People Say I’m Intimidating, Should I Worry About That?

People say I’m intimidating. I’ve heard it my whole life. The first time I realized there was a disconnect between how I saw myself and how others saw me, I was 18 years old. I was on a field exercise with the army. It was muggy as hell and my hair was wildly out of place. I hadn’t been in the army that long, but I’d been an active member long enough to know that if my bun had fly-away pieces of hair in the field, it was probably okay.

While standing around waiting for the next part of the exercise to start, my friend approached me, laughing. She told me about a conversation she’d had with someone a rank above me about how messy my hair was. The higher ranked solider was going to tell me to fix my hair and my friend laughed at her and said, “I dare you.”

My mouth fell open as I laughed at her laughing, but the entire time I thought, “What the hell does that mean?” But of course I knew what it meant: I didn’t take crap from anyone. Certainly, I would have taken crap from a superior rank in the army, though, right? I guess we’ll never know because the higher ranked solider never did mention my hair to me then or ever.

Why Do People Say I’m Intimidating? Where is this Coming From?

The second time I came face-to-face with the realization that people might not see me the way I see myself was also during an army exercise. I was sharing a room with nine other women, all from different platoons and units. It was well known that if you put that many women in a room together, there was bound to be an argument or two, but we luckily made it through the entire exercise without an issue.

What did come up though, one night while having a few beers after work, was an uncomfortable conversation with another woman who, in front of the entire room, told me I was intimidating. She said, “I was afraid of you when I first met you.” There’s no real way to verbalize how stunned I was when she said that. I had never considered myself intimidating before and I couldn’t understand why someone would be afraid of me. I wasn’t walking around pounding on walls or yelling at people.

So I had to ask, “What makes you say that?” Her response made me laugh and cringe a little at the same time. She said, “You just look like you know what you’re doing. You hold your head up and your shoulders back. You look people in the eye and you tell people to ‘fuck off’ if you have to. I could never do that.”

Fun fact: I had no idea what I was doing and if you’d have asked me, I would have said my eyes were permanently glued to the floor. The last part is true though. I did tell a lot of people to “fuck off” on the regular. We laughed it off and got on with the night, but that conversation stayed with me, well, to this day.

Pausing to Reflect on The Things People Say

I’ve regularly reflected on these stories where people say I’m intimidating. I have tried to see what others saw in me. Over the years, I’ve landed in a few different places with these conversations. First, it started out as shame. I didn’t want anyone to think of me as being aggressive or over the top. And I think it impacted me in a way that kept me small sometimes.

I know I’m loud and outgoing at times, but mostly, I’m quiet and introspective. I was just a kid, really, when I was getting this kind of feedback from people. And I decided to give them some grace that maybe the words they were using were the best they could do. Maybe they meant something else? But it stuck with me, nonetheless.

Later on, I came to consider my confidence and self-assured way of doing things. It’s not that I know what I’m doing, to be clear, it’s that I don’t care if I get it wrong. As a young adult, I realized that many people were making decisions like they couldn’t undo them, and that was just never my style. I recall a conversation with friends in university about “next steps” and they all had vague ideas of what they wanted to do.

When I was able to rattle off exactly what I was doing and where and why and my friend commented, “You always have such a clear idea of what you want.” I hadn’t considered that side of me before. I was just out here putting one foot in front of the other.

Growing into Yourself, Not What Other People Tell You to Be

As I become a mother and continued to grow into myself, I came to appreciate the feedback people were giving me, even if I didn’t always agree, because it gave me information about myself. There was, of course, lots of negative feedback. I’ve heard people say I’m aggressive, on more than one occasion. People have called me rash and unsettled. I’ve had close friends and relatives tell me I’m flighty. The funny thing was none of that feedback was solicited and those people often received a mixed bag of responses from me.

I learned to filter the information based on one simple statement, “If I wouldn’t want your life, I wouldn’t want your advice.” This was especially true in motherhood, where I rarely accepted any advice from people who thought they knew better than me when they didn’t have all of the information about me.

The Tip of the Iceberg Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story

I wrote a blog recently about how people only see the tip of the iceberg of the decisions I’ve made in my life and sometimes interpret what they see and not the work that went into what they see. I think this iceberg of information gives people just enough information about me to feel like they can offer advice, even when it wasn’t asked for, because they think they’ve “been there and done that” but the truth is, they haven’t. And I learned early on in life that our experiences are vastly differently, even if they look the same on the surface.

For example, moms loved to give me advice about the birth process when I was pregnant and I just let them talk. I knew that their experience was never going to be my experience and so there was no point in setting myself up against what they had experienced or use it as any sort of measure. It pissed off a lot of people, including people close to me who loved to shower me with their own insights about motherhood, but my internal dialogue was always the same: “I’m not the same as you.”

Not All Advice is Good Advice

So sure, maybe my self-awareness and sense of self has some people calling me intimidating, aggressive, or even arrogant. I mean, who am I to think I can figure this motherhood thing out all on my own when millions of other women have done it before me? I hope you can hear the sarcasm in that line. But I don’t feel like I’m any of these things that people have called me.

I think I’m decisive and have a self-trust that other people dream about, but they’re afraid of making a misstep. I’ve never been afraid of having to back up the trailer and do a 40-point turn in the middle of a road if I figure out I can’t go forward with something. Literally and figuratively. I’ve had many people insist on helping me back up my little tent trailer when it’s looked like I was messing it up, but that’s because they didn’t want me to embarrass myself. Who said I was embarrassed? And who cares if I was?

People Say I’m Intimidating, But Maybe They are Just Intimidated

I think the feedback and information we get from other people is often informed by their own limitations and it comes from a place of trying to protect us because they would want protecting. But I’ve never been one to hide away from the hard things and if you tell me I can’t do something, well, you should be warned that I am absolutely going to do it. And yeah, maybe that makes me a little intimidating, but maybe it’s not that I’m intimidating. Maybe it’s that people are intimidated. And if that’s the case, well, there’s no much I can do about that.

The disconnect between how we see ourselves and how others see us can be jarring, and there’s been times in my life when I have played down who I am because of how I think people see me. But it usually doesn’t last long because I can’t pretend to be something I’m not. I’ve tried. It never ends well for anyone when I show up as anyone but myself, and I’m learning as I get older that if I’m feeling like I need to be a certain way or act a certain way just to be accepted, I’m probably not going to do it.

Filter for Growth, Not Performance

I’ve also caught myself drawing lines in the sand with people who insist I am a certain way because of a) ADHD, b) my childhood and c) my past relationships. I take responsibility for who I am as a person and there’s nothing I loathe more than when we brush our sense of self under the rug and call it something the internet taught us. If you start a sentence with, “You’re that way because…” I will turn off my brain. Especially if it comes in the form of advice and I don’t want your life.

Sounds harsh, right? No wonder people think I’m intimidating. It’s not harsh. It’s how I filter the bullshit out of my life. I have come to a place where I no longer wish to defend myself to other people. I’m not interested in trying to get them to understand me. This too may be interpreted as arrogance but it’s not. It’s a resignation. People see us the way they want to see us. We can be out here living our best lives and someone will always have something to say about it. They don’t know better and their way isn’t the right way. There’s a million ways to live you life.

Your Turn

If you’ve come across someone who insists you are [loud, arrogant, ambitious, tired, angry, confused, intimidating] consider the source. And then remind yourself it doesn’t matter. Because it’s not your job to convince someone you’re not those things. It’s your job to be you. And things are a whole lot easier when you’re just being you.

Want to spend some time reflecting on yourself, your life, and your interactions? Join my 5-Day Journal Challenge and work through some of the thoughts in your head on your own time, with guidance and care.