Move Forward When No One Understands You
How to take care of yourself and live better when life doesn't feel fair.
“Brrrrrr… It’s cold.”
We all know someone like this.
Maybe it’s an older person. Maybe it’s a coworker. Maybe, if we’re honest…
…it’s me.
I’m always cold.
Not just “grab a jacket” cold.
Not just “turn the thermostat up a notch” cold.
Bone-deep, never-quite-comfortable cold.
I layer up while everyone else is in short sleeves.
I wear long sleeves year-round and keep a jacket in my car… just in case.
In the winter, it’s never warm enough inside.
In the summer, I dress for winter in rooms where other people feel fine.
So I adapt.
I endure the looks, the jokes, the subtle eye rolls.
People laugh. People get annoyed. People misunderstand.
Because from the outside…
it doesn’t make any sense.
When your reality isn’t shared
From the outside, I look excessive.
From the inside, I’m just trying to survive comfort.
And that gap between what others see and what I feel is where frustration grows.
No one understands his plight.
No one else feels what I feel.
I can say my fingers are numb. I can explain that the cold actually hurts. But to them, it just sounds like I’m being dramatic.
And when people can’t feel it…
it’s hard for them to believe it.
I captured this tension in a simple seven-stanza haiku I wrote from a writing prompt built on these emojis: 🥶 🤡👹⚡🎉🙀💜.
Read it slowly.
Cold Man
🥶
An old heart patient
Has thin blood and drinks iced drinks
Complains that he’s cold
🤡
He wears lots of clothes
Long sleeves even in summer
People laugh at him
👹
He complains a lot
Others get annoyed with him
He’s a cold ogre
⚡
The frustrations rise
No one understands his plight
He wants to be warm
🎉
He gets by himself
Turns heat on in the guest room
He’s warm and happy
🙀
Heat makes others sweat
This man just wants to be warm
He’s cold and weary
💜
So he stays quiet
And wears a lot of clothing
He’ll be warm later
When it’s not just about temperature
But what this points to goes far beyond temperature.
We all live with things other people can’t feel.
Unfortunately, most people don’t share the same realities.
Being cold all the time doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of my complicated psyche and the emotional struggles I’ve battled for years.
And I know I’m not alone.
Some carry anxiety that never fully quiets.
Some are walking through grief they don’t talk about anymore.
Some are exhausted in ways sleep doesn’t fix.
Some are fighting battles that don’t show up on the surface.
And from the outside… they look fine.
Just like I probably do.
That’s where we get it wrong.
We assume shared experience.
We expect matching comfort levels.
We measure others by what we feel instead of what they carry.
And when we do that, we don’t just misunderstand people…
we make what they’re carrying heavier.
What we do with what others can’t feel
So what do we do with this?
We can’t expect everyone to understand what they’ve never felt.
And we can’t spend our lives trying to convince people our experience is real.
At some point, we have to take responsibility for what we need.
For me, that’s looked pretty simple (with the temperature issue).
I layer up.
I keep a jacket close.
Sometimes I step away and warm up on my own.
Not to make a point.
Not to prove anything.
Just to be okay.
Because here’s what I’ve learned:
Not every problem needs agreement.
Some problems simply need ownership and adjustment.
And the same is true beyond temperature.
Sometimes the answer isn’t: “Why don’t they get it?”
Sometimes the better question is: “What do I need right now?”
He’ll be warm later
It might mean stepping away.
It might mean setting a boundary.
It might mean doing something small that helps you carry what others can’t see.
That doesn’t mean other people don’t care about you.
It just means you’re still responsible for what you need.
I didn’t always understand that.
For a long time, I expected others to help me get there. And sometimes that help came. But when it didn’t, I would stall out.
I would wait.
I would shut down.
I would sit in it longer than I needed to.
And all it did was keep me stuck.
At some point, I had to learn this the hard way:
When the help you hoped for isn’t there, you don’t stop.
You adjust.
You take a step.
You do what you can with what you have.
You take responsibility for your own care and keep moving forward.
Maybe that’s the real lesson in all of this.
Staying warm in a world that doesn’t feel it
Not everyone will feel what you feel.
Not everyone will understand what you need.
That’s okay.
Your peace was never meant to depend on their understanding.
Sometimes, staying warm isn’t about changing the room.
Sometimes it’s about adding a layer.
Stepping away.
Making a small adjustment that helps you keep going.
Quietly.
Personally.
On purpose.
And over time, those small decisions matter more than being understood.
They help you carry what others can’t see.
They help you keep moving when it would be easier to stop.
They help you stay steady.
So: feel what you feel.
Take responsibility for what you need.
And keep moving forward anyway.
You may not always feel understood.
But you can choose to take care of yourself anyway.
If you’ve ever had to learn how to take care of yourself when others didn’t fully understand, this is exactly what I write about:
This is a great article! I feel like this a lot. I am the one people look at weird. My thing is I am deaf. I wear hearing aids but they don't always help. Hearing isn't something my brain knows. It is something I have had to learn. Keep putting that jacket on and stay warm. If people make am issue out of it then that says more about them than you.