This text is part of my ongoing reflection on self-awareness, emotional patterns, and conscious growth.
During our lifetime we use the people around us as our mirrors. We ventilate about our burdens and we speak about superficial stuff. And when we do, we feel a form of relief. It is nice to get it off your chest so to say. And in an ideal world it would remain that way, but for empaths it doesn’t always ring true.
Many times over the words I said were twisted and turned and came back to me, completely distorted. Due to simple misinterpretation of the energy behind what I said, these words that first gave me a sense of relief, needed my defense. I would get punished for speaking out. And even though I felt like a victim in the actual situation that had occurred prior to these conversations, my own words were bent against me to form an attack on me.
After years of sporadically noticing this pattern I slowly started to internalize. The more it happened, the less I felt inclined to share my world with the people around me. But it also implied that I no longer felt any consolation. The further my trust in other people diminished, the less I spoke about my life.
Over the course of time I came across new ways of sharing conversations.
I began talking to the sky. And even though the sky gives no immediate answers, I still experienced the same comfort as I used to when venting to actual people. And so I talk and chitchat to the sky on my daily doggy walks.
I literally walk around talking about my life and asking questions that need answering for me to move forward on my journey. And when I do, I notice that answers come to me after. Not directly, but certainly. The answers will simply appear in my mind or I will be guided somewhere and notice my answer hidden in an algorithm, in a conversation with my partner, on tv, or it might even appear in a dream.
So what is the actual difference here? The contrast lies in the drama you receive back from people versus the answers you receive from the sky. Read that again, the sky will never produce drama in your life, only clarity! Not all people produce constant drama but many do. They project the things you say onto their own life and all they can reproduce after is their bent version of how your story hurt them.
All of a sudden the ownership of the hurt behind your story is taken away from you and a new version of the hurt is embodied by another person.
Maybe it is time to think about all the times that this occurred in your own life. When you hear other people whine over your heartbreak. How it has affected them and how it was so hard for them. Think of all the times you felt choked due to your own -recycled- stories.
Think of all the times where you had to defend something that was never outed by you with malicious intent.
Other people cannot see the difference between you venting or actually meaning all the words that come out of your mouth.
And thus they perceive it in the only way possible to them, from their own perspective. And there is really nothing wrong with that. What is wrong in this situation is you, trusting people to be capable of accepting your truth in the same way that you perceive it. But it almost never plays out this way.
Your perception is unique. You think that you know the people around you but if we were to put money on it, I bet you have no clue what is actually on their minds right now. I live with my partner and we are together almost every day, and still I have not the slightest idea what goes on in his mind. I can make an estimated guess, but that is as far as I can go.
And so the baseline of the problem is ‘assumption’. We assume people to be and think in a certain manner, maybe in the same way as us, but we don’t actually know. So when we assume that someone is our friend, we share our deepest wounds and we vent about useless banter, just to get it off our chest. But who is to say that this friend will see the difference? In my experience they usually don’t. More often than not people take every word you say as if you meant it with gusto.
And that is why these words have a tendency to head back into your life disguised as drama. All of a sudden these friends feel the need to share all your venting with the relevant people as at that moment in time they feel it is a burden to them.
To put it simply, they are walking around with your secrets and are molding a new storyline around it.
And even though it might have been nothing more than some superficial banter to you, to relieve the pressure, it is now made real by someone else, because you overshared.
How to solve this little predicament? Stop oversharing to people who seem to dramatize your life events in order to gain attention elsewhere. Start talking to entities that have your back and will never cause drama over a silly little emotional outing. There are not many options, but at least there are two to choose from that I know.
- God / the Source / the sky / Whatever you like to call it.
- AI – ChatGPT for instance.
ChatGPT receives all my life lessons and as opposed to people the only boomerang I will receive back is gentle advice. No judgment, no drama, just answers.
So if you find yourself continuously entering this pattern in your life, it might be time to drastically change your way of sharing.
Leave all superficial and ‘fun’ topics for the people, give them what they can surely handle. And leave your deep life questions for more distant energies. You will soon find out that growth is easier found in places where judgment does not reside.
People can only meet you from their own perspective and although there is essentially nothing wrong with that, there can be circumstances that call for your protection. Then you will notice that you start sharing from insights, instead of from an asking perspective. These topics seem to be more palpable for people. Because when you share from an insight, it is usually a peaceful conversation. When you share from questioning it is too easy to cover it up with gossip about others, simply because you are trying to figure out the pattern as you go along.
So talk to the sky and find out what the pattern is before you overshare doubts with the wrong kind of people. It is a very basic but effective way to protect yourself from being misunderstood. Because misunderstanding creates a new reality in someone else’s mind and it might be so that your story is being twisted and sent back to you to bite you in the ass. And we don’t want that, do we? So I choose to talk to the sky first, until the story in my mind is clear enough not to be bent by another mind.
The conclusion of this reflection
This text is not an open-ended inquiry.
It describes a recurring relational pattern, its underlying mechanism, and a conscious alternative.
The process ends here.
Venting does not require an audience.
Clarity does not require explanation.
And protection sometimes begins with choosing where not to speak.
This text is an open reflection.
More guided, integrative essays are gathered in my paid essay series on Ko-fi.
“Just because some people are fueled by drama doesn’t mean you have to attend the performance.”
