Yes, I know that I have no control over people's assumptions about me, but that still doesn't stop me from being affected by it on a deep level.
Yesterday, I walked into a store and the woman who owned it assumed I was a shoplifter and started to follow me around every aisle. She made little effort to hide that she was following me around. In fact, she said explicitly at one point "don't go down that aisle ! there's nothing for you there!"
At this point I just wanted to walk out of the store, but I figured that I might as well buy something because I might have valdated her wrong assumption if I had just walked out without buying anything.
There is also a racial component to this. I am black, and this has happened to me in the past. However, this time it really affected me because I also felt a lot of hostility and negative energy from this woman as she followed me around. I wasn't being paranoid, and there was no room for ambiguity. She really was following me around, and the words she explicitly said to me only confirmed the hostility that I felt emanating from her.
There I was in the store feeling like absolute crap, yet I kept trying to make excuses for her behavior ( "she was robbed before, possibly with a weapon and is suffering from some kind of ptsd")
As I said, we have no control over what people think of us, but it still doesnt lessen the hurt. Can you share some experiences or ideas of how you personally deal with this ?
Yesterday, I walked into a store and the woman who owned it assumed I was a shoplifter and started to follow me around every aisle. She made little effort to hide that she was following me around. In fact, she said explicitly at one point "don't go down that aisle ! there's nothing for you there!"
At this point I just wanted to walk out of the store, but I figured that I might as well buy something because I might have valdated her wrong assumption if I had just walked out without buying anything.
There is also a racial component to this. I am black, and this has happened to me in the past. However, this time it really affected me because I also felt a lot of hostility and negative energy from this woman as she followed me around. I wasn't being paranoid, and there was no room for ambiguity. She really was following me around, and the words she explicitly said to me only confirmed the hostility that I felt emanating from her.
There I was in the store feeling like absolute crap, yet I kept trying to make excuses for her behavior ( "she was robbed before, possibly with a weapon and is suffering from some kind of ptsd")
As I said, we have no control over what people think of us, but it still doesnt lessen the hurt. Can you share some experiences or ideas of how you personally deal with this ?