What Happens When We Stop Explaining Ourselves?

For a long time, I thought I had learned an important rule:

Never justify yourself.

I was in a twin flame journey for almost three years, and that experience taught me many things.

Looking back, it was an invaluable experience.

Along the way, I worked through some of my childhood wounds around disappearing and the need to defend myself.

At first, I thought healing meant never doing those things again.

But very soon I realized that wasn’t it at all.

Quite the opposite.

I learned to find balance.

I simply stopped doing it automatically.

Now I can decide for myself whether I want to explain myself, defend myself, or walk away.

There is nothing wrong with explaining yourself if that is what you actually want to do.

The problem is when you do it every time, even when it isn’t necessary.

When it becomes a reflex.

It sounded like one of those signs of healing.

At first, I didn’t understand when people told me:

“If someone misunderstands you, let them.

If someone thinks badly of you, let them.

If someone creates their own version of you, don’t explain.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

But now I understand that there is truth in that.

The problem was when it turned into another rule I had to obey.

After I realized that my explanations were only becoming fuel for a fire I hadn’t even started, I became afraid of explaining myself.

I was afraid that explaining myself meant I was still caught in the situation.

I had been hit by the same rake so many times that eventually I became afraid to go anywhere near any rake at all.

And that isn’t the answer either.

You don’t have to avoid every rake just because you’ve stepped on one before.

You just have to learn where to step — and when.

So I eventually came to a different conclusion.

Maybe I wasn’t stuck.

Maybe sometimes explaining yourself is not a sign that you are stuck.

Maybe sometimes it is simply a way of taking your own story back.

I started finding myself in situation after situation where I realized that I could explain myself.

Not to convince someone.

Not to make them agree with me.

But simply to take responsibility off myself for something that had never been mine to begin with.

And that distinction became very important to me.

I almost fell into another trap —

the fear that if I explained myself, I was somehow repeating the same old pattern.

There was a situation in my life where someone repeatedly interpreted my actions in ways that did not match my intentions.

I was told, directly and indirectly, what I was supposedly doing,

why I was doing it, and what my actions supposedly meant.

The same ideas were repeated so many times that eventually I started questioning myself.

When we see the same information in our feeds often enough, or when different people repeat the same things to us over and over, our brains can start treating repetition as evidence of truth — even when it isn’t.

So I didn’t blame myself for doubting my own perception.

I simply stopped listening.

But I didn’t get there immediately.

At first, there were doubts:

‘Maybe that really was what I was doing.

Maybe I really was interfering.

Maybe I really was responsible for choices that were not mine.”

And somewhere along the way, another belief appeared:

“I am not allowed to defend myself.”

Because defending myself would mean I was still participating.

So I learned to distrust my own impulse to say:

“That’s not what I meant.

That’s not what happened.

That’s not who I am.”

I thought I was healing.

Maybe I was simply learning to stay silent.

Eventually, I realized that I had just gone to the opposite extreme.

I had replaced one automatic reaction with another.

And that wasn’t the answer either.

I needed balance.

And one day, I had a strange little realization.

I wrote something about the fact that interfering in other people’s choices had never been my intention.

And immediately I thought:

“There it is again.

I’m justifying myself.”

For a moment, I almost stopped myself.

As a creative person, I visualize things very vividly.

And at that moment I could literally see a giant rake swinging straight toward my forehead.

But then another thought came:

“What if I actually want to say this?

What if I am not trying to convince anyone?

What if I am not asking anyone to agree with me?

What if I simply want to say what is true from my side?

Why should telling the truth automatically mean that I am trying to convince someone?”

And suddenly, something shifted.

I realized that perhaps my impulse to explain myself was not always a problem.

Perhaps, at some point, it had been a form of protection.

When other people were defining my intentions for me, saying

“No, that’s not what I meant”

was not necessarily an attempt to control them.

It was an attempt to keep hold of myself.

And maybe that matters.

We often talk about trauma responses as if every protective reaction must eventually disappear.

But perhaps that is too simple.

Sometimes a response that developed because we needed protection can later become a useful tool — if we are the ones deciding when to use it.

The problem isn’t necessarily the response.

The problem is when it becomes automatic.

Or when we are no longer allowed to choose.

Because when we can pause before we act and choose how to respond, the reaction is no longer running the show.

We are.

At first, I had been so beaten up by my own repeated encounters with that metaphorical rake that I became afraid even to go near it.

But eventually I understood:

I can explain myself without taking responsibility for being understood.

I don’t have to make anyone understand me.

I can simply tell my story —

in my essays, my articles, my videos, or anywhere else I choose.

There is a big difference between why we explain ourselves.

Are we trying to create a certain image of ourselves?

Or are we trying to take responsibility off ourselves for actions that were never ours?

This distinction feels very important to me now.

I can explain myself.

I can clarify what I meant.

I can say when someone’s interpretation doesn’t match my experienсе.

And then I can stop.

I don’t have to make them understand.

I don’t have to make them agree.

I don’t have to keep explaining until I receive some kind of verdict that says:

“Okay. You’re innocent.”

That is not my responsibility.

I can tell my side of the story without becoming responsible for someone else’s interpretation of it.

I can simply choose not to continue the conversation.

I can say what I want to say —

and leave.

And, in a way, that is what I have always done.

How other people reacted to my words, how they interpreted them, and what kind of drama they created around them was never my responsibility.

And maybe this is the balance

I was looking for.

For a while, I blamed myself for defending or explaining myself at all.

Then I blamed myself for not being understood.

I thought:

“I must never explain myself.”

Or:

“I must explain myself until everyone understands.”

But neither is true.

We are not responsible for how other people understand us.

Maybe someone simply doesn’t want to understand us.

Maybe they have already created their own version of reality in which you are exactly who they need you to be.

And you don’t have to participate in maintaining that version.

My balance now looks like this:

I decide when I want to explain myself.

And I decide when I’m done.

Maybe someone simply enjoys chewing the same piece of gum over and over.

But that doesn’t mean I have to chew it too.

Not Everything Needs to Be Chewed Forever.

There is another image that came to me one day.

Sometimes people keep chewing the same piece of emotional gum for years.

The same story.

The same interpretation.

The same questions.

The same arguments.

The same what ifs.

They chew it, pass it around, chew it again, and somehow everyone becomes responsible for the taste.

But what if I don’t want to chew it anymore?

What if I’ve already said what I wanted to say?

What if I don’t care what they decide to do with the story after that?

They can keep it.

They can interpret it.

They can discuss it.

They can create whatever reality they want around it.

That’s their gum.

They can chew it for as long as they like.

I don’t have to.

Because explaining myself once does not mean I have agreed to participate forever.

This is where responsibility becomes much clearer to me.

I am responsible for my choices.

I am responsible for what I say.

I am responsible for what I do.

I am responsible for whether I want to respond or remain silent.

But I am not responsible for what another person decides to believe about me.

I am not responsible for their choices.

I am not responsible for the story they construct around me.

And I am certainly not responsible for maintaining that reality for them.

I am not responsible for the taste of their gum.

And I don’t have to chew it with them.

I don’t want to.

For a long time, I think I confused responsibility with control.

I thought that if something was connected to me, I somehow had to manage it.

But that isn’t responsibility.

That’s an impossible job.

Sometimes taking responsibility for yourself means returning everything else to its rightful owner.

If people wanted me to exist inside their reality and consciously crossed my boundaries,

those were their actions.

Not mine.

I simply refused to keep chewing their gum.

Maybe healing doesn’t mean becoming so detached that nothing ever makes you want to explain yourself again.

Maybe healing means being able to explain yourself without needing the explanation to save you.

You can speak or remain silent.

You can clarify.

You can walk away.

You can defend yourself.

You can decide that the conversation isn’t worth another word.

None of these choices automatically means you are triggered, stuck, weak, or unhealed.

Sometimes you simply choose.

You don’t need to be afraid of justifying yourself.

You don’t need to prove that you have healed by never explaining anything.

It is perfectly okay to say:

“This is what happened from my side.

This is what I meant.

This is what I didn’t mean.

And now I’m done talking about it.”

That’s enough.

Everyone else can keep chewing their gum.

We can explain ourselves without taking responsibility for being understood.

And we can leave the rest with the people who choose to keep chewing.

It’s their gum.

Maybe they have never tasted anything better.

Our job is to make our own lives much more interesting than someone else’s piece of gum that has been chewed for so long it has become nothing but rubber.

We can choose a new piece every day.

We can choose the flavor ourselves.

And if someone offers us theirs, we can simply say:

“No, thank you.”

That is freedom of choice.

We don’t owe anyone participation.

If someone starts a drama, it doesn’t mean we have to join the cast.

We have tickets to the comedy.

And popcorn. 🍿

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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