How the Stories We Tell Ourselves Hurt Us

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

One day, some five decades ago, I went on a day trip to Cunningham Falls in western Maryland with my parents and younger brother. I remember playing in a little stream while my mom chatted with another woman.

“She’s not very surefooted,” I heard my mom say to the woman.

I stopped what I was doing. Not surefooted? Was I going to fall? I made my way carefully to the bank of the stream and got out of the water.

From that day on, I identified myself as not very surefooted. I dreaded winters when snow and ice on the ground convinced me I had to stay inside. In time, I even began to fear the leaves that obscured the sidewalks in the fall, and also the rain that — any time, regardless of the season — could make everything slippery and treacherous. The interesting thing is that I didn’t learn that I was not very surefooted from the experience of falling — I learned it based on something my mother said to someone else.

From a very young age, we are almost constantly engaged in the process of learning something. But is what we’re learning always the intended lesson? No. That’s something that begins when we are young and impressionable, and it’s a pattern that, left unchecked, can cause us a lot of unnecessary pain.

Take my mom, for example. I’m certain (now) that she didn’t intend to teach me that I couldn’t trust my sense of balance. That’s the story I told myself, the lesson I learned. I then applied that basic “lesson” to every situation involving even the slightest risk of falling.

As we go through life trying to make sense of our world and the people in it, we often find ourselves filling in gaps in the lessons, so to speak. For me, it was such an automatic, ingrained thing, I wasn’t mindful that I was doing it.

When I was dating the man who ended up being my husband, we lived 250 miles apart and only saw each other one weekend a month. During one of those weekends, we had the following exchange:

Him: Wow, you sure know a lot about protein in food.

Me: I used to want to be a nutritionist…

Him (laughing): A nutritionist? You have a jar of chocolate flavored peanut butter in your fridge.

Me: Excuse me. (I go into the bathroom and cry)

Me: He thinks I’m fat. He’s making fun of me. I am so hurt and angry right now. I’m a hypocrite. Chocolate peanut butter! I’m so stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing with him. I’ll never find love. I’d rather just be alone.This is too hard.

I dry my eyes, return to the living room, and say nothing.

Think about the last time you texted a friend and she never texted back. In the absence of any other information, you might begin to fill in the gaps yourself. You might begin to tell yourself a story. I must have said something to upset her. Was that last text too intrusive? Is she ghosting me? She must be tired of me texting her too much. I should back off. Too much of me isn’t a good thing.

There are many possible reasons your friend hasn’t texted back, and very few of them have anything to do with you. By being mindful of the story you’re telling yourself, you can stop and ask yourself two questions instead.

What story am I telling myself right now? Is it true?