It’s a feeling that can curdle your confidence. You share an idea in a meeting, and it’s met with silence, only for someone else to repeat it five minutes later to praise. You express a concern to a partner, and you’re told you’re “overreacting.” You try to set a boundary, and you’re laughed off.
Slowly, a toxic story begins to write itself in your mind: No one takes me seriously.
This story can feel like a verdict on your entire worth.
But what if it’s not a fact?
What if it’s a combination of an internal distortion we can learn to manage and an external tactic we can learn to recognize?
Understanding both sides of this dynamic is the key to reclaiming your credibility and finding your voice.
Before we look at how others treat us, we have to look at the stories we tell ourselves. The feeling of being dismissed often begins with two mental traps.
1. The Trap of Absolutes
When your inner voice says "no one" or "always," it’s a red flag. This language collapses your entire, complex life into one single judgment. But it’s a lie.
In reality, your credibility isn't a single score; it changes with the context. Maybe one person dismissed you, but another trusted you. The distortion erases the positive evidence, but it doesn’t erase its existence.
2. The Trap of the Phantom Audience
Part of the sting comes from imagining a faceless crowd where “everyone” thinks you’re ridiculous. But this “everyone” is usually a ghost—a stand-in for one or two specific, critical voices from your past or present.
The first step toward clarity is to unmask this audience. When you hear that voice, ask yourself:
Whose voice am I actually hearing right now?
The list is almost always shorter—and less powerful—than the distortion makes it seem.
The ultimate defense against this is building your internal ballast: a deep, practiced conviction that your perceptions are valid, your feelings are real, and your perspective deserves space, even without unanimous approval.
Dismissal as a Tactic
Dismissal isn’t just something you feel; it’s something people do. It’s a social maneuver used to control, invalidate, or diminish another person. Recognizing the different styles can strip them of their power over you.
The Mocking Style → Turns your feelings into a joke with sarcastic eye-rolls or exaggerated ridicule. It’s designed to reframe your seriousness as silliness.
The Cruel Style → Uses cold contempt to crush your dignity, conveying not just that you’re “wrong,” but that you’re “pathetic.”
The Patronizing Style → Wraps invalidation in faux-gentleness, infantilizing you with words like “sweetie” or “just calm down.”
The Gaslighting Style → The most insidious style, it aims to make you feel fundamentally irrational with lines like, “You’re just inventing things,” or “You’re rewriting history.”
Certain phrases are designed to cut deeper because they weaponize the very distortions you already fight. Lines like,
“That’s why no one takes you seriously,” or
“Everyone agrees you’re ridiculous,”
are so painful because they don’t sound like opinions; they land as if they're factual.
Performance Reviews Mess With Your Head
Performance reviews are a normal part of working life. They’re supposed to help us see where we shine and where we can improve. But for people who are unknowingly neurodivergent—like those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or other neurotypes—these reviews can feel confusing and discouraging.
How to Reclaim Your Ground
Once you can spot both the inner distortion and the external tactic, you can begin to take your power back.
Shift the Frame. When someone says you’re “overreacting,” understand that this is not a measurement of your feeling. It is a measurement of their capacity. What they call “too much” may simply be more than they can handle. Their limit is not a verdict on your legitimacy.
Revalue Your Qualities. The very things that often draw dismissal—intensity, passion, sensitivity—are the engines of art, activism, and innovation. Visionaries were called ridiculous. Mystics were called hysterical. What is dismissed in one context is celebrated as a strength in another.
Choose Your Contexts. The work isn’t to win over every detractor. It’s to hold your own ballast, spot the distortions, recognize the tactics, and invest your energy in people and places where your seriousness is understood and valued.
Your Seriousness Is Not on Trial
The thought “no one takes me seriously” is a painful story, but it is not a fact. It’s a distortion that collapses time, conjures phantom audiences, and corrodes your credibility from the inside out.
While dismissal from others is real, your awareness is the tool you need to resist it. Your seriousness is not up for debate. It is already there, waiting for you to claim it.
Have you ever felt dismissed in this way? What strategies have helped you hold your ballast?