On the Spiritual Art of Letting People Be Wrong About You

Once upon a time, I really cared about being perfectly understood. To a fault, really. But there was a point in my life — I think around my mid-30s — when my urge to correct other people’s misunderstandings finally burnt out.

One day, I was still explaining myself in long paragraphs, feeling responsible for every incorrect assumption a stranger could possibly make about me or my life. The next, I was standing in the kitchen, eating shredded cheese straight from the bag (as one does), and thinking:

If someone wants to believe I’m a half-feral forest witch with opinions about skincare, it's cool.

And it actually felt pretty good.

I suppose I finally figured out that a lot of people don’t actually want to understand you. Most of the time, they just want to confirm whatever narrative they've already settled on within seconds of slapping eyes on you. Because if you correct them, they look almost offended. You've just interrupted whatever internal movie they've got playing in their head, and they're not here for that.

After enough rounds of this, you realize correcting such people is a total waste of your time and start conserving your energy instead of giving everyone the explanatory tour of your inner landscape they never asked you for.

Especially online, where nuance goes to die of exposure.

At this point, I’ve been misinterpreted in ways so baffling you'd think people were consuming my work through a funhouse mirror. I’ve been labeled intimidating, fragile, sinister, angelic, demonic, or “definitely writing for me specifically” by people who probably barely even skimmed what I actually said.

I’d pretty much always jump in with a ten-part clarification in a desperate attempt to put things right. But eventually, I realized I was doing unpaid emotional tech support for strangers who honestly didn't care that much in the first place, and there are better uses for my one life.

People Will Assign You a Role Whether You Like It or Not

Most people approach interactions like raccoons approach trash cans — quickly, enthusiastically, and without a whole lot of attention to detail. That usually requires jumping to conclusions.

If you're quiet, you must be mysterious. If you’re articulate, someone will always come out and decide that you’re cold or snobbish. If you’re attractive, people interpret every word out of your mouth as flirting, but if you're spiritual, half the internet decides you’re also available for free personal revelations.

None of that has anything to do with you. It’s all projection.

People respond to symbols and archetypes, not individuals, so you’re more or less doomed to be cast in whatever role someone is looking to fill. The muse, the puzzle, the threat, the teacher, the flattering mirror, the emotional vending machine. Whatever serves up what someone is hoping to find that day.

Once you recognize this, it becomes easier to shrug it off. Because they’re not really talking to you. They’re talking to their idea of you.

Correcting People Is Exhausting (and Usually Useless)

For most of my life, I thought of clarification as a courtesy. I personally hate being wrong, so I assumed other people must, as well. If someone misread me, I’d explain, and if someone assumed something bizarre, I’d correct it.

In other words, I treated misunderstandings the way you treat a pothole — annoying, but ultimately fixable. But I've also realized over the years that misunderstandings aren’t usually the information gaps they appear to be at first glance. They’re really more like emotional conveniences.

People twist meaning to suit whatever storyline they’re running internally, and trying to correct that is like trying to convince a conspiracy theorist that the moon landing happened. They hear you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they actually got the message.

Once that reality sinks in, your desire to clear things up fades, and you stop writing long clarifying emails and Facebook comments you’ll probably only delete anyway. Most importantly, you stop seeing every misreading as your responsibility to fix.

Trust me, it's not. Completely a them problem.

Some People Need You Misunderstood to Support Their Narrative

For some people, self-perception cracks if they're forced to acknowledge that they got you wrong. God only knows why, because it's different every time.

Maybe your confidence just plain clashes with the version of you they needed you to be. Maybe your boundaries ruin a fantasy they have about you, or your intelligence disrupts their internal hierarchy somehow. In cases like those, the misunderstanding is no accident. It’s a structural feature helping to hold up their worldview.

When you correct such people, they don’t integrate the new information. They treat it as noise interrupting a flawless script they already memorized, possibly a long time ago. In those cases, letting them be wrong is an airtight way to opt out of someone else’s delusion.

And no, you don’t need to stick around to supervise how that goes. Again. A them problem all the way.

Choosing Not to Explain Yourself Is Its Own Kind of Peace

I still remember how great it felt when I first decided I wasn't going to waste my breath correcting people anymore. It felt almost... mischievous. I saw the wrong assumption, and I felt the familiar pull to fix it. Then it dawned on me that I didn't actually have to do anything about it, and the sun still came up in the morning.

Think of it as a small rebellion that gives you back your precious, limited time. You stop rehashing conversations in your head and wasting your energy drafting defensive essays. Your emotional energy redirects itself to things that genuinely matter. And eventually, you start interacting with life from a place of autonomy rather than obligation.

There’s something quietly spiritual about that shift, too. I've realized it reflects trust — not in the other person, but in yourself.

Letting People Be Wrong Strengthens Your Actual Voice

Once I stopped editing myself for the sake of avoiding misinterpretation at the hands of people I often don't even know, my writing became bolder. My tone got a lot sharper, and my humor started sticking the landing more often, because I wasn't preemptively diluting my work and my self-expression to make it harder to misread.

In other words, I stopped writing like someone managing a customer service portal and started writing like someone who actually trusts her own intention. I've even found I sometimes enjoy creating things just for the sake of forcing people to think or guess a little bit. (It's good for 'em.)

Decisions like these can actually make you more relatable — not to everyone, but certainly to the people who actually matter. Those people are the ones who will recognize your tone without needing footnotes. They don’t need explanations, reassurance, or bootie pats. They just get it.

And the rest? Do you honestly even care? (I know I don't.)

So, If You're Tired of Being Misunderstood...

Know that you don’t need to correct everyone, regardless of how it probably feels sometimes. You don’t owe explanations to total strangers or trolls. You're not required to convert the confused, educate the unwilling, or soothe people who misinterpret you because it was convenient for them, either.

You're the boss of where your energy goes.

Focus on the people who actually pay attention in the first place, so you can pour your time into creativity rather than damage control. Give an accurate version of yourself to those who treat it with respect, and let everyone else wander off into the bushes to be wrongy-wrong-wrong with their wrongness.

Because the people who are meant to understand you always will. Everyone else is really just passing through on their way to misunderstand someone else.