Do people misread you?

[paranoid_cataclysm]

This question popped into my head, since it involves emotions I thought it would be a good question to ask here.  Do people misread your emotions such as once when I was extremely paranoid thinking everyone was against me and having an anxiety attack someone thought I was angry at the world when I was far from angry and rather scared that I was going to lose my job.  I learned that people with bipolar disorder/schizoaffective disorder/schizophrenia tend to misread other peoples' emotions and I was wondering now if everyone else misreads our emotions.

[cirene]

Wow - is this characteristic of bipolar??  Since my school days, I've been told my facial expressions sometimes look like I'm thoroughly pissed but I'm not at all.  At work, folks will walk by my office and stop in and ask 'are you ok?'  I'm totally fine but my boss would tell me I look very angry.  How odd that all you folks deal with almost the same exact thing!

[paranoid_cataclysm]

I have the same problem when I'm off meds, people think I'm on drugs even if I don't say anything to them.  I was told it is my facial expression.  Someone else told me it is because I act funny and I'm hungry all the time but I don't get where they get the second part from because I only eat once or twice a day and sarcasm isn't their form of humor.

[ElizabethC1983]

yea, happens to me too. same thing, when im anxious or having a panic attack and afraid, I usually dont talk much when that happens, especally if im in public or around lots of people then people have thought I was mad about something. It just kinda makes things worse too.

[hell1971]

Yes people misread me, my true friends have no problem with me but to strangers I can come across as "off", which always astounds me because I never say anything to justify this, I am always pleasant if I am "off" its usually due to a lack of concentration and my mind may wounder when people are talking, sometimes I cant stand all the noise both in the real world and in my head and as I think about it I think this is why I am sometimes misread.

[Xila31]

The one thing that always bothered me was when I was in high school I was labeled "a psycho" and one student even tried to nominate me for "most likely to go beserk and kill everyone" in the senior year book. They did not allow it (thank goodness) but that really hurt me because I am not a violent person at all, or mean. It made me realize just how much on the outside I was.

[Jade59]

People have read me as angry all my life.  Through school, many of the kids who didn't know me thought I was stuck up when really, I just had  very low self esteem and was unsure of myself.  I met my best friends in 7th grade, but we had all gone to school together since grade school.  They told me I seemed scary before they knew me??  My mom even used to tell me the frown would freeze on my face and well, with age I suppose it did.  I'm not someone who automatically smiles so I try to remember to arrange my face to look friendly when out in public because I'm not angry at all.  I do have to think about it and people definitely react to me differently when I make this effort.  

[Xila31]

I think I get misread, too. I think that sometimes I respond to things in a way people do not expect. Like once when we were first dating, my husband surprised me by saying he was going to take me out to dinner for Valentinte's day. I was not expecting it and instead of doing the "OMG! That is soooo sweeet!" or getting all excited, I just sort of looked at him and said, "Okay, that's nice." I was actually really excited and happy about it, but I just didn't respond correctly, so he thought I didn't want to and was not excited so he was hurt by my reaction.

Despite the bipolar, I tend to be sort of flat off and on like that.

[HoneyNut]

Yes, I feel (and know at times) that I am being misread.  I also think it is my fault too though, because I feel that I have inadequate control over my facial expressions and emotions.  It's probably due to over-thinking on how I want to be perceived/come across to the other person that at times signals get crossed.  At other times I am completely unaware how others see me; I think it is just a loss of social reality, for me.

[heyjude1]

Yes, I have had people think I am angry about something and in reality, I'm not angry, but just anxious or excited.  I don;t think it has anything with being Bipolar but just bad communication or perspective of the other person.

[ILADVOCATE]

Yes before my current recovery and especially before psychiatric treatment people thought that I was an angry and hateful person. When I read poems that were psychotic, people thought that I was amusing because I was "crazy" (their terms). Part of it is misunderstanding and part of it is societal stigma but in reality I was having standard symptoms such as paranoia and an agitated mixed state and as well as displaying inaapropriate behavior that was manic with aspects of psychosis. People have a preset series of categories they think of as normal and whereas for physical disabilities they can understand what is wrong if its psychiatric they just label it as abnormal and think its a willful antagonistic response when in fact it may be a symptom or maladaptive coping behavior.