TRANSCRIPT
How do we read people’s character? How do we figure out who they really are beneath the surface? Everyone, from what I’ve seen, has had an experience at some point or other, myself included, with thinking we know someone, only later to find out that this person was very different from who we thought they were initially. Maybe they really surprised us and showed sides of themselves that were completely not apparent at first—contradictory, hypocritical, even downright nasty or evil.
So how do we figure out who people really are? In my experience over the last few decades, feeling like I’ve gotten quite a bit better at reading people’s character, especially reading it initially and reading lots of different parts of them quickly, what I’ve seen is there are two main things that have allowed me to do this better—a lot better. And it’s not techniques. I think on the internet, I seem to have read somewhere there’s different techniques for how to read people, read different cues and tells about who they really are. You know, when they touch themselves in a certain way, when they say things that might not be honest, or whether they wink or blink or look away, or how they hold their feet. And all those might be true, but to me, those don’t really get at what primarily has helped me.
The first main thing that helped me—and this actually will connect with the second thing, and I’ll get to that afterward—the first main thing is really getting to know myself. Really getting to know my own character, getting to know all these different sides or parts of me, things that previously were buried. I think about when I first entered adulthood, late teens, maybe 20, 21. I thought I knew myself pretty well. I thought I could read my own character pretty well. But what started becoming apparent is there was a lot buried beneath the surface—a lot of sides of myself that I didn’t know, that I wasn’t in touch with, that I couldn’t read. This was because those sides were unacceptable in my family system, unacceptable to my parents, unacceptable to the world that was connected to my parents, to my school system, to university, even to many of my friends, my social milieu. These sides had to be pushed down. Primarily, these were sides that were connected to my unresolved traumas—parts of me that had been traumatized that were forced down. A lot of my post-traumatic feelings, a lot of, let’s say, sadness and anger, unmet needs connected to my unresolved traumas, a lot of this was just pushed down out of my sight, out of my consciousness.
And what this left me with, when I was disconnected with those parts of myself, it left me with a certain—I don’t know what you’d call it—a blindness in a way for knowing myself. And by extension, I couldn’t see a lot of these similar parts in other people. My denial of parts of myself extended to denial of others. And in that way, I read other people and myself primarily more in two dimensions, not in three dimensions. And what was it? What was it that allowed me to read other people better? Well, for starters, with knowing myself better, I went through a grieving process. And in this grieving process, it was a process of reclaiming those split-off sides of me, feeling all those ancient buried historical feelings—unacceptable feelings, often having a lot of memories come back. It was like I was like a dry river canyon that had been dammed up, and the dam was now breaking, and all this water and life was flowing back into me. And it flowed into my face, and it flowed through my eyes. I did so much crying, and this was going on for 10, 15 years at various points.
But what happened through this was that I got to connect with these parts of me on a feeling level. And I think of it in terms of really—I think this is the primary way that I learned to read myself better. I saw it in the mirror, but even just feeling it inside myself with no actual vision at all, I could feel those feelings in my mouth and in my eyes, around my eyes and the skin around my eyes. But literally in my eyes, I could feel my sadness. I could feel, oh, anguish. And I could feel why I had had to be so dishonest with myself. And I also felt the joy of returning to myself. And it was like these feelings of coming back to me, the physical sensations of myself coming back to me, were stamped into my memory so deeply. It was like these parts of me were always me. They always had been there. But having been split off for so long, it was like returning to a connection with an ancient friend who I loved so much, who loved me so much, who was me.
And what happened after having gone through this process, and during going through this process, was that I began to be able to read so many other things in people that previously had been denied me. And I could see it in their eyes, and I could see it in their mouth. And I remember early on being very open and talking about these things and watching people get very angry and get ashamed and get frustrated and deny what I was saying. “That’s not true.” And many, many times later learning that it was true. And sometimes people even came back to me and said, “Oh my God, things you said were correct.”
Another thing was that now, having this newfound—I called it a gift—this newfound gift of being able to better read people, I realized that other people who I talked about it often didn’t like it. They denied it. “No, you’re not correct. That’s not correct what you’re saying about that person.” Sometimes people even said, “That’s not true what you’re saying about your own self.” Like I remember talking with my parents sometimes about things I was discovering about myself. “No, no, that’s not true. You’re reading yourself incorrectly. That’s just a phase you’re going through. You don’t feel that way. You don’t think that way.” And it was like, wow, the world also wanted to read me incorrectly. And when I started reading myself more correctly, I threatened them. So it’s a dangerous gift to be able to read people better. It’s a gift that holds a lot of power. It can really threaten people’s denial, upset the apple cart of their view of the world, of their view of themselves.
And then there’s the second part of what really has helped me be able to read people better, to read their character better, to read the truth of what they’re holding inside, what they’re not sharing, what they are sharing, and what they’re not sharing. And sometimes to see what they’re sharing and how it’s not true. It started really with being able to read my parents better, to know who my parents really were—not who they had presented themselves to be to me and to each other and to themselves and to the world—but who their real characters were, what they were holding inside, primarily what they had done to me and how they had done it and how they had denied it and how they had denied me my birthright of knowing what had been done to me and my birthright of having my feelings about what had been done to me. And I’m talking the bad stuff that was done to me—the violations, the harm, the traumas, the neglect, the abuse—by really seeing who they were, a full three-dimensional picture of their characters, their history, their personalities, their truth and their lives, their healthy sides and their dishonesty. To see it all, even though they never saw it, they largely didn’t see it. By being able to see this, it changed something in the way I was able to read people in the outside world.
And what I’ve come to realize is that when I was in denial of so many different sides of my parents, when I was fundamentally unable to see them in three dimensions and just only able to see certain parts of them that were palatable to the family system, I transferred this denial onto other people. I got fooled by other people in the same way that I had been fooled by my parents. I needed to be fooled by other people. I couldn’t read their character because if I read who they really were in three dimensions, it would betray my parents. And so by protecting…
My parents, by protecting the sides of myself on the inside that were like my parents, I was vulnerable in the world. Vulnerable to people who didn’t share who they really were, perhaps didn’t even know who they really were, or sometimes people who were even very manipulative, who lied about who they were. They knew who they were; they knew what they were hiding, but they didn’t want to present it.
And so, by really getting to know my parents better, this painful, terrible process of waking up and seeing so many ugly things that I didn’t want to know, so many imperfections that I didn’t want to know, revolutionized my view of my own history and where I came from and of the people who I once thought I loved most in the world. It was like a veil was lifted, and I could much more easily see the truth in other people.
Another big thing related to the second part was that when I couldn’t see my parents for who they really were, when I couldn’t see what they had really done to me and how they’d really affected me, when I was stunted in my own healing process, I was a person, a young man. I think to some degree, some part of this is still there, but it’s largely resolved. But I was someone who was living my life with a profound amount of unmet needs. There was a little wounded child in me, desperate, desperate, desperate to be loved by my parents. This was the stunted, wounded, traumatized part of me that had never been loved properly and hadn’t been able to develop. It was immature; it was in a primitive phase on the healing process.
A lot of my orientation toward life, toward my relationships with others, romance, and friendships was about trying to get people to love me in this way to make up for what my parents didn’t do. And I was susceptible to fantasy in the most profound way. I have a whole video on that called “Parental Rescue Fantasy,” where I was looking for other people to become the parents who would finally rescue me. It was like I was wearing rose-colored glasses that could only see people in light of my fantasy of how they might be able to save me, and nobody could do it. That’s the sad irony.
But what it left me susceptible to was people who maybe were deluded enough to think that they could save me or were manipulative enough to present themselves as saviors. Whereas in both cases, they couldn’t do it. But because of that, I couldn’t read the reality of them. I couldn’t read the truth in their eyes. I couldn’t read the truth in their mouth. I couldn’t hear the truth in the tone of their voice.
Because that’s been another key way that I’ve been able to read people’s characters better now, is through just hearing the tone in their voice. Very quickly, I can feel an intuitive level if their voice represents authenticity or not. And by losing my illusions about my parents, by losing my fantasy about my parents, that veil was lifted, and I could read people so much better. And it’s been such a gift. It’s been something that has allowed me to connect with people in a real and honest way.
For many people, I look at them and I can see how false or dishonest they are, or how lost or buried or confused they are, and sometimes how much they don’t know it. And I can see, “Ooh, take distance from this person.” Whereas in the past, I might have gravitated toward that person because I was projecting all sorts of stuff of my own unconscious dynamics on unresolved traumas onto them.
Then I see another thing out in the world is how profoundly so many people can risk misreading leaders, misreading their characters. Look at people, look at leaders of all different stripes in an idealized way, and can’t read the truth that I now can. Look at these people, look at these leaders, and just say, “Oh my God, this person is an absolute creep. They’re lying. Their eyes are giving it away; their mouth is giving it away; their voice is giving it away.” I don’t even have to speak their language to know that this person is lying. I don’t even have to open my eyes; sometimes just hear the sound in their voice to know it’s not honest. It’s dishonest.
And yet, it can be shocking for me to see how many people, masses of people, are fooled by these people. And then at the same time, to look at the people who are fooled and listen to the people who are fooled and read the hurt in their character, to read the true unresolved needs that are buried within them that their eyes show, that their voices show—things that most of the time they don’t even seem to be aware of at all.
So this, for me, these are some of the gifts of being able to read people’s characters better. But then there’s one final thing, one final way that I have learned to read people’s characters much better. One thing that’s really helped me a lot, and that’s a lot of practice, a lot of time collecting a lot of data, learning where I had blind spots and correcting my errors. I still have blind spots.
I think of one area when I was a therapist. It’s certainly early on for a few years. I think I got better at it over time, and I don’t think it’s the worst area to have a blind spot in reading people’s characters. But I think one of the ways I made errors in reading people’s characters, and still do probably to a degree, is I think I read often people’s characters erroneously on the side of good. I tend to see their goodness more powerfully and sometimes can be a little bit blind to see how they’re getting in their own way.
I think part of this is kind of true still because people do have a lot of parts. And fundamentally, this is what I’ve learned: everybody, no matter how bad or dishonest or in denial they are, everybody has a core of truth and beauty and goodness. And I would say this: the more I’ve become good, really good, connected with the goodness and the truth of myself, the more quickly and intuitively I can hone right in on someone else’s goodness and see that part of their character.
And actually, it’s very useful because what I’ve seen is when I can quickly hone in on and read the goodness in someone else’s character, often it’s like pouring water on that part of them, and they grow better. I think it was very useful for me as a therapist to be able to quickly and intuitively find and accurately appraise their good parts, maybe sometimes at the expense of not as quickly reading other sides of them. So I could get fooled a little bit here and there.
But I also wonder sometimes if it saved my life. I think about, well, all these years that I’ve done hitchhiking, getting in strangers’ cars in random places in the world, sometimes in places that might have been dangerous. And also then quickly honing in on someone’s goodness. And sometimes maybe people who picked me up didn’t have good motives. Maybe there was a part of them that had some nefarious motives; maybe they wanted to harm me in some ways. And I think maybe by over-reading their goodness or by accurately appraising that part of them that was good, it may have saved me.
Because what I’ve seen is when I can quickly hone in on people’s goodness, and I have seen people out there who can’t see other people’s goodness, they’re literally just blind to other people’s goodness, probably because they’re so blocked from their own goodness. It’s so buried underneath their traumas. But when I read people’s goodness and they pick up on it, they love it. So I think there are people out there who maybe didn’t have the best intentions for me, but when I was able to read their goodness, they felt loved because they were loved, and they became much more loving in return.
I think in a small way this happened when I was mugged last year in New York City. These two guys, I did to some degree hone in on their goodness, and they felt respect. I think it probably stopped them from physically harming me more than they already did by grabbing me and throwing me around. Who knows what they would have done to me, especially if I had responded in a negative way.
Way and met, forced with force, fire with fire. I was loving toward them and respectful. But now I take it a step further.
Theoretically, what if I had even honed in more on their goodness? In that moment of terror and horror for me, not saying I should have done this, but let’s just say theoretically I had been able to hone in even more on their goodness and see the truth of their goodness? Because I know they had good little selves in there somewhere, as blocked as they might largely have been.
I wonder how they might have responded. Would they have let me go free? Would they have let me keep my money and my phone and my bank cards? Might they have apologized? I don’t know. I consider these things.
And well, maybe if I ever get mugged again, as I keep growing, as I keep healing my traumas, as I keep connecting more with my goodness, the goodness of the world, maybe, maybe if I ever get mugged again, I will be able to practice this the next time.
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