the stories we tell ourselves.

“she never responded to my text, she must be mad at me.”

“he said he appreciated me, obviously he’s in love with me.”

“they were talking, they must have been talking about me behind my back. and they are purposefully leaving me out.”

the stories we tell ourselves. we can convince ourselves of all sorts of things without having any of it based in facts. one of my college professors always said, “perception is reality,” meaning what we believe to be true is true for ourselves. or is it?

that first example actually happened to me. my phone broke on tour and it took me 10 days to get a new phone. at some point in those 10 days a friend of mine texted me; i never texted her back (because I couldn’t) and she assumed that i was mad at her. she wasted time and energy and made herself worried for literally no reason at all.

funnily enough the second example happened to me as well.  maybe I didn’t immediately jump to “he’s in love with me” but you get what i’m saying, right?  and you know what, he wasn’t in love with me, he just appreciated me. shocker.

you guys, the third example happened to me too! i don’t know why we think that we are important enough for people to talk about us but we all do. we all assume that other people are talking about us and we assume that they are speaking of us negatively. and, of course, if they are talking about us behind our back they are also leaving us out of things on purpose. 

in every circumstance we think we know what’s going on. we think we have it all figured out. we think we have read the situation or the other person or that text message or social media comment correctly. notice a theme?….we think. and then once we start, it snowballs and we can’t stop.  we read tone into every message, good or bad. we interpret what people say as condescending or assume they wish the worst for us.

the biggest problem with this is it generally causes needless hurt, confusion, and bitterness. we get so wrapped up in our own heads that we don’t even realize we’re dragging our crap (emotions, past experiences, etc) into present situations where it doesn’t apply. i’m not sure what it is about our human existence that causes us to err on the side of the negative but we do. and almost always it has to do with our own problems, our lack of confidence or our need to be right.

it’s not easy but the best thing to do when you find yourself heading down this path is to step back and ask yourself, “is this rational? would this person actually mean to make me feel bad or is the fact that i slept through my alarm, dropped my coffee on the floor, and forgot to send that email that i promised to send really what’s causing me to be on edge?” or if you’re feeling slighted (and it’s justified) maybe say something instead of stewing in your own pot of anger? super difficult but would probably make you feel better, right? a lot of times just feeling like you’ve been heard is enough.

i’m not pointing any fingers here, i’m just as guilty as the next person (if not more so) but maybe the next time we start to jump to a conclusion we should plant our feet firmly on the ground and ask a couple questions before throwing ourselves into the abyss.

xo