The versions of people we trust

Work of boredom 2026.01.04 

 I was woken up by a dream this morning and it took me a good minute to realise it hadn’t actually happened. In the dream, a person who is extremely nice in real life was quite rude, scolding me sharply. I woke up in the middle of trying to explain myself.

I have stopped analysing my dreams because they are often bizarre and feel meaningless. But this one lingered. Not because of what happened in it, but because of how unsettling it felt to encounter an extremely rude version of an extremely nice person.

Once the initial shock passed, I started thinking about it. My brain seemed to believe this was better than trying to fall back asleep. What do we really know about the people in our lives?

This particular person has always been warm, friendly, and kind in my experience. But I only know them in a professional setting. Are they equally nice to others? Is this warmth a professional mask, something worn because the setting requires it? Would they be the same person if I met them in a different context, outside roles and expectations?

We create images of people using only the information available to us. And that information is always incomplete.

I thought of another colleague, someone who always appears to be in pain and visibly annoyed when you need something from them at work. Is this sourness something they carry home in the evening? Or does it soften once they step into a space where they feel less demanded of and more understood?

This led me to wonder what determines our niceness.

For me, being nice in a professional setting comes easily, but not effortlessly. Even in difficult moments, I consciously choose my words and tone. It takes energy. It takes intention. It is a deliberate process.

So when people are not nice, is that also a conscious process? And if it is, why do they not try harder to be kinder, or at least less hurtful, in how they communicate?

Sometimes, not being nice is not a deliberate choice at all. It is a lack of bandwidth. Pain, burnout, resentment, fear, or long-standing habits can shrink the space where kindness lives. For others, it is conscious. They have learned that sharpness equals control, protection, or efficiency. And often, they do not perceive enough cost in changing.

Coming back to the person in my dream. The blueprint I hold of them is simple: ‘always warm, always nice, always friendly.’ But is that who they are across all situations? The respect and trust I have built in this relationship feels rooted almost entirely in these positive interactions.

So I wonder, if I were to observe behaviour that does not fit this version of them, would I be deeply disappointed?

Is it safe to have a stable internal model of someone?

Or does that stability itself carry risk?

The more I sit with this, the more familiar it feels. This is something we see repeatedly in family and relationship counselling. The pain that emerges when someone steps outside the role they were unconsciously assigned. The good one. The strong one. The kind one. Often, the distress is not about the behaviour itself, but about the collapse of an image that once felt reliable.

Maybe the challenge is not to stop forming internal models of people. That may be unavoidable. Maybe the work is to hold those models lightly. To allow room for contradiction. To let people be mostly good without demanding that they be consistently good.

Disappointment does not come from discovering that people are complex.

It comes from believing they would not be.