How to Stay Connected When Someone Gets Your Intentions Wrong

Issue 172, June 19, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

Have you ever had someone say something about you that felt was completely untrue? Maybe they told you that you’re selfish or inconsiderate, or they said you don’t care about them.

Whatever the accusation, before you even had time to think, you found yourself mentally gathering evidence for your defense. You started making a list of all the ways you’ve shown up, all the things you’ve done for them, and all the reasons they’re wrong.

Most of us do this automatically. We want to correct the misunderstanding. We want to explain ourselves. We want the other person to see that they’re wrong. And of course that’s understandable.

But here’s what I’ve learned: when someone says something painful about you, defending yourself too quickly often gets in the way of real communication.

Years ago, I was talking with a fellow in recovery whose husband told her, “You don’t care about me.” She could have immediately responded with a list of all the ways she cared about him. Most of us would have been tempted to do exactly that. Instead, she got curious.

She asked him what had led him to believe that. As they talked, something important emerged. He believed that because she hadn’t done what he wanted, she hadn’t listened to him. And from that, he concluded that she didn’t care about him.

What they eventually discovered was that they were operating from completely different definitions of what it meant to listen and to care. She had heard him perfectly well. She simply disagreed with him. And that disagreement wasn’t evidence that she didn’t care. He was conflating listening with agreement, and agreement with caring.

Without that conversation, they would have stayed stuck in conflict. With it, they were able to understand what was actually happening.

One of the things I teach all the time is that understanding someone’s feelings doesn’t require agreeing with their conclusions. Someone may genuinely feel uncared for. That feeling is real  for them. But it doesn’t automatically mean you don’t care about them. Those are two very different things.

This distinction matters because so many people with weak boundaries immediately move into one of two positions. They either defend themselves or they abandon themselves.

Defending yourself sounds like, “That’s ridiculous. Of course I care about you. Here are the umpteen different pieces of evidence to show that you’re wrong.”

Abandoning yourself sounds like, “Oh no. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I really am selfish. Maybe I did do something terrible and I need to fix it right now.”

Neither response creates connection with the other person. What creates connection is staying anchored in your own reality while remaining curious about someone else’s reality. That’s where internal safety becomes so important.

When someone criticizes you, misunderstands you, or tells you that you’ve hurt them, your nervous system may react as though you’re in danger. You might feel a rush of anxiety or an overwhelming urge to explain yourself. You might start rehearsing arguments in your head because you’re desperate for them to see your side and understand you.

But discomfort isn’t danger. And other people’s disappointment isn’t proof that you’ve done something wrong.

The more internal safety you develop, the more capable you become of hearing difficult things without immediately moving into defense, attack, fixing, rescuing, or self-blame. Instead, you can become curious.

You can ask questions like…

“What happened that led you to feel that way?” 

“Can you tell me more about that?” 

“What am I missing?” 

“What did I do that caused you to believe I don’t care about you?”

Notice that none of those questions require you to agree with the other person’s interpretation. They simply help you understand their experience.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about social boundaries as giving yourself permission to be who you are socially. Part of that means allowing other people to have experiences, feelings, and interpretations that you don’t necessarily agree with. That’s harder than it sounds.

Most of us want to be seen accurately. We want people to understand our intentions. We want them to know we’re good people who care. And when someone forms a conclusion about us that feels unfair, of course it’s natural to want to correct the record.

But social boundaries aren’t about controlling what other people think of us, because we can’t. They’re about staying connected to what’s true for us while allowing other people to have their own experience.

That doesn’t mean their interpretation is correct, and it doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. It certainly doesn’t mean you have to take responsibility for it. It means you’re willing to let their experience belong to them while you remain grounded in your own reality.

In the example above, the husband genuinely felt uncared for. His feeling was real. But that didn’t automatically make his conclusion true. His wife didn’t need to convince him he was wrong before she could listen to him. She also didn’t need to agree that she was uncaring. The social boundary was staying connected to herself while remaining open to understanding him.

That’s a very different posture than defending yourself, fixing the other person, or collapsing into self-doubt. It’s the ability to hear from someone, “This is my experience of you,” without immediately turning it into, “This is the truth about me” in your head.

I’ve come to realize that one reason I’m much better able to hear other people’s interpretations of me today is that I’m no longer looking at myself primarily through their eyes.

For much of my life, I was scattered outside myself. Someone would have an opinion about me, and I’d immediately leave my own experience and “climb” into theirs. I’d start evaluating myself through their interpretation, trying to determine whether they were right, whether I was wrong, and what I needed to do to change their perception.

Today, I experience that very differently.

I’m much more situated within myself. I occupy my own life, my own body, and my own experience. I stay connected to what I know, what I feel, and what’s true for me.

That doesn’t mean I assume I’m always right. It doesn’t mean I stop listening to feedback. It simply means I no longer leave myself in order to understand someone else.

And ironically, that allows me to listen more openly than I ever could before.

When you’re frantically trying to determine whether you’re okay, it’s difficult to hear what someone is actually saying. But when you’re anchored in yourself, you can become genuinely curious about their experience without immediately turning it into a verdict about who you are.

If you’re wondering how someone becomes more anchored in themselves, I don’t think it happens all at once.

For most of my life, my center of gravity existed outside of me. My attention was constantly pulled toward other people’s feelings, reactions, opinions, expectations, and interpretations.

If someone was upset, I focused on them.

If someone misunderstood me, I focused on them.

If someone disapproved of me, I focused on them.

My attention automatically moved outward.

Over time, I developed a simple practice that changed everything. You might have heare md state in in years past as, “Keep the focus on yourself.” But that doesn’t mean “become selfish.” What it looks like is this: whenever I noticed myself getting pulled into someone else’s experience, I gently redirected my attention back to myself.

What do I want, need, think of feel here?

I asked those questions over and over and over again. Little by little, my center of gravity shifted.

Today, I’m much more likely to stay connected to my own experience while listening to someone else’s. And I think that’s one reason I’m able to hear interpretations I disagree with without immediately becoming defensive or collapsing into self-doubt.

You can’t create internal safety by focusing externally.

If your attention is always fixed on managing other people’s reactions, changing their opinions, or securing their approval, you’ll never experience the steadiness that comes from being connected to yourself.

Internal safety grows when your center of gravity moves from the outside world back into your own life.

One of the most powerful social boundaries you can develop is the ability to tolerate being misunderstood. Not because you enjoy it or it feels good. But because your sense of who you are is no longer entirely dependent on someone else’s interpretation.

When someone tells you they’ve been hurt, disappointed, or upset, there may be something important for you to learn. There may also be misunderstandings, assumptions, or conclusions that simply aren’t true.

The goal isn’t to prove your innocence or make them agree with you. The goal is to stay anchored in your own reality long enough to discover what’s actually happening.

That’s where genuine communication begins. And it’s one of the clearest signs that you’re no longer abandoning yourself in your relationships.