When you fall over yourself trying to make someone understand you, they don’t experience your good intentions. They experience someone trying to control them. The more you chase understanding, the more the other person pulls away — not because your words are unclear, but because the emotional content of your communication is “I need you to do something for me.”
Joe demonstrates this through a live experiment: he asks Savannah to say the same sentence five different ways — with armor, ego protection, vulnerability, desperation, and finally from a grounded, self-possessed place. The words are identical. The responses they evoke are completely different. The chasing versions make the listener want to flee.
“The more you try to control that they understand you, they’re just feeling it as someone’s trying to control me.”
What people are actually resisting isn’t your message — it’s being controlled. When someone doesn’t understand you, they’re often saying “I don’t want to believe you” or “I don’t feel safe enough to connect right now,” not “your words don’t make sense.”
Related Concepts
- Communication techniques get weaponized
- Approval seeking pushes people away
- State of mind determines how you’re heard
- What we call being understood is really seeking connection