OK, so the title may sound a bit rash – what I mean is probably not what you are thinking.
I’m introverted, so I am well aware of (almost too good at) when I need to keep hush-hush, mind my own d*mn business, and just let the truth speak for itself. I also know what it means to tell people what they want to hear and not what is necessarily….honest. Because there are those who can either handle the truth or need sugar-coated honesty until they ready to face the truth on their own.
I tend to keep my opinions and feelings to myself as it is. I have this insecurity that what I believe or say doesn’t matter, is wrong or invalid.
For example, when a stranger in the department store asks me what I think of the dress she’s picking out for her best friend’s wedding – if I must – I’m probably going to sugarcoat the truth. I don’t know her, what’s going on in her life (the good or bad), and in five seconds I’m never going to see her again, so why possibly ruin her day with an honest opinion she may not want to hear?
And to be frank, my opinion doesn’t matter, anyway – it’s how she feels in the dress that matters.
Let’s be real here, she’s not REALLY asking for an honest opinion – she’s looking for a boost. I think if she really, truly wanted bluntness, she’d probably ask her mother or snap a picture to send to a close friend or family member.
And that’s a difference I am able to distinguish.
So in that sense, I don’t consider that tiptoeing around someone’s feelings. That’s simply called being a nice, considerate person, or stranger. Tiptoeing has a slightly different meaning, such as allowing how someone else feels or thinks to affect me. That I feel the need to spare someone else’s feelings by overlooking, invalidating or wronging my own.
Needless to say, I know I can’t please everyone. For some in my inner circle that feels impossible, so it’s often like Christmas morning around here for me when I can appease them. But honestly, I’m exhausted from feeling like my world revolves around displacing my actions, choices, thoughts, feelings, and opinions for the sake of others.
I’m a much happier person keeping my nose out of where it doesn’t need to be, standing up when honesty threatens my own worth and value, and choosing honesty over worrying about how someone may feel. Mainly because, well, I’m being more honest with myself.
So here is why I’ve stopped, with 5 reasons I now refuse to tiptoe around peoples’ feelings.
5 reasons I stopped tiptoeing around people’s feelings
I’m not the one in control of your feelings
Nor am I responsible for them. I am, however, to be accountable for my words, actions, and own feelings while considering how they might influence, impact, or affect others.
I like to think of the phrase, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it at all.” We know we cannot live our entire lives bowing our heads to accommodate the fragile feelings of every human being. And we shouldn’t have to, especially when it forces us to compromise our own dignity. No matter how sugar-coated nice or brutally honest I am, I am also not in control of how the other person responds or reacts.
[Related Read: 4 Things You Need To Stop Doing In Order To Live A Happier Life]
With that, saying or doing the wrong thing is always a 50/50 chance
I’ll say it once more – we can’t and won’t please everyone.
Even being genuinely nice (or so I thought) has landed me a seat at the “worst person ever” table. I know I’m not alone in that, either. So please join me for a second when I say: stop going above and beyond yourself to please everyone, or simply every given situation.
Good or bad – there are those easily offended by anything and everything in this world, and we have social media to thank. And you have zero control over that.
Hell, constructive criticism is like being chastised if it isn’t completely masked with praise.
Just the other day I witnessed someone posting a picture of their new haircut on social media, to which someone commented on how beautiful it looked.
Wait, I’m getting there.
Then someone had the audacity to reply to that person’s comment (which may or may not have been sugar-coated from the truth, but that’s beside the point), pointing out in dismay how someone could lie when, in their rightful opinion, the original poster’s hair looked like a straight, mangled disaster.
Ok, so if you read the very beginning of this post about the department store woman example I gave, this is what I mean by making the distinction on what deserves the truth and when people just need to put a freaking sock in it. In this case, the person who chose to be nice still has the ability to displease someone – the other random woman who shamed and accused her “niceness” as lying.
[heavy sigh]
When the truth impacts us both – I choose me
Many times tiptoeing has caused me to derail my value and own self-worth.
Right before I left my previous job to start my own business, an unexpected event occurred between me and another co-worker. It was said through higher authority that this person had a difficult time receiving constructive criticism.
That being obvious since at the time of our dispute I was the [appointed] person in charge, to which she refused to take direction when asked. She resisted with attitude and excuse as if the duty that was asked of her she considered “beneath her”. To me that was utter disrespect for someone who was deemed in charge, doing the same exact work, if not more because I was also carrying her weight.
And because of her inability to take accountability for her poor work ethic (which, IMO, was recurring but especially on that day), she was being dealt a lesser “reprimand“. *Mind you, because both of us were involved, I was also reprimanded.
Nonetheless, this was said to me verbatim… by someone of higher authority (above me).
That was the first and only time my own work ethic and earned value as a long-term employee sincerely felt threatened, and blatantly worthless at that point. It was unsettling to know that the outcome was based on another person’s feelings, and were weighed upon moreover my own.
Needless to say, she barely got a slap on the wrist for disrespecting my authority and routinely taking advantage of others’ hard work.
I was not going to be scrutinized or stand down on what I feel is or isn’t right. And in a situation like that, it was a no-brainer – I chose me. I stood up for me, and I graciously walked away from the job.
Just because I’m honest, doesn’t mean I’m not empathetic
Them: “Be seriously honest here – do you think I should get back with him?“
Me (in my head): “Uh, f* no.“
Also me: “You deserve someone who treats you right, but that’s only a call you can make.“
Them: “No, like I need your personal take – what would you do?“
Me: “Well… I’d leave his a**, knowing this is the third relationship I’ve had where a guy has cheated on me because if I took him back a second time around I am literally reinforcing the condition that I don’t deserve better.“
Them: “Wow – ouch – you could have just left it at ‘Leave his a**’.”
Empathy is being able to place yourself in the shoes of another – being able to relate to that person’s feelings from their perspective. Even if you have never been through those feelings or the experience personally.
For real though, deep down there are times I find it incredibly difficult to empathize with others, so as bad as this sounds… sometimes I fake it. But that doesn’t mean I’m being dishonest with others, or myself. I don’t have to bring myself down to another person’s emotional level to console them.
The real problem is where people resort to giving unsolicited advice rather than simply empathizing with the way someone feels. In a very sneaky way, this is considered gaslighting.
Some may actually be looking for advice, while others simply want others to reinforce what they want to hear (ok, or just to listen to them vent). That is the crossroad where we need to be able to understand that some people have not accepted a need for change – they simply want someone to listen. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink it.
On the flip side, it can too often feel like people are using me as an empty vessel for their constant negativity and BS they refuse to do *anything* about. THAT SUCKS TOO, because what they’re feeling can be emotionally and energetically taxing. The problem is I allow others that kind of access to me without creating separation (between them and me), yet if I set a boundary such as, “Hey, I want to be there for you, but right now I’m not in the headspace to listen,” they’ll just be butthurt, think I’m uncompassionate and, well, a sh*tty, selfish person all around.
And this is where I draw the line, and I expect others to know their part in this. It’s being able to understand and appreciate the value in what it means to receive honesty (even in boundary form, too), whether it’s the kind of ‘honesty’ or response you were hoping for. This calls for others to be more receptive and accepting of the person on the receiving end, rather than tricking them into being deceptive based on how we know the truth will make them feel.
[mailerlite_form form_id=23]If I can’t let my hair down, I don’t need you in my inner circle
Because honestly those who know me know me. Yet somehow there are those who simply know me by how easily influenced I can be. They know I second-guess myself, often resort to self-doubt or conform to another person’s way or thinking just to keep the freaking peace. Many know, by now, that this is something I am working to heal.
At times I am still left feeling so…powerless, and less in control of…me.
That no matter what I say or how I say it, what I do or what I think, feel, believe, and perceive – it is wrong. In the end, causing me to tiptoe around these people just to keep them in my life.
It’s in those moments I can feel so blatantly irrelevant as a person.
For once, I want to feel what I feel, do what I want to do, and say what I feel like saying – without the constant worry of how it will affect others (and whether they stay) in my life… and that be OKAY.
It’s time I start honoring my own feelings and not of how someone else may feel for a change!