People are not always as they seem

Another random observation from "the couch" without any scientific data. I have been making the observation for a while now that many people are perplexed, distressed and confused when people treat them differently from how they think they should be treated. (I know this is beginning by sounding trite but bear with me.) People become very hurt and offended when people speak to them and generally interact with them as if they are (confident, selfish, attractive, strong, dumb, etc...) when they do not perceive themselves to be that quality. This i think can be best summed up by "we are often not the same on the inside as we are on the outside."  I think we are often evaluated by the world as meaner, needing less help, more anxious, less competent, more selfish than we evaluate ourselves to be. It sets up a mismatch that is often very confusing and causes conflict.

I spoke recently with a beautiful young woman., She is around six foot, slender, blond and very beautiful in a Grace Kelly with quirks kind of way. Her nose is indeed a bit too big, her eyes a bit wide apart and her mouth a bit imperfect. She is non the less undeniably, no argument beautiful. 

Yet she wasn't always so . She was at eighteen, too tall, too awkward. Had glasses for her slightly lazy eye and braces. She had long daggy hair in a plat. It took until a few years after school when she was "trained" by a much older man to be beautiful.

It turns out that she on the inside is still that gorky girl who was bullied mercilessly at school. She never really fitted into her beautiful outside. She perceives all communication as people still making fun of her, people still treating her badly. They in contrast, treat her as if she is pretending. They see a drop dead gorgeous woman and assume her shyness is an affectation. They see her, without really knowing why, as inauthentic.  They treat her with suspicion, waiting for her to drop the game and come clean as the gorgeous sophisticate she really is - except she isn't. 

She then doesn't understand their reaction. She takes their tone personally. She sensitively picks up their suspicion and reserve.  She doesn't have a lot of friends. 

Out there in the real world it worth remembering that people are not always as they seem....