79| How to Stop Living Inside Old Emotional Stories

 What if the anxiety you feel has nothing to do with what's actually happening, and everything to do with a story your brain wrote before it happened? Isn’t the same rain that ruins your beach day the same rain that makes you feel cozy on your couch and it’s just the story tied to it that changes? Let’s talk about changing our mood by changing the story we tell ourselves. 

Transcript

 What if the anxiety you feel has nothing to do with what's actually happening, and everything to do with a story your brain wrote before it happened? Isn’t the same rain that ruins your beach day the same rain that makes you feel cozy on your couch and it’s just the story tied to it that changes? Let’s talk about changing our mood by changing the story we tell ourselves. This podcast is always 20 minutes or less so you don’t have to feel overwhelmed or overhaul everything in your life, but just make small, simple changes to create more calm and peace. To get to your better life, make small changes and begin to live it!

Welcome back, friends or hello new friends. I'm so glad you're here, whether you're on a walk, snuggled comfy into your favorite chair with a cup of something warm, or even just sitting in a parking lot trying to decompress before you go inside the house and deal with everyone. No judgment, because that parking lot sit is one we’ve talked about and can be a great way to give yourself that daily self care without any interruptions.

If you’re here today because you’re feeling a bit out of control, overwhelmed by your emotions, let’s talk this thru. A lot of how we feel on any given day has almost nothing to do with what's actually happening around us. It has to do with the emotions we've attached to what's happening. The story we're already telling about it before it's even fully unfolded and it’s the story and what we tell ourselves that helps to create the emotion, positive or negative. 

So here’s an example. I want you to think about rain for a minute. Just rain. The sound of it on a roof, that steady, rhythmic pitter patter. Now imagine you're on your couch, wrapped in a blanket, a good book in your lap, nowhere you need to be. That rain is the most beautiful sound in the world, isn't it? It's cozy and soft and it feels like you can take all afternoon just relaxing and recharging. Just get comfy and relax for a bit just listening to the sound. And you get so comfy maybe you get to take a nap...I love a good rainy nap day!

Now think about that rain again but this time, imagine you're at the beach. It's been months since you planned this day, maybe it’s a family day where you had to do so much planning to get everyone on the right schedule for this day. You packed the snacks, you loaded the car, you navigated the parking situation, and now the sky is doing that. The same rain. The exact same sound. And now it's an inconvenience, maybe even a minor catastrophe depending on how many children are involved and how long the drive home is going to feel. So it’s the same rain, same sound but completely different emotional experience. So really, what changed? The rain didn't. The water didn't consult your schedule. It's just rain doing what rain does. What changed was you. Specifically, the meaning you attached to the rain based on what you were hoping for, what you were dreading, and the story your brain had already been writing before the first drop fell. And this idea is actually the whole thing that we’re talking about today.

So much of our daily emotional experience is based on our response to our interpretation of reality. And that interpretation is being shaped constantly by our past experiences, our current expectations, our fears, and honestly, sometimes just how much sleep we got last night. We're walking around in a kind of emotional filter we don't even realize we're wearing, and it's coloring absolutely everything. Take a moment and think about your own life. Is there something you tend to react to in the same way every single time, almost automatically? Maybe it's a certain tone of voice from someone at work, or the sound of your phone buzzing late at night, or even something as simple as hitting every red light when you're already running five minutes behind. The reaction is almost instant. There's almost no pause, no consideration. Your nervous system just fires. That's the conditioned emotional response at work, and it's been running on autopilot probably for years.

There's research that explains why this happens with such precision. Psychologists have long studied the concept of cognitive appraisal, which is essentially the mental process we use to evaluate whether something is a threat, a challenge, a loss, or a benefit. Researchers Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman, who did work on stress and coping, found that it isn't the stressor itself that determines our emotional response, or the rain in this case. It's how we appraise it, what value we assign to it. Two people can experience the exact same event and have completely different emotional reactions based entirely on the meaning they assign to it. One person's Tuesday frustratingly stuck in traffic is another person's relaxing podcast catch-up time. Same cars, same road, completely different inner experience.

And here's where it gets really interesting. As we’ve talked about, our brains are pattern-loving machines. They are deeply, almost aggressively efficient. So when we experience something a certain way a few times, the brain essentially files it and says, "Got it, we know how to feel about this one." And from then on, the emotional response gets triggered before we've even fully processed what's happening. It's like your brain is a slightly overambitious assistant who keeps finishing your sentences, except instead of finishing sentences, it's finishing your emotional reactions before you've even had a chance to weigh in.

But between what happens to us and how we react, there is a space if we choose to see it and use it. And in that space lives choice. Now, that space might feel microscopic right now. It might feel like it doesn't even exist. But it does. And the whole point of what we're talking about today is learning how to see that space, and then how to make it just a little bit bigger every time. So how do we exactly do that? How do we stop being so automatically swept up in our own emotional weather patterns and start getting some say in what the inner forecast looks like?

The first thing as we tend to talk about regularly, is just noticing. Not fixing, not changing, not judging yourself for having the reaction in the first place but just noticing. When you feel that familiar tightening in your chest, that flare of irritation, that wash of dread, try to pause just long enough to ask yourself one simple question: what story am I telling about this right now? Not "is the story true?" Not "should I feel this way?" Just, what is the story, just name it. Because the moment you name it, you create a tiny bit of distance between you and the automatic reaction. You go from being inside the emotion to being someone who can observe it. And that shift, as small as it sounds, can help you be more receptive to change just like you would if you were observing a friend or partner going thru it.

So let’s think about the last time you felt really anxious about something, maybe before a difficult conversation you needed to have, or a presentation at work, or a doctor's appointment. The anxiety wasn't just about the thing itself. It was about every story wrapped around the thing. What might happen, what it would mean, what it would say about you, what other people would think. The brain constructed an entire emotional movie around a single upcoming event, and your body was responding to the movie, not the actual event when it happened.

This is why two people can walk into the same job interview, and one feels butterflies and frames them as excitement. The other feels the exact same physical sensation of butterflies and frames it as proof that they're going to fail. Researchers at Harvard actually studied this, finding that when people were coached to reframe anxiety as excitement, they performed so much better on stressful tasks. The physiological state was identical, the physical feeling was the same, it was just the label they assigned to it that changed. Here's a gentle reflective question to sit with: when you're in a hard moment, are you actually experiencing the moment, or are you experiencing the story you've layered around it? And again I'm not asking so you can immediately fix it, I'm just asking so you can start to see it. That's the beginning because you can’t change what you don’t see.

Now, there's something important I want to say here, because I don’t want to seem like I'm suggesting that your feelings aren't real, or that you should just think your way to happiness, or that if you're struggling it's basically a mindset problem you need to solve. That is absolutely not what I'm saying. Your feelings are real, every single one of them. The grief is real, the frustration is real, the exhaustion is real. What we're talking about isn't bypassing those feelings. It's learning to relate to them differently so they don't take over and run the whole show. There's a huge difference between having a feeling and being hijacked by a feeling. Both involve the same emotion. And self-care, real self-care, isn't about pretending the hard feelings don't exist. It's about building the inner capacity to be with those hard feelings, to feel them, without drowning in them.

The repetitive emotional stories are the ones that deserve our closest attention. You know the ones I mean. The story that says you're always the one who gets overlooked. The story that says nothing ever works out for you. The story that says people are always going to hurt you. The story that says if it can go wrong, it will. These aren't just bypassing thoughts. They're ingrained into our thinking by repetition, and they have a huge power over how we experience our days, our relationships, our sense of what's possible for us. Think of emotions like waves, so when you’re in the ocean, can you stop the wave with your body? No you can’t but you can float with it, you can let it flow without fighting whether the wave is going up or it’s going down.

And the thing about those stories is that they feel so true. That's what makes them sticky. They've accumulated evidence in your brain over years. Your brain has carefully collected every piece of data that confirms them and set aside the data that doesn't confirm them because your brain always wants to be right. This is what psychologists call confirmation bias, and it's not a character flaw. It's just how brains work to want to always be right. But knowing that is actually really useful, because it helps to understand that the evidence your brain has been collecting isn't a complete picture. It's a biased, curated one which means it’s not necessarily true so you can and should challenge it.

So when you catch yourself in one of those ingrained stories, especially one that's been on rotation for years, try this: ask yourself what the story is costing you. What experiences are you automatically shutting out because of it? What moments are you half-present for because the story is already narrating over them? What version of your life might exist just on the other side of that story, when you start to challenge it?

This is where the real self-care work lives. Self care lives in the deeper practice of becoming more of a witness to your own inner world and less of an unwitting participant in patterns you didn't consciously choose. A 2021 study published in the journal Emotion found that people who practiced what researchers called "emotional granularity," basically the ability to identify and name their emotions more specifically showed greater emotional regulation and resilience over time. The simple act of distinguishing between "I'm anxious" with "I'm specifically anxious about being judged" turns out to matter. That type of precision gives you something to work with instead of the vague emotional overwhelm swirling around you.

So what can you actually practice? Start small as we always talk about because small is where consistency can start. When something triggers that familiar automatic reaction today, whether it's a comment from a colleague, a conversation that goes sideways, a plan that falls apart, try to catch yourself for just one breath before you respond. In that one breath, ask: Is this the situation, or is this my interpretation or the story of the situation? You don't have to change the reaction. You're just introducing a moment of awareness. Over time, this becomes a really good coping skill. The space between pause and response becomes easier. You start to notice the patterns faster. You start to feel less like the emotions are happening to you and more like you're someone who has emotions but isn't entirely defined by them.

So before we wrap up, think of one area of your life right now where you tend to feel emotionally reactive, where you notice the same feeling coming up again and again. Now, without judgment, just curiosity, what's the story that tends to come along with it? What does your brain consistently tell you about that situation? You don't have to share it with anyone. Just notice it. Naming it is already something. This is the work. And it's also, honestly, one of the most compassionate things you can do for yourself, because when you understand why you're feeling what you're feeling, you stop compounding the original emotion with shame about having it. You move from "why am I like this" to "oh, here's the story my brain is running." And from that place, change becomes possible, not overnight but over time. Small and consistent is what we’re always talking about here.

Now, here's how I want to close today, this week, I want to invite you into a very simple daily practice. Each evening, just take a couple minutes, no journal required unless you want one, and recall one moment from the day where you had an automatic emotional reaction. Maybe you got annoyed, or anxious, or deflated. And ask yourself two questions. What happened? And then, what story did I immediately tell about what happened and how might I make one small tweak to it? That's it.

If something in today's episode landed for you, I'd love for you to share it because the person you're thinking of right now might really need to hear this. That friend who takes everything personally. That family member who's been stuck in the same story for years. Send it to them with a little "thought of you" message and let them find their way to it. And if you're listening on a platform that lets you leave a review, I’d love for that as well because it does genuinely help more people find the show, and you can help this little community of ours grow into something that reaches people who really need it.

And if you haven't already hit follow or subscribe, do that now while you're thinking about it so you don’t miss any episodes. But thank you as always for spending this time with me today. Thank yourself for showing up for yourself in this way, even if the only thing you did today was press play on a podcast because that still counts. You taking time for yourself and choosing to bring a little more awareness to your own inner world is not a small thing, it’s actually a wonderful self care act you took today. So go easy on yourself out there and remember that rain in your life is just rain. Your power is in the story you assign to it, your response to it, how you choose to let it affect you. I hope you choose to let the rain fall around you, you decide to dance it, and let it all flow around you in little puddles of peace, little by little and peace by peace.