Recently, I said something sarcastic to someone, and it hurt their feelings.
I didn’t mean it to. Sarcasm is basically my first language. It’s how I banter. It’s how I signal affection to people I actually like. If I’m giving you a hard time, it usually means I trust you enough to give you a hard time. In my head, it was a warm thing. On the receiving end, it landed as a cold one.
I’ve been sitting with that for a few days now, and I want to write about what I’ve been sitting with, because I think it names something a lot of us get wrong.
The two easy exits
When someone tells us that something we said hurt them, we generally reach for one of two easy exits.
Exit one is to over-own. To collapse. To apologize so hard and so much that the other person ends up managing our guilt instead of their own hurt feelings. “I’m the worst. I can’t believe I said that. Please forgive me. I’ll never do it again.” This looks like accountability, but it isn’t. It’s actually a way of making the whole thing about us and getting reassured back to feeling okay.
Exit two is the opposite. To under-own. To wave it away. To hide behind the language of “your reaction is not my responsibility” and “I said what I meant, so if you took it wrong, that’s on you.” This is having a real moment on the internet lately, especially dressed up as boundaries or as radical self-honesty. It’s neither. It’s a dodge.
Both exits let us skip the harder thing, which is standing in the middle and holding two truths at the same time.
Two things are true
Truth one: I am not responsible for another adult’s emotional reaction. I don’t get to reach into someone else’s nervous system and control what they feel. I can’t apologize hard enough to make hurt disappear, and I shouldn’t try. Their reaction belongs to them.
Truth two: I am responsible for what I said and how I said it. Full stop. Not for their reaction, but for my choice of words, my tone, my timing, and the pattern I’ve built over time about how I show up.
Both things are true, at the same time, in the same moment, without one canceling the other.
That is the whole game, really. Adult accountability is the ability to hold both of those without collapsing into one of them.
Why we miss this
There’s a piece of research I keep coming back to on this. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, in her long-running study on self-awareness, found that 95% of people believe they’re self-aware, but only about 10 to 15% actually are. Her explanation for the gap is worth pausing on.
Eurich distinguishes between two kinds of self-awareness. Internal self-awareness is how clearly we see our own values, intentions, and reactions. External self-awareness is how accurately we understand how other people experience us. Her most important finding, in my opinion, is that these two are not correlated. You can be extremely clear about your own intentions and completely wrong about your impact. You can know exactly what you meant and have no idea how it landed.
That’s basically what happened to me last week. My internal self-awareness was fine. I knew what I meant. I knew I wasn’t being cruel. What I was underestimating was the external side. How the words actually landed on a specific person, in a specific moment, with a history I wasn’t fully accounting for.
Being right about my intent didn’t make me right about my impact. Those are two separate things, and I only had access to one of them.
What I’m not going to do
I’m not going to stop being sarcastic. That would be a lie about who I am, and the people in my life who love me would rightly ask what happened to me. Sarcasm is part of my sense of humor, my rhythm, my way of moving through the world. It stays.
I’m also not going to weaponize the phrase “well, that’s your reaction, not my problem.” Because it isn’t only their problem. Some of it is my problem, in the sense that my choices helped create the moment.
What I am going to do is get more curious about the gap. About the space between what I meant and what landed. About the moments when the person in front of me isn’t in on the joke, or isn’t in the emotional place to receive it the way I intended it, or has a history I don’t know about that makes my particular flavor of humor cut instead of tickle.
I’m going to ask, more often, “how did that actually land?” not because I’m going to change my whole personality based on the answer, but because I want to know. The knowing is the whole point.
The move
Here is the move, if you’re looking for one.
When someone tells you that something you said hurt them, resist both exits. Don’t collapse into “I’m terrible” and don’t puff up into “that’s your problem.” Instead, try something like: I hear you. I didn’t mean it that way, and I can also see how it landed that way. Both of those are real. I’m sorry it hurt. I’ll pay closer attention.
You are not apologizing for who you are. You are not apologizing for having intent. You are taking responsibility for the part that is actually yours, which is what you said and how, and leaving the part that is theirs, which is what they felt, where it belongs.
That is a very small sentence. It carries a lot of weight.
The person I hurt is not wrong for being hurt. I am not wrong for being sarcastic. Both things can be true, and my job as a grown-up is to hold both of them without dropping either one.
That’s the work. It’s not glamorous. It’s not a five-step framework. It’s just the daily practice of paying attention to how I show up, being honest about what’s mine, and being equally honest about what isn’t.
I’m still learning it. I suspect I always will be.
Love,
Certified Professional Coach and Psychologist
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How often have you wished for that person in your life who listens deeply, doesn’t judge you, and doesn’t try to fix you? That person who holds space for you to talk through your struggles, your hopes, and dreams so that you can live the personal and professional life that you truly want? I’m that person. Yes, I’m a psychologist and a professional life and leadership coach but my superpower is listening, deep, empathic, compassionate listening. If you’ve been seeking a professional listener who will help you live the life you truly desire, let’s set up a time to talk. My email is Lisa@LisaKaplin.com.