Some people will never ask you for your side of the story.
Not because they forgot. Not because they’re too busy. But because the version they already heard? It fits. It’s convenient. It confirms whatever quiet narrative they’ve been building about you in their head. Why complicate a good story with facts?
There’s a certain comfort in a one-sided tale. It lets people feel right, justified, even a little superior without doing the messy work of curiosity or fairness. Nuance is exhausting. Assumptions are efficient.
And listen, I get it. As a general rule, I try to hold space for multiple truths, competing perceptions, the whole complicated human mosaic. It’s not always easy. It requires restraint, humility, and the occasional swallowing of ego. Not everyone is signing up for that kind of labor.
Some people would rather just decide.
So they do.
They decide who you are based on fragments, whispers, or someone else’s emotional edit. They don’t ask. They don’t check. They don’t wonder.
Whatever.
Stay strong anyway. Stay grounded in who you actually are, not who someone needed you to be in their story. Because here’s the quiet punchline. When people flatten you into something simpler, they don’t diminish you. They limit their own experience of you.
And that’s the real loss.
Not yours.
Theirs.
Shame on them.
They’ll never know the full, inconvenient, remarkable truth of a good person.
Categories: Culture, identity, Leadership, mental health, Psychology, workplace
psychologistmimi 
I like that a lot.
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Very well said. Are you speaking from experience of having your side of the story conveniently overlooked? I feel like this is happening more often with the rise of online media and the proliferation of opinions being shared. It’s quick and easy to take what you read as gospel, and ignore the rest as it doesn’t fit the narrative because that’s what you’re taught to do my mainstream media poop. It doesn’t leave space empathy, for an open-mind, for seeking more information or questioning the inherent bias in a news story or comment or whatever else.
I don’t like the way some people read something and condemn a person without question, spewing crap online that is judgemental and ignorant and too hasty without appreciating the fullness of the person or the story. I think it’s seeping out more now into day to day life, like seeing a person and making a snap judgement based on what you see, but without any thought beyond that. Judgement is human, but so too should be acknowledging and appreciating the flaws in that judgement.
I’m not sure if anything I’ve just written makes any sense; my brain is a bit mush and can’t stay on point. I just wanted you to know I hear you and think you wrote this very well!
Caz xx
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Doing the work, and listening effectively, is HARD work. People who are not self-aware aren’t going to do it.
If you are self-aware, you want everyone to have the same grace extended to them as you want for yourself.
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