10/09/2025
Sometimes others can find us hard to read:
Sometimes we overcompensate for our insecurities in how we present ourselves to others. We try to hide how needy, shy, embarrassed, fearful, or uncomfortable we feel by putting up a guard or masking. We may feel shy, for example, but look standoffish to others. Sometimes when we mask, we go too far. We hide our feelings and end up coming across as snobby, superior, or simply hard to read. Others get a very different impression of how we’re feeling than what’s actually true. Other times, we’re just not naturally expressive by nature, leaving others to project onto us what they imagine we’re thinking or feeling, or to overlook us altogether. We might not be aware we’re doing this, leading us to feel surprised by others’ reactions to us. We think others can see how soft we are deep down—how caring, lonely, in need of friendship, or wanting to extend ourselves, we feel—but what people actually see is a lack of approachability.
Some of us also have trouble accurately perceiving how we’re coming across to other people, even if we try to present ourselves in a specific way. We get reactions or feedback that don’t match how we feel inside, leaving us puzzled or feeling out of sync with our environment and with the responses we get from others. What a lonely thing indeed. Some of us have trouble looking like we want people to approach us—and then we feel lonely when they don’t—without realizing the part we’re playing in it.
Some therapists are afraid to give clients honest feedback about how they’re coming across—whether it’s as distant, reserved, critical, judgmental, or cold. But I find that my clients often crave this kind of honest feedback. Without others giving us accurate information about how we’re being read by them, based on our body language or demeanor, we end up being clueless when we’d benefit from being clued in.
One of my clients shared how lonely she feels, how hard it is for her to make friends. With me, she seemed so reserved and unapproachable—often avoiding eye contact, sitting with her hands folded across her chest, looking at me with what felt like a blank stare. I could see how others might find her intimidating or think she simply wanted space. But really, she was feeling so alone and wanted so much to show up in a more inviting way.
Another client would often push me away just when I tried to get close to her in a session, perhaps by revealing a feeling I had, giving her a sincere compliment, or sharing how moved I was by her story. At those moments she would change the subject or wave away my bids for intimacy. I was able to show her that this was what she was doing in her marriage as well. She hadn’t realized how much she had been pushing her husband away, when all she wanted was to connect with him.
Some clients minimize their experiences, talking about their pain as if narrating an impersonal story, or describing their experiences as if talking about someone else going through a situation that’s “no big deal”, and then feeling surprised when others can’t see how much they’re hurting or act dismissive or disinterested.
I try to point these things out in a kind way, and I appreciate when others do the same for me. For those of us who experienced a lack of accurate mirroring in childhood by caregivers who read us inaccurately due to their own projections onto us, or who simply did not pay enough attention to read us at all, the need for feedback from others can be acute, although sometimes it can feel so hard to ask for it. We don’t know what others have in their minds about us unless they tell us, and others don’t know what we have in our minds about or towards them unless we convey this in some way. The only way to read and be read in relationships is through indirect communications of what we experience internally, using language or nonverbal cues such as tone of voice or facial expression, that create links between people to bridge the privacy of their separate minds.
Reading people can be challenging even under the best circumstances, but when there’s a lot of ambiguity, a lack of clear signaling in how we come across, or a paucity of words to explain our experiences, it makes things so much harder. It can also be hard when we don’t get the feedback we need to understand how others are perceiving us. Situations involving less social cues, such as talking on the phone, can be challenging for those of us with social anxiety because we have even less information to go on than in in-person interactions. But the truth is, that for some of us, the natural lack of full information found in relational experiences can be hard to navigate in general. Learning to tolerate the exposure of showing others how we really feel—including when we feel vulnerable—helps us bridge this gap, as does asking others for feedback and clarifying how we really feel when there are disconnects between others and us.
