Last Friday evening, I walked into a room filled with 40 people I had never met before.
I knew absolutely nothing about any of them. Not where they came from, what they did for a living, or what had brought them there.
I grabbed a plate of food and sat down at a table with a group of strangers.
Almost immediately, I regretted my decision.
There was one woman dominating the conversation, pontificating about all the great things she’d done and imparting her knowledge and wisdom to everyone at the table.
I was completely turned off.
We’ve all met that person before. The one who instantly rubs us the wrong way. And in a split second, we make the go/no-go decision about them.
In that moment, that’s exactly what I did.
I barely engaged in the conversation and found myself eating as quickly as possible, looking for the first opportunity to politely excuse myself.
I wanted to put as much distance between myself and this woman as possible.
The irony?
I was going to be spending the next seven days with these people.
There was no escaping her.
I’d known her for less than twenty minutes, and I’d decided I already knew everything I needed to know about her.
Why is it that certain people get under our skin? And so quickly? Like little mites invading our nervous system in a matter of moments.
The funny thing is, sometimes our strongest reactions have very little to do with the present moment.
There’s that age-old saying, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.
Damn if that’s not true.
Sometimes it’s simply the way someone looks. They remind us of a person or relationship from our past.
Sometimes it’s the way someone speaks, a particular tone of voice, or even the way someone smells.
My beloved husband actually had to get rid of his body wash because the smell reminded me of Camp Foley in seventh grade. Trust me, I don’t want to climb into bed being reminded of those three weeks in Northern Minnesota every night, especially the mosquitos.
Sometimes we don’t even know why we’re reacting. We just recognize the sensation in our bodies when something gets triggered. The tightness in the chest. The tension in the shoulders. The constriction in our throat.
And sometimes the person sitting across from us is simply being themselves, and something about it doesn’t land well.
Which brings me back to the woman at dinner. The one I had decided to avoid at all costs for an entire week.
What was it about her that had managed to get so far under my skin in such a short period of time?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I had interpreted as self-righteousness reminded me of someone from my childhood. A parental figure who was always imparting her “wisdom” to me. Sometimes it was welcomed. Other times, it felt like an overstep.
And suddenly, my reaction began to make sense.
My response had very little to do with the woman sitting across from me. It was shaped by the familiarity of being lectured to as an eight-year-old girl who didn’t yet have the emotional capacity to understand the lessons being imparted to her or the desire to sit and listen to them.
When I stepped away long enough to examine what was happening, I realized that I was responding to a present-day interaction with emotions that belonged to an earlier experience.
An experience from 45 years ago.
How messed up is that?
But I know I’m not alone here. We all carry patterns from our past, whether we recognize them or not.
I didn’t choose to react to that woman the way I did. I just did.
The feeling arrived without warning.
And here’s where you get to exhale.
Just because we learned a pattern doesn’t mean we have to keep repeating it.
We can recognize it. Question it. And eventually learn to respond differently.
Which means the guy on the train loudly conducting what sounds like a corporate takeover on speakerphone, the impossibly flexible, perfectly toned twenty-something at yoga class who looks like she stepped out of a lululemon campaign, or even the woman pontificating across the dinner table doesn’t have to become the villain in a story they don’t even know you’re telling.
They might actually become a friend.
But getting there takes something I’m still learning and have a deep desire to practice.
Because there’s a particular kind of person I’ve come to admire.
The person who is deeply grounded in themselves. We’ve all encountered someone like that at some point in our lives.
The kind of person who looks you in the eye when you’re talking and actually listens. No wandering eye, no quick glance at their phone. They ask questions from a place of genuine curiosity. They don’t interrupt, which admittedly I am very guilty of. And they can sit in an uncomfortable conversation without feeling the need to immediately defend themselves or become the loudest person in the room.
But there’s another quality I’ve come to admire even more.
The ability to take accountability with ease and grace.
Imagine hearing that in your eulogy. “She moved through life with ease and grace. She was always the most grounded person in the room.”
I think the people who are really good at taking accountability speak it like a second language.
And I wonder, how did they become so fluent?
Because taking accountability requires enough self-worth to survive being wrong.
As a Type A perfectionist, I really don’t like being wrong.
Like, ever.
But what I’m learning is that I did something wrong is very different from there is something wrong with me.
And maybe that distinction is what makes accountability so difficult for some of us.
There’s also the willingness to admit that maybe our assessment of someone else wasn’t entirely accurate or, worse yet, completely wrong.
Because let’s be honest, we judge people all the time. We make assumptions, draw conclusions, and decide whether we like someone before we’ve even had a chance to get to know them.
I certainly did that night at dinner.
And it makes me wonder how often I’ve allowed my own experiences to influence the way I see other people. How many opportunities have I missed to get to know someone for who they actually are rather than who I perceived them to be through the filter of my past?
Sometimes our judgment of another person tells us more about ourselves than it does about them.
Yikes. That’s a hard pill to swallow.
Think about the person who gets under your skin the fastest. A colleague? Your mother-in-law? A sibling? Ask yourself honestly, is it really about them?
Once we slap a judgment on someone, we tend to defend our position.
We convince ourselves we’re right. We replay conversations and scenarios in our heads. We look for evidence to support our opinions because, let’s face it, the validation feels pretty rewarding.
We even recruit other people to support our position and further validate it. That’s a vicious circle.
I know I’ve done it. It’s not an easy thing to admit, but it’s also entirely real.
That’s not the person I want to be. I want to be someone who recognizes when an old pattern is showing up in a new relationship or even an existing one. Someone who is willing to get curious about why another person is getting under her skin rather than automatically assuming that person is the problem.
Most importantly, though, I want to be someone who takes accountability for those judgments once I recognize what’s behind them.
Maybe that’s what being grounded actually looks like. I still have the reaction. I just take responsibility for what I do with it.
As the week went on, I started to see the woman from dinner differently. So rather than leave my first reaction unspoken, I approached her.
And trust me, there was a moment of personal discomfort when I said:
“I have to tell you something. When I met you the first evening, I left the table as quickly as I could. I was really triggered by you, which I’ve come to realize had nothing to do with you but everything to do with me. And I’m really glad I wiped my own slate clean, because it’s been so much fun getting to know you and hearing about your experiences.”
My vulnerability, and her willingness to receive what I was saying, opened the door to a much deeper appreciation for one another.
I’m certainly not sharing any of this from a soapbox. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m just warming up this new muscle.
But I’m excited to flex it.
I walked away from that first dinner convinced I knew exactly who this woman was.
Seven days later, I walked away with a friend I genuinely love and adore.
She didn’t need to change. I did.
Always EDITing,
Leslie
I know I am not alone here. Have you ever misjudged someone who turned out to surprise you? I’d love to hear your story.
P.S. This is just one of the many lessons I’m flirting with after seven days away. I’m still processing so much of what I experienced, and I suspect you’ll be hearing more about it in the weeks ahead.
More of my recent work
If you’ve come this far, thank you. 🙏
I read every comment. I take them all to heart and sometimes too personally, but that’s a whole other unwinding.
If you leave a comment, you can count on a response.
I love being a part of and creating community. And I do consider this exactly that.
So welcome!
"If it's hysterical, it's historical" is going straight into my notes. I think about how often I've decided who someone is within minutes, based on something that actually belongs to me, not them. That moment of walking up to her and saying it out loud takes real groundedness.