“Maturity is when you don’t need to hear all the gossip or know a bunch of secrets.”
🍑 A Note from Me
Hi, I’m Jessica.
I write NP Fellow Become The CEO of Your Health— a weekly mental health and functional medicine newsletter about building a healthier relationship with your mind, your body, and yourself.
There’s a particular kind of sick feeling that happens when you learn something about someone you trusted that you weren’t expecting to learn.
Your stomach drops and your brain starts moving faster than the rest of you.
Wait. What?
Then comes the replay.
Things they said.
Things you said.
Conversations that seemed completely normal at the time.
Moments that suddenly look different under this new information.
Was that a sign?
Did they know then?
How long has this been happening?
How did I not see this?
Being blindsided can make you question the other person, but very quickly, it can make you question yourself.
Suddenly you’re trying to solve two things at once: Who is this person?
And: How did I get them so wrong?
🚨🔊My New Annual Halloween Vibes playlist - 2026 edit is now out on Spotify along with my podcast called NP Fellow Collective!
Your Brain Will Start Looking For What You Missed
Hindsight is incredibly convincing.
Once you know something, your brain can usually find evidence that you should have known it sooner.
That weird comment.
The question they didn’t quite answer.
The moment something felt off.
Maybe some of those things were signs.
There are times when we dismiss information because we don’t want it to mean what we suspect it means.
We explain things away.
Give another chance.
Accept an answer that doesn’t quite make sense.
Tell ourselves we’re overthinking.
That’s worth noticing, but there’s another possibility:
Maybe you made a reasonable judgment based on the information you had at the time.
You didn’t know then what you know now and you couldn’t evaluate information you didn’t have.
And if someone withheld something, obscured what they were doing, or allowed you to operate under an assumption they knew wasn’t accurate, hindsight doesn’t magically make that information available to your past self.
Being blindsided doesn’t always mean you missed the signs. Sometimes you were making decisions based on information someone else chose not to give you.
If Something Felt Off, Look At What You Actually Noticed
Sometimes there was a feeling.
You couldn’t quite explain it. Something just seemed…off.
This is where people love to say:
“Always trust your gut.”
I don’t think it’s that simple.
A feeling that something is wrong deserves your attention.
It doesn’t automatically deserve to make the decision.
Don’t obey the feeling. Investigate it.
Ask yourself:
What am I actually noticing?
What doesn’t match?
Maybe their words and behavior are telling you two different stories.
Maybe they expect transparency from you while being strangely selective with their own.
Maybe you keep leaving conversations more confused than when you entered them.
Maybe something changed and nobody acknowledged that it changed.
Red flags aren’t always dramatic.
There’s rarely ominous music playing in the background while someone announces themselves as untrustworthy.
Would save us all some time.
Sometimes it’s simply a mismatch and if you notice one, you can ask about it.
Then pay attention to what happens next.
Do they answer the question?
Do they clarify?
Do they acknowledge why something might look different from your side?
Or do they deflect?
Minimize?
Change the subject?
Make your reaction the problem?
Sometimes how someone responds to being questioned tells you as much as the explanation itself.
You May Never Know Why They Did It
This is where being blindsided can turn into an investigation.
Did they mean to hurt me?
Was this deliberate?
Were they using me?
Did they know exactly what they were doing?
Was everything they told me bullshit?
You start looking for motive because motive seems like it will settle the case.
If you can understand why they did it, maybe you’ll finally know what to think about them.
Then you’ll know what to do. Except you may never get a clean answer.
Even if you confront someone, you’re asking the person whose behavior made you question your trust to give you the explanation that restores your certainty.
Maybe they’ll give you one.
Maybe it’ll be true.
Maybe it won’t.
Maybe they genuinely see what happened differently.
You could spend a very long time trying to get inside someone else’s head.
Meanwhile, their behavior is sitting right in front of you.
You know what happened.
You know what information you had.
You know what you learned later.
You know how they responded when you asked about it, if you chose to ask.
That may be enough.
You don’t need someone to confess their intentions before you’re allowed to respond to their behavior.
You can be uncertain about someone’s intentions and certain that their behavior changed what you’re willing to give them.
What Does This Change?
This might be the more useful question.
Not:
Who are they really?
Not:
Was everything fake?
Not even:
Can I trust them?
Instead:
What does knowing this change for me?
Maybe the answer is nothing.
You hear their explanation, understand what happened, and decide the relationship doesn’t need to change.
→ Maybe it changes one thing or maybe it changes everything, but new information is allowed to affect the decisions you make about someone.
You don’t need to prove they’re a bad person first, you don’t need them to agree with your interpretation, and you don’t need to build a case convincing everyone else that your decision is justified.
You can simply say: “I know something now that I didn’t know before.”
And let that information matter.
Trust Doesn’t Have To Be All Or Nothing
When someone blindsides us, there can be pressure to make one giant decision:
→ Do I trust this person or not?
But trust isn’t always that binary.
A better question might be:
What access does this person get now?
Access to your private thoughts.
Your time.
Your work.
Your vulnerability.
Your benefit of the doubt.
Someone can lose access to one part of your life without being dramatically exiled from all of it.
Maybe you share less.
Maybe you ask more questions.
Maybe you put things in writing.
Maybe you stop assuming that because someone could have told you something, they would.
Maybe you step back completely.
The response depends on what happened.
Trust doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Access can change before the relationship does and changing someone’s access doesn’t have to be punishment.
→ It can simply be an update.
You learned something. So you adjust accordingly.
You Don’t Have To Decide While You’re Still In Shock
Being blindsided creates urgency.
You want answers.
You want to confront.
You want to know what else you don’t know.
However, you don’t have to decide the future of a relationship while you’re still reacting to what you learned.
→ Collect information, ask what you need to ask, and let the initial reaction settle.
You’re allowed to wait before deciding what this changes because the first decision doesn’t have to be what am I going to do about this person?
It can simply be: “I’m going to give myself enough time to understand what just changed.”
A pause gives you time to decide what the new information actually means for you.
Final Thoughts: Believe What You Know Now
Being blindsided can shake your confidence in your own judgment.
Try not to turn that into a second betrayal.
Maybe there were signs you missed.
→ If there were, learn from them.
Maybe you gave someone more benefit of the doubt than they had earned.
→ Remember that.
Maybe there was information you simply couldn’t have known.
→ Let that be true too.
You don’t need to punish your past self for not having your current information and you don’t have to reconstruct every conversation you’ve ever had with someone to figure out who they really are.
Sometimes you won’t get the explanation that makes everything click into place and sometimes the explanation won’t change anything anyway.
You know something now that you didn’t know before.
→ That doesn’t tell you everything about another person, but it tells you something and you’re allowed to let that something change your decisions.
Sometimes the new information is enough.
You don’t need the confession, you don’t need the perfect explanation, and you don’t need to prove who they are.
Believe what you know now and decide what access that information earns.
Thank you for reading this article.
Until next Sunday,
—Jessica
Your 2am friend who actually gets it
“You support your inner peace by letting the right information come to you instead of chasing after the craving of knowing everyone’s business.” —Yung Pueblo
🪩 A Gentle Invitation
If this article resonated with you, you may appreciate my new product called Weekly Skill, a paid NP Fellow series focused on one real, grounded internal skill each week regarding attention, impulse control, emotional regulation, presence, and learning how to work with your nervous system instead of against it.
No pressure. Just an invitation.🤝
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MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.
It’s okay to sit with your own thoughts for a moment. You don’t always need to or should have an immediate reaction.
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