A recent online comment became a neat little case study in my mind after someone wrote on a video I’d posted, “Christ you are so boring!” So I decided to jot down some thoughts, in the hope that it might help others better understand why opinions and judgements get thrown around (most of us are guilty of doing this!), and to help you avoid being affected by someone else’s stuff, even when they try to make it about you – to ‘shrug it off’.

So this blog isn’t really about an insult; it’s about what becomes possible when you do the work on yourself. And what continues quietly and often destructively to others (and often to self), when you don’t. It’s about the difference between living unconsciously and living with awareness. The difference between reacting and reflecting – between projection and ownership.

What judgements often reveal

On the surface the comment is just a throwaway insult. A bit of online nastiness – nothing new. But I found myself genuinely curious about it, and thankfully, not offended. Because I’m soundly aware that moments like this say far more about how an opinion holder sees the world instead of the actual thing they’re throwing their opinions at.

There is a saying often attributed to Anaïs Nin: “We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Whether or not she said it, it is psychologically true. Our perceptions are not neutral; they are filtered through our history, our wounds, our insecurities, our unexamined parts.

So when someone says, “You’re boring,” what are they actually saying or doing?

The language of opinion

First, notice the language: “You’re boring”, it’s presented as absolute fact. It carries no ownership. It does not say, “I find you boring.” It does not say, “This content isn’t for me.” It states something as though it is objectively true. That might seem like semantics, but it is not.

To say “I find you boring” requires at least a flicker of self awareness. It acknowledges subjectivity. It admits that this is about the opinion holder; their taste, their response, their internal experience. But “You’re boring” points only outward.

And that is something we see everywhere. “That film is shit.” “That person is unbearable.” “This place is rubbish.” Opinions thrown around as if they are facts. No ownership. No curiosity. No pause to consider what is happening internally before launching it externally.

When we have not done much internal work, this feels normal. It’s socially reinforced. It is how people talk. But the more interesting question is not whether the opinion is kind (it clearly is not), but rather: why say it at all?

Looking beneath the surface

And that is where psychotherapy enters the room… TA DA!

Because once you begin doing the work on yourself, a deeper layer becomes visible. Instead of stopping at “that was unkind,” you might ask, “what’s actually being expressed here unconsciously?“

If I imagine I had felt hurt by the comment, that hurt becomes data – something to hold and consider. Sometimes what gets evoked in others gives us a clue about what is being displaced elsewhere. In psychodynamic terms, this could be projection: where an uncomfortable feeling that cannot be tolerated internally gets located externally instead.

For example, if someone cannot bear their own sense of dullness, insignificance or invisibility, calling someone else boring momentarily distances them from that feeling. It is messy, it is unconscious, and it is very human.

When we do not do the work

When we do not do the work, this is the cost. We remain at the mercy of feelings we do not recognise or understand, and we throw them outward, often onto undeserving others. We see this process on micro and macro levels, from playground insults to large scale political hostility. Unprocessed pain often gets scattered onto other people. When we do not own our internal world, it leaks.

The specific word also matters; “boring” is not random. Words carry emotional charge and we rarely choose them randomly. If that word has weight, it probably has weight somewhere in the opinion holder’s story – so it fundamentally communicates something about them and their relationship with the idea, notion, feeling (discomfort?) with ‘boring’.

This is close to what Carl Jung described as the shadow. The parts of ourselves we find unacceptable, weak or threatening. The parts we disown. The traits we react most strongly to in others often mirror something unresolved within us. None of this means we excuse unkindness, but it does help us understand it.

Why it did not land

What also struck me was not the comment itself but my response to it; it just didn’t land like it might have done years ago. Instead I was able to observe it as it just flew past me, or if it did land, I felt able to simply just ‘shrug it off’. And that is not because I am enlightened. And I’m not trying to be preconscious here. It’s because I have done a lot of work on myself, and as a result, I am far more comfortable with who I am than I once would have been.

If someone finds me boring, that’s fine, I’m OK with that. It might even be true for them (and some others too!), but it does not threaten my sense of self, because I know a) that it’s an opinion, b) who the opinion belongs to and c) it’s more likely an expression of their self, not mine.

When something or someone hooks us in

If, however, I carried a deep insecurity about being dull or not enough, the comment would have hooked straight into it. I would have grabbed it, turned it over, obsessed about it. “What if they’re right?” “What if everyone thinks that?”

That is what we often call being triggered (I’ve written more about that here).

But it is important to understand what that really means. The other person (the opinion holder or any stimuli for that matter) only pulls the trigger – they do not load the gun. When you are ‘triggered’, the ammunition is already there within you: old experiences, old shame, old narratives about who we are. And so to blame the other person (or whatever external stimuli) for your emotional experience is to do precisely what I’m talking about in this blog; it’s not taking responsibility for your own stuff and pinning that on someone/thing else.

Draining the charge

When we do the work in therapy and process those experiences, the charge in the ammunition drains out. The memory might remain, but it no longer explodes on contact. The trigger gets pulled and nothing fires. You stay in the present moment, the ‘here and now’, instead of being dragged back into the past or the ‘back there and then’.

That does not make you numb. It does not mean you accept poor behaviour. It just means your response comes from grounded presence rather than from an old wound. And this is the magic of doing the work.

Stepping out of the game

Counselling and psychotherapy helps develop your self awareness, it gives you ownership, and it sharpens your capacity to ask, “What is actually happening here?” Both out there, and importantly, in oneself.

Over time you start noticing how often people speak without that awareness. How frequently opinions are delivered as fact and how the emotions behind opinions are rarely, if ever acknowledged (let alone aware of!). It seems totally normalised to discharge feelings onto others without acknowledging them.

And there is a quiet dishonesty in that. Not malicious necessarily. Just unconscious.

When we care deeply about what other people think, when we internalise every projection, we become bound to it, conditioned by it. We unconsciously agree to participate in one another’s unexamined reactions, and it keeps the game going.

Therapy allows you to step out of that agreement, it allows you to say, ‘I am not playing this game anymore’. It clarifies what actually matters. Who actually matters. And equally, what does not.

The freedom of looking inward

It adds a dimension to life. You begin to see the mechanics underneath behaviour, underneath conflict, underneath your own reactions.

You stop confusing other people’s baggage with your identity. You also stop being governed by your own!

So yes, someone thinks I am boring. And that is genuinely fine.

What interests me far more is what that sentence reveals about the cost of not turning inward, the cost it can have on others when you don’t, and the freedom that comes when you do.

Therapy is not about becoming immune to criticism; a big part is about becoming conscious enough not to confuse someone else’s unconscious material with who you are.

And that changes everything.

Thanks all

Ed