One time I was temporarily living in an apartment complex with a very heavy door at the entrance with restricted access. Other people from work were living there too. I happened to talk to one of them during lunch. I mentioned in the course of conversation that I could hear the loud bang of the entrance door closing from inside my flat. This person brushed it off and didn't believe me. Apparently they couldn't hear anything so I was just imagining things. I knew I wasn't but I also know I am ultra-sensitive to sound so thought it possible I heard the sound, but others just didn't.

That little exchange stayed with me. Perhaps because it was one of the numerous times where my own experience, observation, or perception was invalidated as being all in my head. Only later I found out this person lived on the 10th floor. I was on the 2nd floor. So it wasn't that I was too sensitive to sound, it wasn't that I was imagining things... the actual conditions in which we were experiencing things were different, though outwardly they looked the same! Had that person trusted my experience... there might have been some understanding. Instead, they chose to believe that what didn't match their own experience was not true or made up by an overactive imagination. Makes one think about how we go through life holding onto our own truths, rarely trying to see what the other person sees, where they might be seeing it from…