The Power of Words

I’ve always tried to be a good person. I’ve accepted that I’m not perfect. Sometimes I get things wrong. Sometimes I’m not as kind as I’d like to be. But, generally speaking, I try my best. I’m only human, and I want people to like me.

I grew up as the kid who was never popular, yet there was always a part of me that longed to be well-liked by my peers. Looking back, I can trace so much of my adult life back to a single sentence that someone once said to me: “See, this is why nobody likes you”.

I attended several different schools while growing up, which made it difficult to form and maintain friendships. It was especially hard when I’d move from a school where people seemed friendly and I’d felt relatively happy to one where I suddenly felt as though there was something wrong with me.

At high school, I was fortunate enough never to get into any physical confrontations. Instead, I was the kid nobody really noticed. I drifted through the years almost invisible. People rarely bothered to learn my name, yet they were perfectly happy to mock me or make my time there unpleasant.

There was definitely bullying, although it often felt less like targeted cruelty and more as though the people involved didn’t even recognise me as a fellow human being. I was just there, existing on the edge of everything.

I had a very small group of friends, although “acquaintances” would probably be more accurate in most cases. We didn’t stay in touch after leaving school, and the whole experience left me feeling incredibly lonely.

I wasn’t always the friend I should have been either. Part of that was my desperate need to be accepted. Sometimes I’d join in laughing when one of my friends became the target of ridicule, only to feel awful about it afterwards. I wanted so badly to fit in that I made choices I’m not proud of.

In a strange way, that understanding has helped me forgive many of the people who made my life miserable. Teenagers are all trying to find their place in the world, and in the process, they often make poor judgements and hurt people without fully appreciating the impact.

It didn’t work, anyway. I still wasn’t accepted. I was still a nobody. Perhaps that’s the safest way to get through school: slipping quietly under the radar. Yet those experiences followed me into adulthood and continue to shape the way I see myself.

To this day, I crave approval. Any criticism, rejection, or sign that somebody dislikes me can feel overwhelming. I hate it. I’m tormented by it. Even when I know I’m overthinking, I can’t seem to switch it off.

Things changed when I started college. For the first time, I made a few genuine friends; people I still consider amongst my closest friends today. Even the classmates I wasn’t particularly close to were friendly enough. We’d exchange greetings in passing. People acknowledged my existence. It sounds like a small thing, but after years of feeling invisible, it meant a lot. I felt happy, comfortable and accepted.

I believed people could see that I had good intentions, even if I didn’t always understand every social cue or handle every interaction perfectly. Then everything changed.

During a group conversation, someone I care for dearly said: “See, this is why nobody likes you”.

I can’t even remember what we were discussing, as the context has long since disappeared. But those seven words remain crystal clear in my memory.

My entire world seemed to collapse. Everything I thought I knew about myself was suddenly thrown into doubt. Had I been fooling myself into believing people liked me? Were my friends only pretending? Did strangers immediately get a bad impression of me? Had I misunderstood every social interaction I’d ever had?

That single sentence embedded itself deep inside my mind. At the time, I had no idea how much those words would shape the person I’d become.

Ever since, I’ve questioned everything. I don’t trust my judgement in social situations. I assume people are simply being polite. I worry that friends secretly tolerate me rather than enjoy my company. When I message someone, I convince myself they’re rolling their eyes before forcing themselves to reply. Every facial expression, every pause in conversation, every choice of words gets replayed and analysed over and over again. I’m even convinced my own family are judging me.

I’ve had a lot of therapy over the years, and this topic frequently comes up as a root cause of my self-hatred and my tendency to live for other people’s approval rather than my own happiness. Despite all the self-reflection, self-compassion exercises, and attempts to challenge those beliefs, we’ve never quite managed to undo the damage.

What can I do, really? If someone I trusted so deeply could casually blurt out that nobody liked me at a time when I felt more accepted than ever before, am I kidding myself by believing otherwise? Part of me still thinks I should just accept it. After all, I don’t even like myself most of the time. Why would anyone else?

I do sometimes lean hard into trying to be liked as a result of all this. I’ll go out of my way for people. I try to be overly friendly. I’ll do favours that come at my own expense, all in the hope of winning approval. Assertiveness goes out the window. Anything to avoid someone realising that they don’t like me.

I don’t know how to move on from it. The therapist’s approach is usually to examine the belief critically: it’s unrealistic that everyone dislikes me, I’m not an all-bad person, and it’s okay if I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Looking at it from the other side, I don’t like everyone I meet either. That’s normal. That’s life. Intellectually, I understand all of that. But understanding something and believing it are two very different things.

It strikes me now that the sentence itself probably wasn’t what changed my life. If a stranger had said it, I doubt I’d remember it today. What gave those words their power was who they came from. They were spoken by someone whose opinion mattered deeply to me, at a time when I finally felt accepted. In a single moment, they confirmed every fear I’d carried since childhood: that I was unlikeable, unwanted, and somehow getting social interactions wrong without realising it.

Years later, I still don’t know whether I’ll ever completely shake that feeling. What I do know is that one careless sentence can leave a mark that lasts far longer than the person who said it ever intended. That’s why I try to be more careful with the words I choose. We rarely know what battles others are fighting or which insecurities they’re carrying. Sometimes a single sentence can follow someone for the rest of their life. I know, because one followed me.