Ouch! Why did you judge me like that?

What to do when someone rashly judges you.

Once upon a time, a loved one accused me of several serious sins. I analyzed my behavior, searched my heart, and communed with God, and I felt confident that the accusations weren't at all correct. I knew that my loved one was perceiving my behavior through the lens of his own past trauma, and I tried telling him so, but he would not be convinced. I felt powerless and trapped. I wanted to kick and scream and make him see me for who I really was. I felt bewildered, enraged, misunderstood, disrespected, villainized, shut out, betrayed, abandoned, tired, depressed, and hopeless. I saw that this person and I were at a mutually intolerable impasse, and I had to cut him from my life.

It's important to only be in relationships with people who agree that you are who you say you are. When you're creating a relationship with someone new, it's not uncommon for us to not know how to interpret each other and for misunderstandings to arise. The important thing for a healthy relationship is that you navigate those misunderstandings together by communicating with each other, not individually by telling stories about each other to yourselves and acting on assumptions.

KEEP THE RELATIONSHIP OUT OF THE COURTROOM

Willingness to trust is the most important part of the formation of any close relationship. When a relationship first starts, it's like a tender plant and needs tender, loving care. Harsh, rigid judgments will damage or end it. When your partner does something that you think is wrong or bad, you need to be willing to be an investigator, willing to carefully and unhurriedly gather the facts of the situation as objectively as possible. You need to be familiar with your own biases and take them into account. And you need to let your partner give you their version of the story. Don't skip these important parts of "crime" investigation.

If you skip important parts of the investigative process and move straight into the courtroom, then due process has been violated, and you run a greater risk of prosecuting and convicting an innocent person and making yourself a fool. Sure, go ahead and arrest your suspect and impose appropriate bail (boundaries) while you investigate, especially if the suspected crime is serious enough, but you should approach the person with an attitude of willingness to believe in their innocence. Trust. Once due process has been fulfilled, then take it to court, get expert opinions if called for, and make a ruling. You do get to be the judge. It is your final say. Regardless of whether you can tell if they are innocent or not, you still get to decide what you want to do. Your needs and wants still matter. Do what you will, but make sure you treat the other person with as much fairness and respect as you can.

EVALUATING YOUR PARTNER'S BEHAVIOR - DO THEY NAVIGATE MISUNDERSTANDINGS WELL?

1. Do they ASK you what you meant by your words/behavior? This is a sign that they are a careful investigator. Those who do not ask, but instead move straight to judgment, are likely to continue to do so.

2. Or do they skip asking you questions and move straight to accusing you of wrongdoing? If so, this is a sign that they currently are more focused on communicating their feelings and wanting YOU to fix them. You can validate the feelings, but explain to them that they are not behaving in the healthiest way by not asking you questions first. Make it clear that you are not okay with being treated that way and hold that boundary.

3. How do you feel when you communicate with them? Do you feel like you have to walk on eggshells to avoid misunderstandings? Do you feel trusted and respected? Tell your partner how you feel in response to their behavior. Recognize that your feelings may be in response to your partner's behavior, but they may instead be in response to how you only *perceive* your partner's behavior due to a core wound inside you (and not be about your partner's behavior at all), indicating that you have some personal healing to do before you can see others clearly. If your feelings really are about their actual behavior, though, then let your feelings guide you to set boundaries with your partner, and hold yourself and your partner to those boundaries.

MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT THE ONE MISJUDGING

I once had a friend write me a thank-you poem in response to something kind I did for him. When I read the poem, though, I perceived him criticizing me for previously failing to give him enough attention. My "I will be betrayed" core wound was triggered. I felt a stinging hurt, and I felt surprised, betrayed, and angry, and I wanted to quickly cut him from my life. But I calmed myself and decided to first ask him what he meant by the triggering phrase while acting like nothing was wrong. To my surprise and relief, I found out from his explanation that my interpretation, although understandable, was completely wrong! His intended meaning made better sense, and I could see that the whole poem was beautiful and sweet! Instead of feeling ashamed of myself for my misunderstanding, I recognized that it was just a result of past betrayals I've experienced and my need to continue rewiring my brain to respond less defensively. I felt so glad that I kept my perceptions and feelings to myself and reached out to him to help me correctly interpret his behavior. If not for those decisions, I could have lost him and his sweetness, and he could have been left wondering why I suddenly cut him out of my life.

Here's what to do when something someone else does triggers you

1. Get grounded in who you are. Stay out of defensiveness by practicing self-compassion and remembering your worth. You are a good person, and if you did make a mistake that somehow triggered their decision to judge you, it's normal to make mistakes. You are worthy of love and belonging. Thus, you don't have to defend your goodness or prove your worth.

2. Stay out of judgment yourself by practicing compassion for the other person.

3. Ensure that what you think they meant is really what they meant by asking them questions. This will meet your need for clarity and their need to feel heard and understood. Ask them "What did you mean when you said ____?"

4. Watch them to see if their behavior continues to be suspicious.

5. Ask them about the continued suspicious behavior. See what they say. Their explanations might surprise you. The reason you continue to feel suspicious could be because you still have that core wound - it's the core wound causing your feelings, not the behavior itself. If they're lying to you, the more you require them to lie, the less comfortable they will feel, and the more they will have to work to maintain their lies, and the greater the chance that they will get caught. They might decide to drop out of your life rather than continue to deceive you. Or, if they didn't realize that you were right and they were wrong about their behavior, then your persistence could lead them to see the error of their ways and you could see them change.