When they talk about you as if they know you.
They never talk about you. They talk about their own shadows.
This is Part 8 of the reflective thread on The RAA Method™. Subscribe to receive the next entries directly.
We’ve all heard people talk about us as if they’ve lived half our life with us. Most of the time I hear it second-hand. Someone comes and says: “They said you’re cold, that you never forgive, that you’re arrogant.” It’s always the same structure - they said. Never they know.
For a long time I reacted by explaining. If they accused me of being harsh, I explained that I wasn’t harsh but consistent. If they said I was too proud, I explained that I was principled. I believed that if I gave enough explanations, maybe they would realize they were wrong. But it never worked. They weren’t looking for me, they were looking for confirmation of their picture.
I remember when, as a teenager, I was accused of being the reason my friend broke up with his girlfriend. It hit me hard because I had actually been rooting for that relationship to last. Even my best friend tried, in my absence, to desperately explain to them that what they thought wasn’t true. It didn’t work. They stopped hanging out with me. I lost about ten friends in a single day. Of course, later I understood they weren’t real friends anyway, but at that time it hit me straight in the face.
And then it struck me that they weren’t really talking about me. They were talking about their image of me, about the picture they had already assembled, the one that fit their story. In that moment I realized for the first time that I wasn’t the subject of their conversation, but simply a surface onto which they projected what they carried inside.
The real problem begins when you start believing those images. When their version of you starts getting under your skin, when you think you owe them proof to the contrary. I did that for years, and every time I ended up emptier. Because once you play on their field, their picture always wins.
The shift only happened when I changed the angle. Instead of spending my energy trying to break their frame, I began investing it in listening to myself. Not in defiance, not in retreat - but in shifting focus back to what was alive in me, rather than the images circulating around me. That’s when I saw the real difference: it wasn’t that they stopped talking, it was that I was no longer available through their definitions.
From there, everything became simpler. I started listening differently: not to what they said, but to why they needed to say it. What gap inside themselves they were trying to fill by pretending to know someone they never truly felt from within. Once you see that, their words lose weight. They don’t disappear - but they stop carrying you with them.
Because the truth is clear: no one can really know you unless they stand inside your own pulse, in the resonance of your being. And words, images, labels never reach that place.
They can only know their fears, their projections, and their need to categorize the world. And in the space between their stories and your truth lies your freedom. You only need to ask yourself what matters more.
And maybe the real question at the end is this: does anyone ever truly know another, or are we all just walking through a maze of mirrors?
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Next Entry: When you feel you can’t be the same person anymore - but don’t know who you are now.
Your Truth, Your Compass.
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