The Wealth of Being Misunderstood

We all want to be understood. But what happens when seeing yourself becomes someone else's responsibility? This reflection shows the wealth of self understanding for you and your relationships with others.

The Wealth of Being Misunderstood

10/17/26

It is a natural need to be understood by others. From birth one of the first responsibilities of the caretaker is to understand our human basic needs. We cry when we're hungry, we fuss when we're sleepy and we smell when we need to be cleaned. These are all physical needs but what about emotional and psychological needs? Needs like connection, fulfillment, comfort, emotional safety? These too are the caregivers responsibility and when not properly cultivated we grow up and become people who expect understanding ourselves to be a collective responsibility.

Let's look at the etymology of the word itself.

The word understand comes from the word Old English understandan, combining under and standan (to stand). Although its precise origin is argued, one interpretation suggests the imagery of standing among or in the midst of something. Which is interesting because it makes me think about the relationship between proximity and understanding. When we stand close enough to someone, it gives us the opportunity to observe, listen, and become familiar with their needs and behaviors, their experiences. But proximity doesn't necessarily guarantee understanding at all, does it? And as our means of communication have broadened, so have our opportunities to understand people without ever standing physically close to them.

The relational necessity required to have a growing understanding of oneself, while taking over the responsibilities of our caretakers, is a need that involves mirroring and modeling. It must be learned and performed for us. We aren't born being able to identify our emotional needs. Those abilities are taught and learned overtime. It becomes natural to us as we age knowing that my body being low on energy and signaling that I am hungry requires me to eat. If my focus becomes scattered or displaced, and my body starts to slow down, I may need rest. These alerts are easier (in most cases) to hear and recognize than the emotional and psychological ones. Why is it that someone can immediately recognize hunger but have a difficult time seeing that they suffer from loneliness? They know after a long travel week that they are physically exhausted, but struggle to see that because of daily boardroom meetings, an hour in an Uber in rush hour traffic, two delayed flights, and returning home to a dirty apartment has caused emotional exhaustion. Without hesitation they know how to sleep, but will bypass needing comfort or a friendly ear to listen to how they're experiencing their reality. We know that we have emotional needs, but the question is, how have we learned to interpret them? What did we learn to do when those needs weren't recognized?

And let's be clear, looking to have our needs met within relationships isn't essentially a bad thing or the effect of childhood loss or lack. We're human, communal humans, that need connection and care from one another to survive. What childhood sometimes influences is exactly how and why we seek that care. The expectations we have for the community, and the responsibility we put on them for foundational needs that's not their obligation.

So what does it look like becoming accustomed to bypassing or ignoring your emotional needs? And what needs to happen in order for you to recognize and respond to them?

First I'd say figure out where you're starting from. Are you someone who recognizes them or someone who barely notices at all? Have you become accustomed to ignoring, escaping and disassociating from your feelings with the next post, joint, or partner. Are you aware of them, but have become phenomenal at looking to someone else to read, regulate, or rectify them. Then there are those who recognize their emotional needs and believe those needs must be dealt with entirely on their own.

If you're anything like me you've chasséd through them all a time or two..or eight. The marijuana addiction had a tighter hold on me than a toddler gripping your finger while learning how to walk. I spent years wanting others to validate my feelings in order to make them feel seen. And I'm currently moving through the post trauma cycle, where my self protection just finished working a double shift, and I'm learning how to entertain the idea of trusting my emotional needs with others. Been all the way there and back. But all of the back and forth showed me what I was experiencing and that it was my job to acknowledge it. That the 4 year old me who was looking for their mother to soothe and ease the pain, put in a req. and needed me to fill the position.

And from that the strangest thing happened.

The part of me that knew exactly what I needed appeared. Shocked and surprised to hear her number called. All this time I had been overlooking the one person who had the exact remedy to my emotional dis-eases. My lack of knowing that I was my own plug led me searching outwardly, for what could only be found within. It was my validation that held the most value. It was my ability to learn and recognize how to meet my emotional needs that I was unconsciously assuming was everyone else's role. The part that went unnoticed for so long, was how valuable having a deeper relationship with my needs was. The relationship that involved vulnerability, honest communication, active feeling and listening, and trust. Something that wasn't modeled for me but still required that I meet its needs.

Putting the cart before the horse causes you to go nowhere.

Self First not Self Only. As I mentioned earlier, being met within relationships is a natural need as humans. But in us not learning how to meet our own needs, our ignorance actually creates an adverse effect. Like two magnets repelling each other. Showing up with unconscious unmet needs, expect the relationship to do the heavy lifting. When the main responsibility to each other is to witness one another in the relationship with ourselves. Not take over. It is in being seen by others, in our vulnerability that provides the part of you, the part that answered the call, the space to be acknowledged outwardly. It is our peers who should be allowed to see us navigate our weakest most sensitive moments. But when we never accept the role of being our own friend first, we set our relationships up to become repellent with one another. Our energy feels needy, the same story becomes annoying after hearing it the 7th time. What once felt light and free starts to feel like an obligation.

Yes..there will be moments when your relationships require a season of constant check-ins, or Friday night couch sitting melt down sessions. Those moments offer us emotional encouragement and mirror our strengths back to us. They're a gift and are so important. But your relationships also know when you're looking to be saved, when the little you is longing for a mother in others... and it's not fair. Not to your relationships or to the person within you waiting for their number to be called. Relationships offer us the opportunity to recognize our needs by showing up through loyalty, patience, and care. We still have responsibility.

Hearing your number being called and answering it gives you access to claiming the emotional wealth and resources you were born with. Yes, born with. Because although we are born looking to our caretakers to show us and model our needs being met we've always had the ability to do it as we grew older, we just learned not to. We learned to look and rely on something or someone outside of ourselves. Searching everywhere but within. The exact place our wealth is waiting to be claimed.

The wealth is having a relationship with the most vulnerable parts of you before you share them to be witnessed by others. It's one of the very things that helps you be okay with being seen incorrectly by others. Someone else's inability to understand you, or you being interpreted incorrectly isn't rocking the foundation that you've built within. It actually gives you more clarity of how we all have a right to value different things.

One more time. Wanting to be understood isn't a bad thing. Resonance is a blessing. It becomes bad when others misunderstanding you makes you question who you know you are. So never stop needing people, just recognize that if their misunderstanding of you makes you feel shitty, maybe you're being asked to understand yourself a little deeper.

You were born with the emotional codes of wealth within your DNA. And the ROI is, you calling on the version of you who's been waiting to hear their name all this time.

Krissy