Never Judge a Person Until You've Walked Ten Miles in Their Moccasins

That’s a great saying but what does it mean?

Whether or not those are the original words, the wisdom behind them has never felt more relevant. We are living in one of the most judgmental periods in history and I am not sure how good we are at navigating it.

I don’t think people have suddenly become unkind. I think they are now exposed to more people, more opinions, more images and more lives than any generation before us. Every day we scroll through hundreds of snapshots and make tiny, often unconscious judgments about complete strangers.

We think we know, we rarely know what’s true.

We Judge What We Don't Understand

As a therapist, I've noticed something over the years: people often judge struggles they have never personally experienced.

• "Why don't they just get over it?"
• "What's wrong with them?"
• "Everyone gets tired."
• "Other people have it much worse."

These are comments I hear all too often.

Unless you've lived inside someone else's body, mind and nervous system, you can never truly know what they're carrying. We can make assumptions, but we can't know their reality.

An older person who walks slowly may not simply be "slowing down." Every step may hurt. They may have arthritis in every joint, have lost their confidence after a fall, or be grieving the body they once had. Until you experience ageing yourself, it's easy to underestimate what it asks of a person.

I remember my grandma talking endlessly about her knees and the pain they caused. As children, we'd often glance at each other as if to say, "Here we go again." It wasn't that we didn't love her, we simply didn't understand. Then, years later, I experienced arthritis myself. Even though it was only mild, it taught me something I hadn't fully appreciated before. What had once sounded like complaining suddenly sounded like someone trying to explain what living with pain every single day felt like.

I think that lesson applies to so many things we experience as human beings.

"How can they afford to go on holiday when they didn't have enough money for Christmas presents?" "How can they buy a new hoover when they still owe me money?" "How could they accept that promotion when they knew it should have been mine?"

Over and over again, we judge and assess without really knowing the full story. We see a single chapter of someone's life and convince ourselves we've read the whole book.

The same is true of illness. Someone living with chronic pain may look perfectly well on the outside. Someone struggling with anxiety may smile all day while their heart races inside their chest. Someone living with depression may be fighting the biggest battle of their life simply by getting out of bed each morning.

I often hear people say, "Social situations exhaust me. Putting on a front all day so that people can't see how I'm really feeling is just too much." Most people around them have no idea of the effort it has taken simply to leave the house.

From the outside, we see behaviour. From the inside, they are living an experience we cannot see.

Perhaps that's why compassion matters so much. We rarely know the battles another person is fighting, and when we judge without understanding, we risk adding to a burden they are already carrying.

My Son Taught Me This Again

A few months ago, my son Dan shattered his ankle. Three breaks, a plate, and a set of screws holding it together. On paper, that's a sentence. In his life, it rewrote almost everything.

Dan runs his own business, has two young children who don't understand why Dad can't get down on the floor to play with them anymore, or lift them when they fall and cry. He can't carry a box, a shopping bag, or a toddler. Stairs, which he used to take two at a time, now take him a full minute and crutches. A trip to the supermarket, once a fifteen-minute errand, becomes an hour of planning and negotiating how long can he stand before the pain sets in.

He's exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. The mental load of running a business from a chair, coordinating childcare he can no longer physically help with, and simply getting through a day without wincing, is its own kind of labour. Nobody puts that on a scan.

And still, I've heard people say it to him, gently but plainly: "Other people have it worse." "He'll just need to get on with it." "It’s only a broken foot, surely, he can cope." "When is he going back to work?"

I don't think anyone meant harm, I think they simply hadn't lived it. Watching my own son go through this, I found myself thinking about every patient I've ever sat across from who told me something similar had been said to them, about their pain, their anxiety, their grief that had been judged harshly and I understood it differently this time. Not as a therapist but as a mother and a grandmother.

It's remarkable how quickly our perspective changes when life places us in someone else's shoes. The things we once dismissed suddenly become very real. I only wish compassion didn't always need pain as its teacher.

Our Children Are Growing Up Under Constant Judgment

Many young people are growing up believing they are constantly being watched, judged, compared and scored. They spend hours deciding what to wear, how their hair looks, whether they'll fit in, whether someone will laugh, whether they'll be left out. For some, leaving the house has become an emotional marathon, not because they're weak, but because they're carrying an invisible weight.

Social media has amplified something humans have always done: comparison. Only now it follows our children everywhere, and much of what they're comparing themselves to isn't even real. It's edited, filtered, and selected for the happiest moment and the best angle. Yet our brains treat someone else's highlight reel as an accurate picture of their whole life, and measure our own ordinary Tuesday against it. It's a competition with no fair rules.

In my clinical work, I've seen a rise in young people who quietly withdraw, not because they lack potential or don't care, but because trying to keep up feels impossible. They just can’t cope with the constant competition. So, they retreat into bedrooms, into gaming, into scrolling, isolating completely from life outside because sometimes the safest way feels like not participating in life at all. Leaving parents feeling lost and helpless, asking themselves what can we do to change this?

Judgment Feeds Survival

The nervous system doesn't distinguish especially well between physical danger and social danger. Being excluded from the group has been a real threat throughout human history, and our brains still respond as though acceptance equals safety. We believe that safety comes in belonging to a tribe. If you have ever suffered being ghosted or left out you will know what I mean.

That's why judgment cuts so deep, and why fear of it changes behaviour:

When we fear being criticised, we stop speaking. When we fear rejection, we stop trying. When we fear getting it wrong, we stop growing.

A child who's afraid of being laughed at stops raising their hand in class. An adult who's afraid of being judged stops asking for help. Dan, afraid of being seen as making excuses, pushed himself to walk on an ankle that wasn't ready, and set his recovery back by weeks. Judgment doesn't just hurt feelings. It changes what people are willing to attempt.

I say to the teenagers that I work with, please go into school and think who would I like to be friends with. That is a very different question to the one most of them ask, who will be my friend. The first shows independence and enables the teen to keep in their power, the second shows a need desperation almost an unspoken phrase of “please like me and be my friend”. It seems that unconsciously or energetically others can feel this and then act differently at times to the 2 differing intentions.

Self-Judgement Hurts and Creates Unhelpful Patterns of Behaviour and Belief

I often wonder where our self-judgement really begins and who it begins with. I imagine the answer is different for every one of us. For some, it starts with a careless comment at school. For others, it might be criticism at home, bullying, comparison, rejection, or simply growing up feeling that they were never quite enough.

I think many of us forget that our brain, our own internal computer, is being programmed from the day we are born by lots of different people, not just the ones who love us. Along the way we collect labels. Shy. Clumsy. Lazy. Thick. Stupid. Too emotional, too sensitive. We hear them often enough that we eventually stop questioning them and start believing them. Before long, we begin living as though those labels are part of who we are, rather than simply opinions that were placed upon us.

I believe that one of the most important things we can do as human beings is to know our worth. In fact, it's one of the reasons I created the self-worth task inside HappyMe. Over the years, I realised that so many people didn't actually need more confidence. They needed to stop believing the harsh things they had been telling themselves for years, often based on opinions, labels and experiences that were never truly theirs to carry.

I also believe that one of the most important relationships we will ever have is the one we have with ourselves. The conversations we have inside our own minds shape how we feel, what we believe is possible, and how we see the world around us. There is a part of our brain that processes our internal dialogue as though every word is directed at us. When we repeatedly criticise ourselves or reinforce negative labels, our brain begins to accept those messages as truth. Over time, those thoughts become beliefs, and those beliefs quietly shape our behaviour.

We create patterns and programmes that we then go on to live by. I often describe our brain as having internal filters. Those filters are constantly searching the outside world for evidence to support what we already believe about ourselves. If I believe I'm stupid, ugly or overweight, my brain will naturally notice the look from another person, the offhand comment, or the situation that appears to confirm that belief, even when it was never intended that way. Meanwhile, all the evidence that contradicts it often passes by unnoticed.

Isn't it interesting that we find it so much easier to believe the negative things people say about us than the positive ones? Why do we hold on to criticism for years, yet dismiss compliments in seconds? Perhaps the most important judgement we will ever change is not the one we have of other people, but the one we have of ourselves.

Moral Judgements

Have you ever noticed how quickly we form an opinion about someone the very first time we meet them? Within seconds, our brain has often decided what kind of person they are, whether we like them, whether we trust them, and even whether we think we have anything in common with them. Yet the reality is, we've barely exchanged a few words.

During my training, we did a fascinating exercise that has stayed with me ever since. We were each asked to choose someone from the group that we didn't know. We then stood opposite them for five minutes, simply looking at them, before writing down what we believed to be true about them. We had a list of around ten questions to answer. What job did they do? Were they married or single? How old were they? What kind of personality did they have? What hobbies might they enjoy?

When we'd all finished, we compared our answers with the people we'd been observing. It was incredible. Very few people in the room got more than a couple of answers right. We had all confidently created stories about complete strangers, yet most of those stories were wrong.

It made me wonder what these snap judgements really mean in everyday life.

Perhaps they're the reason we decide to buy from one person rather than another. Maybe they're why we instinctively warm to one individual but keep our distance from someone else. They may influence who we choose as friends, who we trust, who we avoid, or even who we employ. These unconscious judgements quietly shape many of our decisions, yet they're often based on very little evidence.

The trouble is, when we get those first impressions wrong, we may miss out on some wonderful people and opportunities. We can dismiss someone before they've even had the chance to show us who they really are. We write people off because they don't fit the story our brain created in those first few moments.

I've learnt over the years that first impressions can be useful, but they should never be the final verdict. Curiosity is far more powerful than certainty. When we allow ourselves to get to know someone beyond our first judgement, we often discover qualities we would never have seen if we'd simply walked away.

The Acceptable Judgements

Healthy judgement is not something to fear. In fact, it is one of our greatest strengths. Every day we make judgements that help us stay safe, protect our wellbeing, make wise decisions and live in line with our values. Healthy judgement allows us to recognise when a situation doesn't feel right, set boundaries with people who repeatedly disrespect us, learn from our mistakes without attacking ourselves, and choose relationships that are built on trust and kindness.

The difference is that healthy judgement comes from awareness rather than fear. It is curious instead of critical, thoughtful instead of reactive, and focuses on behaviours and choices rather than labelling people or ourselves. Judgement becomes unhealthy only when it is driven by survival, assumptions or shame. When we learn to judge with wisdom, compassion and evidence, our judgements no longer imprison us, they guide us towards a safer, healthier and more authentic life.

A Different Question

Perhaps the answer isn't becoming less observant. Perhaps it's becoming more curious.

Instead of "What's wrong with them?", we might ask, "I wonder what they've been through?" Instead of assuming weakness, we might ask whether this person is carrying something we simply can't see. Compassion doesn't mean agreeing with every choice someone makes. It means recognising that every behaviour has a story, and that most of the people we're quick to judge are not lazy, weak, or difficult. They're tired, frightened, or overwhelmed, and doing their best with a nervous system that's trying, in its own imperfect way, to feel safe.

In practice, that shift is small. It's pausing half a second before deciding what someone's slowness, silence, or short temper means. It's telling a child that their worth was never up for scoring in the first place. It's remembering, the next time you're tempted to compare your unfiltered day to someone else's filtered one, that you're not actually looking at their life.

None of us truly knows another person's journey until, somehow, life invites us to walk a few miles in their shoes. I didn't fully understand that until I watched my son learn to walk again. When that day comes for you, whatever form it takes, compassion will feel far more natural than judgment ever did.

The more people I've worked with as a therapist, the less I judge. Because every story I've heard has reminded me that behaviour always makes sense when you understand what created it.

One of the reasons we created HappyMe was because I wanted people to experience this shift for themselves. Not simply to stop judging other people, but to stop judging themselves so harshly too. Through the lessons and tasks, I've watched people become kinder towards themselves, and something interesting happens when that changes. They often become kinder towards everyone else as well.

Melanie