Speak Up Stop Holding It In

If you never communicate, you’ll always be misunderstood

Many times we think that others will know exactly what we’re going through. We walk through life thinking, “well, if they cared they’d at least try to figure it out.” We assume that they owe us their time in working to understand us; when we barely give ourselves the same luxury.

It’s all about the sense of validation. Often we’re fighting against the self-esteem demons in our minds that work day and night to convince us that if anyone did really love us, we wouldn’t feel so lonely in all these packed rooms. We fail to figure in the fact that we’ve spent little, if any, time building a solid relationship with ourselves.

Those insecurities will lead you to act up in your relationship, fall into depression, and generally waste a lot of your God-given time on this earth wrestling in the darkness.

The easy solution to all of the ills of feeling misunderstood is to communicate. 

But of course, in this twilight zone of timeline saturation and hyper-sharing – we say too much without saying enough. We share bits of our highlight reel without sharing the REAL highlights and low points of our life with the ones who matter the most. 

As men, we battle with breaking the mental bonds of being “too soft” or “emotional” when we try to share our feelings. We deal with our inner battles silently and in the end feel misunderstood. 

Challenge yourself to communicate. Don’t get comfortable fighting the demons in your mind, they have home-court advantage. Bring them out into the real world by finding someone with a listening ear and speak to your solutions. Or you could even write about it. 

Whatever you do, find a way to work toward connecting with yourself first. The lack of understanding begins and ends within.

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