, or wether you just need someone to understand you. I think there is a problem with how mental health is approached these days. Often for proper treatment a psychiatrist needs to know almost everything about a patient. But that's not really how the world works. Any psychiatrist has multiple patients every day, a limited understanding of the mind and a very specific view on how to treat certain psychological conditions. It's not possible to understand all patients in all their complexity, with the limited time they can spend with them. So the best is to just prescribe some meditation and hope it somehow solves the problem.

I think the rise of mental illness and depression might be rooted in a greater problem that we face today. People become more and more disconnected because technology is isolating us. There is less deep, personal connection. What a few centuries ago a family member or friend did, now has to do the psychiatrist with his doctor in psychology. Who is more likely to actually understand you? Someone who spend most of his life with you, or someone else who sees you every week for an hour and gets paid for it?

Today the world is filled with superficial relationships. The quality doesn't really matter anymore, instead people tend to go for quantity. More friends, instead of stronger and deeper friendships. The human mind was simply not designed to function in the enviroment we have created for ourselves.

It seems as though society has constructed many taboos and restrictions as to what we are supposed to talk about with our friends and even with family. I mean, if you have a son and he seems deeply troubled, it seems completely fine to just send him to the psychiatrist. After all, the psychiatrist is a professional who deals with these problems. Of course, sometimes a psychiatrist is a very helpful tool , but I think in a lot of cases people are just looking for replacements to have someone to actually listen to them. Having someone really listen and understand is often healing enough to deal with traumata. Just visualize how you would feel if you had a person who would actually want to know how you feel, and why you feel the way you do? In a tribal setting this might not even be far fetched. Humans lived in small groups for thousands of years. There was no sea of billions of people who are accessable. Almost all sources of entertainment were social activities, and taboos as far as what you could talk about were probably almost non-existant. If there was a problem, people talked about it, and they were most likely genuinely interested in each other, simply because there were just a very limited amount of people around. People are wired to enjoy drama, especially women. Today we watch TV and movies, and back than people listened to each other. The problem is that the TV is not listening back.

 

Today, we live in houses, seperated from each other. Most of us don't even know all of our neighbours. Why would we, everyone is moving around constantly anyways. So what we lack are real communities and deep interpersonal connections. Those are simple, psychological needs, and we have to keep in mind that our brain evolved in a way to deal with situations in that kind of manner. Traumata are not supposed to just ruin your life, they have a very specific evolutionary purpose, otherwise there would be no place from them in the psyche. In the enviroment traumata evolved in, it was beneficial to the survival of the human being, or whatever species we were back when it evolved. Now, we live in a completely different enviroment, and instead traumata becomes a "feature" of the mind that is doing damage, rather than being beneficial what so ever.

The question is wether just treating the symptoms instead of the root causes is the best way to deal with this.

 

You are definitely not alone with this problem, there is infact an epidemic of "mental illnesses" that relate to the disconnection of human beings. I wouldn't advice you to stop looking for a psychiatrist, but if you can, try to tackle the problems from more than just one front. Simpler said that done, but you might want to start building true and deeper relationships with people. And of course, you can try to meditate and tackle the problem from a spiritual front, as people already adviced. You have to keep in mind though that there is no perfect, easy path for this, especially with how the world is like.

[Nahm]

If you had what you wanted, which seems to be that everyone understands you, then what?

What is that going to do for you?

 

[OKO]

.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Gabriel David

[ajasatya]

On 11/02/2017 at 4:26 PM, Nahm said:

If you had what you wanted, which seems to be that everyone understands you, then what?

What is that going to do for you?

good one. simple and straightforward. let me try to dig a little deeper.

the process of having someone else to help us healing depends on our willingness to go deep in ourselves and touch the pain we need to feel. it happens because we're either too scared or to ignorant to do it alone... or both.

another obstacle is the fact that we're taught not to be vulnerable. we're taught to be strong and resilient. it's not people's fault though. they're just reproducing this destructive pattern because they don't know how to deal with suffering and how to stop creating suffering for themselves.

@Pallero, you want "someone that understands" you, which i translate as "someone who demonstrates his desire to see you healed". but you can do it alone with self love.

sit quietly, feel compassion for yourself and have the courage to touch those wounds. be vulnerable. let go of the resilient stigma. i've done it myself. feel all the pain you need to feel and cry all rivers you need to cry.

[Nahm]

Listen to this song as loud as possible and let me know if it helps. Try it.  

 

[h inandout]

I think 180€ is nothing if that's exactly the thing you need.  I used to be stingy about paying people for the things I need, so I would go about with unmet needs and anger, and attract bad things, like the $260 speeding ticket I just got because the small town I passed through is only 25mph not 45 and I was too emotional to notice.  It is literally inefficient to go through life like this.  I also wasn't seeing myself as someone who could afford to have my needs met or who deserves to have my needs met.  It was all very confusing, because everyone around me seemed to reflect this idea that I didn't deserve to have my needs met.  And I felt embarrassed to admit that I really just needed some compassion because I was so stuck in being the compassionate one, and I even learned to communicate very eloquently so as not to hurt others by explaining how hurt I felt.  So I am in the process of actually saying I hurt more directly to others and accepting that only time will decloud the confusion.  And I admit that sometimes I just want a hug from someone who gets it, and for them to help me brainstorm a way out.

Edited February 27, 2017 by MissMiki

[h inandout]

If you go for the expensive therapist, just remeber that they have to eat too, and that the more you support rhe people who support you, the more you enable them to better the world.

[alyra]

On 2/9/2017 at 2:15 AM, Pallero said:

I keep attracting being misunderstood and it's driving me crazy.

honestly, everyone has this issue, getting missunderstood. some people are more aware of it, some people are more sensitive to it. 

 

I think it is realistic to find that some people more frequently run into the issue or some people it is a bigger deal, like that the misunderstanding is ona more impactful scale. but that everyone just gets misunderstood constantly. 

 

after all, words are symbols, the understanding is in the individual's perspective, and there's no way to communicate the understanding. we can only transfer the symbol, and hope that it means to others what it means to us.