From the author: The fear of being assessed by others crushes me, locks me in a cage, and often literally does not allow me to move. This is a text about a mechanism that works when we try to earn the right assessment from others. Do you notice how much the attitude towards you or other people changes when you have a chance to get to know a person better? When you first meet, not even an acquaintance, but a collision , we always classify new people into some kind of internal category of our own. Nothing is known about the person yet, they haven’t asked anything yet, haven’t heard what he says and how he says it, haven’t even really looked at how he moves, what expression his face takes on in different situations. But it is important for us to award a person with some kind of name, to make him correspond to some caste familiar to us. Even if I hear from a person that he is not inclined to put cliches, does not like to generalize and strive to see how different he is, real - I don't believe it. Because in the first moment, this step, which is called “forming an impression of a person,” gives us the opportunity to feel safer around him. Simply because now it seems to have become more predictable for us. It’s clear what exactly we can’t expect and what, in our opinion (or experience), will definitely happen. Yes, then, if courage and wisdom allow, we can try to put aside the image we’ve created - in order to really see who’s in front of me. And only then does the moment come when a real meeting of two people becomes possible, and not two stamped mannequins. And this happens only if both you and the object of study are ready to open up, as far as possible during the first attempts at communication. Both will have to open up, yes. Otherwise the picture will be completely blurry. No matter how hard you try to get to know a person better without opening up yourself, the trick will not work. At a minimum, because you can get to know another only with your soul, feelings, sensations - with your brain, in the last place, to sum up, to comprehend this is usually called. And for this we will have to open them (soul, feelings, sensations) towards the person who is nearby. And now about the logical trap that we fall into when trying to meet the expectations of others, or when trying to earn the “correct” assessment from them. On the one hand, we all tend to desire approval from others. It’s pleasant, it adds strength, it can increase the degree of self-confidence and give a lot more. On the other hand, being in constant “catch” of other people’s expectations - i.e. those cliches that they managed to hang on us in the first moment - we are determined to maintain them. We begin to work for this picture (or for the one that, as it seems to us, was hung on us - here also mistakes often happen). But in the end, the person next to us doesn’t even have a chance to recognize the real us. And if such a relationship could theoretically be valuable to us, the scenario that unfolds is not at all favorable. I enter into communication wearing a mask, which I thought would interest my opponent. I'm waiting for a positive assessment. And maybe I even get it. Approval, acceptance, intimacy, support. But who is this all aimed at? On me? Or to the picture that I managed to show correctly? Where am I? When will they support, love and warm me? But they won’t, because no one knows the real you. And at some point I even understand this. And to show your true self - oh, how scary it is now. What if I don’t receive the same positive assessment? And I continue to walk through the second, third, and fourth circles of hell. Showing again and again what he initially decided would be accepted correctly. I invest in the relationship, but I can’t get anything. And not because they don’t give it. But because they don’t give it to me, but to a picture, a mask, a stamp, which I also support in every possible way, I constantly invest in. And most often in this place I want to accuse my partner of being callous, of not trying to get to know and understand me , in that there is no intimacy, in that it does not give anything in return.