The Story My Brain Creates

I tried recording my first Healing Out Loud podcast tonight.

And I learned pretty quickly that podcasting is not something I feel comfortable with or know how to do well.

So I’m going to stick with what feels most natural to me:

Writing.

The good part is that I had already written what I wanted to say.

So instead of turning it into a podcast, I’m sharing it here.

This is what tonight’s first podcast episode was going to be about.

What Happens Inside My Head

I can take a very small amount of actual information and somehow create an entire story around it.

And apparently my brain is not satisfied with just the present.

I can go backward and decide what must have happened.

Then I can decide what somebody must be thinking or feeling right now.

And then, because why stop there, I can go straight into the future and decide what is probably going to happen next.

There may be two or three actual facts somewhere in the middle of all of this.

The rest can be guesses.

But when I am in it, those guesses do not always feel like guesses.

They can feel completely real.

And that is what makes this distortion so difficult for me.

I can start emotionally living inside a story before I even know whether any of it is true.

Mind Reading

One part of Jumping to Conclusions is called Mind Reading.

And honestly, the name pretty much says it all.

I think I know what somebody else is thinking.

Maybe somebody seems quieter.

Maybe a conversation feels different.

Maybe communication changes a little bit.

And my brain immediately wants to know why.

If I do not have an answer, apparently I am perfectly capable of providing one myself.

They are upset with me.

I said too much.

They do not want to talk to me.

They are pulling away.

And those thoughts can very quickly stop feeling like thoughts.

They start feeling like information.

Like I know.

But I do not know.

I am guessing.

And something that makes this even harder for me is history.

If I have known somebody for a long time, I know how they have behaved before.

Maybe there really was a time when they got quiet because they were upset.

Maybe there really was a time when distance meant something was wrong.

That part is real.

It actually happened.

So now something feels familiar, and my brain goes back, grabs that old information, and says:

See? This is what is happening again.

And because I am using something that really did happen in the past, the whole thing can feel even more believable.

That has been an important thing for me to recognize.

Past behavior matters.

Patterns matter.

But something being true before does not automatically mean it explains what is happening today.

The past can give me context.

It cannot always give me the answer.

Fortune Telling

Then Mind Reading can move into Fortune Telling.

This is where I take whatever I think somebody is thinking right now and start deciding what they are going to do next.

If I have already decided they are upset with me, maybe they are going to pull away.

If they are pulling away, maybe the relationship is changing.

If the relationship is changing, maybe I need to prepare myself.

Now I am not just trying to figure out what is happening.

I am predicting the future.

And sometimes I can start making actual decisions based on that future before it ever happens.

I did this recently.

There were some real pieces of information.

There was history.

There were things that made what I was thinking seem very reasonable to me.

But then I took those pieces and filled in everything I did not know.

Eventually I found myself thinking about cutting people off.

And when I really stopped and looked at it, nobody had told me the relationship was over.

The thing I was afraid was going to happen had not actually happened.

But in my head, I had already gone all the way to the ending.

And I was preparing to make a real decision based on that ending.

That stopped me.

Because if I had acted on it, the decision would have been real.

The consequences would have been real.

But the future I was reacting to might never have happened.

That is where this becomes bigger than overthinking.

The story in my head can actually start making decisions for me.

Why Uncertainty Is So Hard for Me

This is probably the part that has helped me understand myself the most.

For me, uncertainty is a trigger.

Not knowing does not always feel neutral.

If I do not know what somebody is thinking, if I do not know what is happening, or if I cannot predict what is going to happen next, I do not always feel safe.

And when I do not feel safe, fear comes in.

My body can move into fight-or-flight mode.

Suddenly it feels like I need to figure this out.

I need an answer.

I need to know what is coming.

I need to be prepared.

So when my brain fills in the blanks, in some strange way, it can feel protective.

If I know what the problem is, I can do something about it.

If somebody is upset with me, maybe I can fix it.

If something bad is coming, maybe I can prepare for it.

If I can predict what happens next, maybe I will not be blindsided.

And I am beginning to understand why sometimes even a painful answer can feel safer to me than no answer at all.

Because at least a painful answer gives me something to do.

Uncertainty gives me nothing.

I may just have to wait.

And waiting when I do not feel safe is hard for me.

The problem is that the certainty my brain creates might not be real.

I can feel completely convinced and still be wrong.

And my body can react to that story whether it is true or not.

The anxiety is real.

The fear is real.

The sadness is real.

The physical response is real.

Which is why this sentence has become so important to me:

My emotions are real. The story may not be.

That does not mean I am telling myself not to feel something.

It means I am learning that feeling afraid does not automatically prove that what I am afraid of is actually going to happen.

What I Am Trying to Do Differently

So now comes the hard part.

What do I actually do when I catch myself doing this?

I am still learning.

But one thing that has been helping me is something I call Fact or Fiction.

I strip everything back down.

What do I actually know?

What part did my mind add?

What evidence do I actually have?

And for me, just thinking about those questions is not always enough.

I write it down, or I type it out, and then I read it back to myself out loud.

That has had a completely different effect on me.

When everything stays in my head, it moves really fast.

Facts, assumptions, fears, predictions, all of it starts blending together.

But when I write it down, I have to slow down.

And when I read it out loud, I can see it and hear it at the same time.

For whatever reason, that has helped my brain process things differently.

I can actually look at something and say:

Okay, that part really happened.

Then look at the next part and realize:

Nope. Nobody actually told me that. I added that.

That has been pretty profound for me.

It does not mean my anxiety instantly disappears.

It usually does not.

But it slows me down enough to see what I am actually dealing with.

And sometimes I realize that something I felt completely certain about was actually an assumption or a prediction.

Then comes the next part.

What do I do with that information?

Because just because I can see the facts more clearly does not mean I suddenly stop wanting to do something.

Fear creates urgency for me.

When I am scared, I want control.

I want to fix it.

Ask about it.

Get reassurance.

Prepare myself.

Or sometimes protect myself by making the decision before somebody else can make it for me.

That is why the situation where I thought about cutting people off mattered so much.

I did not need to make that decision right away.

I needed more information.

And that brings me to three words that are much harder for me than they sound:

I don’t know yet.

The “yet” matters.

I am not saying my concern is stupid.

I am not saying nothing is wrong.

I am not forcing myself to believe everything is fine.

I am saying I do not have enough information right now to know what is actually true.

And if I do not know yet, maybe I do not need to make the decision yet either.

That is a big deal for me.

Because when being able to predict what happens next is tied to feeling safe, waiting does not feel easy.

But I am learning that sometimes I need to let the facts catch up before I let the story in my head decide what I am going to do.

Where I Am With This

I am not trying to stop every thought.

I am definitely not trying to pretend I will never Jump to Conclusions again.

I am trying to catch myself a little sooner.

Slow it down.

Figure out what I actually know before I let everything I do not know take over.

And if I can do that, maybe the story in my head does not get to make the next decision for me.

That feels like real progress.

— Dawn
Healing Out Loud

References

Psychology Tools. Jumping to Conclusions.
Therapist Aid. Cognitive Distortions.
Therapist Aid. Fact or Opinion.
NHS Every Mind Matters. Thought Record: CBT Exercise.