How do others see you?

What do other people think of you? I find that many times people are completely unaware of the impression they leave. If you are repeatedly having trouble in your relationships with other people, you may want to take a closer look.

I had a client who said she really wanted to make some big improvements in her social life. She did not have many friends and she wanted to widen her circle. She was also eager to meet a man, as her brief marriage had recently ended.

I asked her to give me a history of her friendships and relationships so I could get a sense of how best to help her. She told me that nothing really lasted. Friendships and relationships would eventually break up, sometimes abruptly and without a good explanation.

I challenged her:  “If you had to point the finger at yourself as the cause of this problem, what would you say?† She said she was “successful†and her friends and partners were too intimidated to be around her as it brought up their inability to succeed at that level.   

She also speaks four languages, which she was sure was threatening to people.

While some of this may have been true, she was doing something that all of us do from time to time: not taking responsibility for our current circumstance.  Her ego was getting in the way of her ability to see the truth, and unless she got past this she would remain stuck and continue to have problems.

When I explained this to her, she resisted at first, but quickly saw that in order to make a change she would have to take a good honest look at herself.

I suggested she talk to a former friend and her ex-husband or ex-boyfriend and ask them how she “came off.† 

This felt uncomfortable to her, but she said there was one “ex-friend†who would probably do it. She did not want to go to her former partners.

In that case,  I asked her to write a letter to herself from her ex-husband with honest feedback about what he might say she was like as a person, friend and partner.  This letter was to be brutally honest and include both the good points and the bad.The next week she told me about the results of her talk, and had her letter in hand.

Her friend had told her she was impressed with her search for the truth and was willing to help.  The feedback was that she was loyal and responsible and people knew she could always be totally reliable; but she could be pushy with her agendas and expected a response immediately to calls and invitations.   

This friend also said that the friendship was stressful because my client made her feel guilty for not doing things on a regular basis with her.  There was a pressure around everything.

She then told me that the act of writing a letter as if she were someone else, made the challenge of looking at herself less threatening, because she could role-play and let her own self get out of the way for a short time.  She was able to let go and approach this as a game and use her intuition.  

In the letter, her ex-boyfriend said that she was fun, smart, full of energy, but also that she was “high-maintenance†and needed more than he could give her. It seemed no matter what he did, it was never enough, and he was always disappointing her.

The end result from this letter was that she had new “information†about the way she was appearing to other people. The biggest things she found that she wanted to change was that people saw her as pushy and as needy. She could start to work on those right away.

Without that awareness she would not be in a position to make any changes. Now, when the same situations came up with new friends or partners, she was able to change the way she acted, which would ultimately work better for her and them.

There is always room to grow and to get feedback directly from a friend, or to tap the inner resources that you already have, as my client did.

Brooke Loening is a life coach in Sharon who works with individuals, and runs coaching groups on achieving growth in career, health and relationships.  To make column suggestions, e-mail him at bloening@snet.net.