Wisdom from the Consulting Room.
Here is a wee place I will share a few thoughts and musings along various themes from my time spent with all those couragerous souls I meet everyday in my consulting room. I hope you too may find some of these thoughts and reflections helpful and if you wish to think about these ideas further please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Making Guesses
Sometimes I meet people who worry an awful lot about what people think of them, turning over in their heads what they might have said to their colleague on that night out or imagining why the person they know and like has walked past them in the street and not acknowledged them. ‘What did I say to offend them? What might I have done to make them think and feel badly of me?’. We are hard-wired to stay attached to others for our own survival, initially our primary caregivers and then later relationships outside our family of origin therefore if we are anxious in our attachments we might put a lot of time and energy into being good or acceptable to other people and therefore work very hard to figure out what they need and want from us. We in turn, in our anxiety, can make very definite ‘certain’ guesses about what someone is thinking and feeling. What I often say in situations like these is that we can only ever make guesses about what people are thinking and feeling as we cannot read their mind or know for a fact what they are feeling until they tell us. What I suggest in this instance is to ask ‘What other guesses might you make? You might be absolutely right about your friend ignoring you but on the other hand there might be other possibilities about what is going on’. This is not to minimise or undermine someone’s assessment of a situation but to encourage a loosening up and flexibility in our thinking about what someone might think and feel just enough to release the anxiety and help us think more clearly about what we are going to do next. Could the friend who walked in the street be having a bad day or have just received some bad news?’ ‘Or could they be preoccupied with all the things they have to do that day?’ ‘Or if they are genuinely upset with you, why might that be and what can you do about it?’ ‘Or is this a pattern in them to ignore people unexpectedly?’
So the next time you find yourself anxious about what someone is thinking about you and convinced you have done something bad or wrong, ask yourself what other guesses you could make, what other possibilities could exist. Can this then alleviate the anxiety enough to help you think more flexibly about what you next steps will be and what help you might need in doing so, whether this is speaking to the friend directly or making an appropriate adjustment in the friendship? Or doing nothing and see if it happens again. I hope you found this helpful and if you are struggling with anxious feelings about what others think of you then do not hesitate to reach out to a trusted professional.