Nothing Anyone Feels Is About You
On perception, projection, and the wisdom of the crooked tree
“In order to communicate clearly, you have to be free of your views, your opinions, your judgments. You have to be free of your prejudices. And with the absence of prejudice and judgment, you have an opportunity to look deeply and to see the reality of the other person.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
Nothing anyone feels about you is personal.
Let that land.
When someone projects a judgment onto us, it often reflects their own inner defenses — not our essence. Of course that person is generally reacting to something we did say or do, but more than that, they’re reacting to their interpretation of it. It’s a way their system is trying to stay safe, based on what it believes.
Because when something — or someone — doesn’t stir our old patterns or identities, we tend to feel neutral. There's no charge. We observe them like we do trees or birds in the sky. We don’t need them to be different. We don’t need to make meaning out of their existence.
But the moment someone’s appearance, behavior, voice, vocabulary, hobbies, or beliefs trigger something in us — the moment our inner alarm bells go off — we begin to project. We can’t help it. It just happens unbeknownst to us— until we start to notice it.
We judge—often without realizing it —to protect ourselves.
Not necessarily because what we’re seeing is untrue.
But because of what our mind makes it mean.
When we’re neutral, we can notice that a tree is growing sideways and not take it personally.
We don’t feel threatened by it.
We don’t think the tree should grow differently to make us feel safe.
We just see: the sun must’ve been blocked on the other side.
The tree grew in a way that gave it the best chance to survive.
And maybe… even feel respect for that.
But if we judged trees the way we judge people — and if our identity was wrapped up in “trees that grow straight” — we’d probably look at that crooked tree with suspicion.
We’d feel the need to label it. Fix it. Distance ourselves from it.
And in doing so, we’d miss the intelligence that shaped it.
That’s what judgements tend to do.
They block understanding.
They close our heart.
They keep us from seeing the quiet wisdom in someone else’s form — skillful or unskillful.
Because we were too busy taking it personally.
Nothing anyone does means anything about you.
But the way you relate to that person — reveals you to yourself.
See what I mean?
It’s all downstream from the rules your mind made — long ago — about what’s right and wrong, safe and unsafe, good and bad, attractive and repulsive.
And we’ve convinced ourselves that judgment keeps us safe.
That if we dislike something strongly enough, we’re being virtuous.
That we’re doing good work by opposing the “bad.”
That we need to condemn the wrong direction in order to choose the right one.
It’s an ego game— one I often recognize in myself.
And it’s exhausting.
In the end, there’s nothing inherently helpful about feeling strongly opposed to anything. Not when it comes from judgment. Not when it fuels separation.
You can discern love from fear without judgement.
You can choose a path of integrity without condemning the other way.
You can evolve without needing an enemy.
We can observe imbalance in another without attacking it or running away from it.
We don’t talk about this enough.
Maybe because there’s still virtue wrapped up in being “against” the wrong things.
When we label something as bad, we may inadvertently close the door to understanding it. We close our heart. And that doesn’t heal anything.
It just deepens the illusion of separation.
That’s the forgetting.
The questions I’m asking myself today:
- What feels personal and painful right now?
- Is it truly personal?
- What part of me am I protecting — or defending?
- Is there real vulnerability here, am I truly in danger, or is this just an old story?
- Is that story still serving me?
- If yes, can I drop the judgement, open my heart and still do what needs to be done to protect myself?
- If not, can I let the old story go?
More often than not, our projected judgments become shackles of our own making — binding us to narratives born from our fear.
Not because those narratives are true, but because believing in them feels safer than facing what they might be protecting inside of us.
We think judgment lifts us onto higher ground — but more often, it just reinforces the sense of vulnerability we’ve been trying not to feel.
It’s important that we keep waking up to the heart of the matter.
Daily.
Thank you for your attention and contemplation.
I’d love to hear from you if this piece sparked anything inside.
Until next time,
Hayley
