How to Stop Taking Things Personally

I surprised myself with the response to last week’s article, Psychological Trespassing. Some of you wrote to say you immediately recognized the experience. You knew exactly what it felt like when someone began telling you what you thought, what you felt, or what your experience meant. What didn’t surprise me was what so many of you described: you don’t like it when people tell you about you. Many of you went on to ask the same question:

Why does this affect me so deeply?

The more I’ve reflected on it, the less I believe the answer lies in communication itself. I think it begins much deeper, with one of the most fundamental things human beings do.

We make meaning.

I don’t mean meaning in the grand philosophical sense. I think meaning is something much more ordinary than that. Every moment of every day we are interpreting what happens around us. Every conversation, every facial expression, every silence, every unexpected event is quietly followed by the question, What does this mean? The remarkable part is that this process happens so automatically that we rarely notice we’re doing it. We don’t experience ourselves as interpreting. We experience ourselves as seeing reality.

Imagine sending a text message to someone you know well. An hour passes. Then another. There is still no reply.

Objectively, very little has happened. Time has passed.

Subjectively, however, a lot may have happened.

I might begin making the meaning that they’re upset with me. I might conclude that I said something wrong. I might decide they’re simply busy. I might wonder whether something happened. The unanswered text hasn’t changed. The meanings I’ve created have.

As those meanings change, so does my experience. If I conclude the person is upset with me, I begin making myself anxious. My body tightens. My attention narrows. I start noticing evidence that supports the conclusion I’ve already reached. If I make a different meaning, I create a different emotional experience.

The event didn’t create my experience.

The meaning I created did.

But I don’t treat the meaning I make lightly. I take it seriously, as if my interpretations are accurate representations of reality—but they’re not. Why do I do this?

In part, because life itself is uncertain. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know how long we’ll live, whether our health will hold, whether our relationships will endure, or whether our plans will succeed. None of us escapes uncertainty.

One of the primary ways we respond to that uncertainty is by making meaning. Over time, the meanings we create become a kind of working map for living. They help us orient ourselves. They influence what we notice, what we expect from other people, what we value, what we avoid, and how we choose to respond to the situations life presents. They don’t eliminate uncertainty, but they give us enough direction to keep orienting ourselves.

The difficulty begins when we forget that we’re using a map.

A map is useful precisely because it helps us navigate. But a map is never the territory itself. In much the same way, the meanings we create help us navigate our lives, but they are never life itself. The problem isn’t that we create maps. The problem is that we gradually stop experiencing our meanings as meanings we’ve created. They simply become “the way things are.”

I believe this helps explain why we sometimes activate our nervous system when we perceive challenges to the meanings we’ve created.

Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory reminds us that our nervous systems are continually evaluating cues of safety and danger. We often think of those cues as physical—a loud noise, an angry face, or an unfamiliar environment. I believe the language we use and hear also serves as important cues. They don’t merely communicate ideas. They influence how safe, understood, or threatened we experience ourselves to be.

If I perceive another person’s words as challenging the meanings I’ve created, it makes perfect sense that I might activate my nervous system. I’m not simply responding to their words. I’m responding to what those words seem to mean for the map I’m using to orient myself in the world.

This brings me back to psychological trespassing.

I don’t believe the deepest problem is that another person sees things differently from me. Nor do I think the answer is to protect my interpretations from being questioned. In fact, one of the clearest signs of psychological maturity is becoming increasingly willing to examine the meanings I’ve created and to revise them when they no longer serve the life I want to live.

The challenge is more subtle than that.

On the one hand, I want other people to respect that the meanings I create are mine to explore, question, revise, or keep. I don’t want someone else deciding what my experience means.

On the other hand, I don’t want to become so attached to the meanings I create that I mistake them for reality itself. If I can’t question my own interpretations, I gradually lose psychological flexibility. My world becomes smaller, my reactions become stronger, and my curiosity begins giving way to certainty.

Those aren’t opposing ideas.

They’re complementary practices.

One shapes how I relate to you.

The other shapes how I relate to myself.

The more I respect your meaning-making, the easier it becomes to soften my attachment to my own. And the less tightly I cling to my own interpretations, the easier it becomes to remain curious about yours.

Respecting your subjectivity means recognizing that I cannot know your experience firsthand. Holding my own interpretations with curiosity rather than rigidity means remembering that the meanings I create are maps, not the territory. They can guide me beautifully, but they can also be revised as I learn, grow, and encounter new experiences.

Inside-out language—which is at the heart of SAGE—is one of the simplest ways I’ve found to cultivate this awareness because when I use it, I continually remind myself that I am the one making meaning. Instead of assuming I’ve discovered reality, I simply remember that I’m making meaning. That small shift in awareness creates just enough space for curiosity, flexibility, and choice.

To me, that is what distinguishes SAGE from other approaches to psychological and emotional wellbeing.

Not to stop making meaning—that would be impossible.

Not even to eliminate our desire for certainty.

Rather, it is to become increasingly aware of the meanings I’m creating while I’m creating them, to hold them with curiosity rather than rigidity, and to remain open to the possibility that tomorrow’s map may be wiser than today’s.

Paradoxically, loosening my attachment to today’s map doesn’t leave me feeling less grounded. It leaves me more adaptable. I become better able to meet life as it unfolds rather than insisting it conform to the meanings I’ve already created.

Ironically, I think this is where genuine security begins.

Not in finally becoming certain.

But in discovering that I can navigate an uncertain world without needing my current interpretation to be the final word.

If you’d like to explore these ideas more deeply, you can download our free introductory article, The Overview Effect in Psychology. At the end of that article you’ll find links to four additional essays that, together, provide a comprehensive introduction to SAGE (Subjective Awareness and Genuine Expression).