Don’t Tell Me Who to Be Until You’ve Lived Who I Am

I’m tired of being interpreted by people who’ve never lived a day inside my head. Never walked in my shoes.

Tired of the nodding. The sympathetic tilt of the head. The quick inhale that signals advice is loading. “I know exactly how you feel.” No, you don’t. You know how you felt. In your life. With your wiring. Your history. Your set of scars. That’s not the same thing.

You Don’t Know What You Think You Know

You didn’t grow up with my background. You didn’t experience the same beatings, the same traumas, absorb the same comments, the same criticisms, the same subtle digs that settle into the bones and stay there. You didn’t build your personality around survival the exact way I did. So when you hand me a neat little story about how you “pushed through” or “changed your mindset”, forgive me if I don’t clap.

I’m not ungrateful. I’m exhausted.

There’s a difference.

The Redemption Arc Nobody Asked For

People love a redemption arc. They love the tidy version of struggle. A dip, a lesson, a comeback. It makes suffering feel productive. It keeps the world feeling fair. If you just think right, act right, grind hard enough, you’ll get the reward.

That’s comforting. It’s also a bit simplistic.

You haven’t lived with my brain. You haven’t dealt with thoughts that don’t line up in neat rows. You haven’t tried to function while your memory slips through your fingers. You haven’t felt the sting of criticism land ten times harder than it should and sit there for days, replaying. You haven’t navigated decades of feeling slightly out of step and being told, subtly or bluntly, to just try harder.

I have.

And it shapes everything.

When someone says, “Have you tried just…?” I want to ask them how many times they think I’ve run that experiment already. You think I enjoy this? You think I haven’t spent years testing strategies, systems, routines, productivity hacks, mindset shifts, therapy sessions, medication tweaks, self-help books, podcasts, journalling, willpower, sheer stubbornness?

It’s not a lack of effort.

Sometimes it’s the cost of carrying what you carry.

It’s Not the Struggle. It’s the Dismissal.

What really grinds me down isn’t the struggle itself. It’s the dismissal. The subtle judgement. The idea that if I were more disciplined, more positive, more resilient, I’d be fine by now. As if I’ve been lounging about, waiting for a motivational quote to rescue me.

Advice often says more about the giver than the receiver. It makes people feel useful. It calms their discomfort. If they can fix you, they don’t have to sit with the messy truth that some things are complex and long and unfair.

Sitting with someone without trying to fix them is hard. Most people can’t do it.

So they correct. They compare. They redirect. “When I was in that position…” Yes. You were in a position. It wasn’t mine.

You didn’t wake up in my body. You didn’t carry my history into every meeting, every relationship, every risk. You didn’t spend years overcompensating because somewhere along the line you absorbed the belief that you weren’t quite enough. Or that you were too much. Or both, depending on the room.

I’ve been told I’m strong. Capable. Intelligent. Resilient. And maybe I am. But you don’t see the private negotiations. The internal arguments before sending a simple email. The overthinking that follows a casual comment. The constant recalculating to avoid disappointing someone.

You see the outcome. Not the cost.

And when I finally say, “Actually, this is hard,” I don’t need a strategy. I need space. I need someone to accept that my version of hard is shaped by years they haven’t witnessed.

The Suffering League Table

Pain isn’t a competition. “There’s always someone worse off.” That line gets thrown around like it’s wisdom. It’s often used as a silencer, though. It tells people to minimise their own experience because somewhere, someone is suffering more.

Both can exist.

You can have it worse than me. I can still be struggling.

So when I say please don’t judge me until you’ve walked a few years in my shoes, I mean it literally. Live with my brain for a decade. Carry my patterns. Sit in my doubts. Deal with the same triggers. Then tell me what I should be doing differently.

What I’m Actually Asking For

Until then, try humility.

Listen without preparing your counterpoint. Resist the urge to tidy up my story so it fits into something that reassures you. Accept that you might not fully understand. That you can’t fix it. That I might not want fixing in the way you imagine.

Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do is say, “I don’t know what that’s like, but I’m here.”

Not advice. Not comparison. Not a judgement dressed up as encouragement.

Just presence.

I’m not asking for pity. I’m not asking to be handled with gloves. I’m asking for one simple thing that seems strangely rare.

Don’t tell me who I should be until you’ve walked in my shoes.

When They Think They Understand (But Don’t)