Tolerating Misjudgment and the Need to Manage Other People's Opinions of us

When Ryan’s coworker asked if he’d like to join the team happy hour, his stomach tightened. He liked the idea of going for a brief moment. Nearly instantly, his brain started spinning: If I say no, they’ll think I’m stuck up. If I say yes, I’ll have to act like I’m totally fine being around everyone’s questions about my boyfriend again. What if I make it weird? What if I say the wrong thing?

By the time he’d finished rehearsing all the possible conversations in his head, the event had already passed. He told himself he just “wasn’t feeling social,” but the truth was, he was exhausted from managing all the invisible calculations of how to be seen “just right.”

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Being understood by others doesn't always go hand-in-hand with being right with yourself.

When we base our choices on what others might think, we’re often trying to manage anxiety through an illusion of control. For some folks, the brain tells us that it's possible to guarantee others will think of us only in certain ways. It imagines, predicts, and rehearses future interactions while over-analyzing and criticizing us about past social interactions. Our mental processes mean well in this effort to reduce the discomfort of uncertainty. For folks who grew up in environments where being misunderstood came with real consequences, managing other people's opinions of us once served a purpose. While navigating oppression, social rejection, shame, chronic invalidation, or even danger, this hypervigalence kept us safe.

Over time, this mental habit becomes self-erasing. The boundary between “what I actually want” and “what others might approve of” begins to blur. Choices start revolving around avoiding disapproval, rather than expressing authenticity. For many folks I have served, this required them to self-fragment. They had to prop up a false self which is the one that tried to fulfill what they believe others want to see of them and won't reject. Simultaneously, they exhaustingly supressed an increasingly lonely, empty, invalidated, unmirrored, and under-built authentic self.

Why does this happen?

Some folks who constantly worry about others’ perceptions often show high levels of internalized shame and self-criticism. This may come from a fear of experiencing compassion (from Self or others). The resulting shame can produce a chronic or recurring depression (Joeng & Turner, 2015). Some folks who are sensitive to being misunderstood by others may manage this overwhelm by limiting their engagement in therapy and in relationships. Unfortunately, the more we avoid therapy and social experiences to minimize this emotional risk, the stronger our shame and our expectation of being misunderstood grows (Tursi & Sellers, 2021). Some folks who are highly sensitive to the uncertainty about how others will react to them tend to overly rely on asking for advice and reassurance from others (Ferrer & Ellis, 2021).

Marginalized folks often engage in impression management not out of insecurity, but out of necessity. A wide body of research shows that marginalized people must constantly calculate how they present themselves to avoid being perceived as threatening, unintelligent, or over-emotional (Healy, 2014). Autistic people, people with ADHD, or those certain personality disorders often experience heightened stress in interpersonal situations. They may have difficulty decoding social nuance, ambiguous cues, or perceived rejection.

How Does Therapy Help?

• Increasing self-compassion to reduce emotional vulnerability.

• Increasing self-compassion to help decrease the need for external validation.

• Creating therapy sessions as a regular experience of non-judgment.

• Developing coping strategies so that new social experiences can be enjoyed.

• Strengthening self-understanding and self-acceptance to bolster resiliency against being misunderstood.

• Increasing the capacity and comfort with making decisions without over-reliance on reassurance and advice.

• Differentiating between adaptive self-protection against oppression and internalized fear of judgment can support both safety and self-authenticity.

• Normalizing neurological diversity and difference, and offer scaffolding without shame.

Let's go over some alternatives.

Philosophy of Dialogue

Philosopher Martin Buber described two fundamental ways of relating to others.

• I–It relationship: we treat others as objects to manage, impress, fix, or predict. The other person becomes an audience to please or a problem to solve.

• I–Thou relationship: we meet others as full, autonomous beings and not as mirrors of our worth but as equals whose perceptions we cannot and should not control.

Some Steps

• Communicate as authentically as possible.

• Understand that another person's response belongs to them.

According to this perspective, Ryan must avoid trying to fully control or account for the perceptions of others in the name of mutual respect. Otherwise, his approach denies the other person their subjectivity and denies himself authenticity.

Non-Violent Communicarion

Developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a method of speaking and listening that fosters empathy, clarity, and accountability. NVC teaches that emotions arise from unmet needs, not from other people’s actions. Someone who’s afraid to speak because they can’t guarantee the listener’s reaction is caught in a subtle form of emotional control. They are trying to manage the internal world of another person rather than focusing on their own integrity, clarity, and need for connection. NVC helps untangle this by shifting the goal of communication from control to understanding. Some Steps:

• Own your part: it is your responsibility to represent your own observations, feelings, and needs.

• Create room for others: allow it to be the listener's responsibility to form their own understanding of what they see and hear.

For Ryan, NVC offers a way to step out of the exhausting cycle of rehearsal and self-censorship. Instead of trying to predict or control how his coworkers will interpret him, he can focus on expressing what is genuinely true for him with honesty and care. When Ryan owns his part (“I feel anxious about small talk today because I need some space”) and leaves space for others to form their own impressions, he moves from control to connection. This shift frees him from performing for acceptance and lets authenticity guide how he relates to others.

Don't Ruminate About Past Interactions - use Social Psychology

When we overthink what others might think of us, we often assume total responsibility for outcomes we don’t control (someone’s mood, interpretation, or emotional reaction). For instance, you may feel ashamed after a tense conversation, assuming you “caused” someone’s hurt. But if their response was shaped by external stress, past experiences, or needs you couldn’t have known, there is nothing to try to control or beat yourself up about later. Recognizing this shifts blame into clarity: we can own our part without inflating it.

Bernard Weiner’s Attribution Theory explains how people evaluate responsibility by considering three factors:

• Locus: Was the cause internal (something within me) or external (something outside my control)?

• Stability: Is the cause consistent and enduring, or temporary and situational?

• Controllability: Could I (or the other person) have realistically acted or felt differently?

Attribution Theory can help Ryan interrupt the spiral that follows every social interaction. After a conversation, instead of replaying each word and blaming himself for how others might have felt, he can pause and evaluate: Was that reaction really caused by me (locus)? Is this how they always respond, or was it just this moment (stability)? Could anyone have changed that outcome (controllability)? When he shifts from self-blame to realistic attribution, he can release the illusion of total responsibility and replace rumination with clarity and self-trust.

Wrapping it all up

Remeber, in building moral social thinking, we don't hold ourselves to extremes. Not caring at all how you’re perceived is not reasonable or even wise. What we want is to stop letting that fear become the compass for your decisions. Developing mental boundaries means learning to notice where your mind ends and someone else’s begins. It’s being able to think, “This is my interpretation. That’s theirs.”  In therapy, we often build this skill through reflective practices—asking, “What do I think? What do I feel? What might they think—and can I live with not knowing for sure?” 

It takes practice and self-compassion to tolerate the discomfort of being misread or misjudged. But that’s the soil where genuine self-trust grows. Over time, the question shifts from “What will they think of me?” to “What do I think of myself, knowing I acted in alignment with my values?”

Important Note: The information shared here is for educational purposes and is not intended to replace professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you’re facing challenges with your mental health, please reach out to us or another a licensed mental health professional who can support you. The stories in our posts are fictional and created to help explain important concepts. They are not based on client cases. Protecting the privacy and dignity of those we work with is central to our practice, and we do not use client experiences in our content.