The Story You Tell Yourself Can Change What Happens Next

Authored By: Michael Green

Early in my recovery, I was at a meeting with my girlfriend, who is now my wife. The meeting had ended, and everyone was doing what people do after meetings. Chairs were being put away, people were standing around talking, and small groups were forming. I was having a completely ordinary conversation with someone when I looked across the room for my girlfriend.

I saw her talking to another man.

They were a little removed from the main group, off to the side having a conversation. That was what happened. But that wasn't what I experienced.

Within seconds, I had an entire story. They were interested in each other. Something was happening between them. Maybe they were talking about getting together. Maybe this had already been going on. Eventually she was going to leave me. I was going to be alone. He was going to somehow win a contest that, as far as I knew, existed only in my head.

None of this felt like speculation. It felt like I was seeing what was happening.

That's an important distinction, because when we talk about the stories we tell ourselves, it can sound as though we're consciously making something up. I wasn't sitting there thinking, I wonder what frightening explanation I can create for this. I thought I was reading the situation accurately.

The conversation I had been having suddenly didn't matter much anymore. My attention had moved across the room. I was watching her. I was watching him. I was noticing where they were standing, how they were interacting, and anything else my mind could use to figure out what was going on.

Eventually I went out and got the car.

When my girlfriend got in, she knew immediately something was wrong. I've never been particularly good at hiding what I'm feeling. My emotions tend to have some size to them.

She asked me what was wrong.

"Nothing."

Of course, I said "nothing" in the particular way people say "nothing" when they want the other person to understand that something is very much wrong.

She asked again. Eventually I said, "Why don't you ask your friend?"

She had no idea what I was talking about.

"The guy you were talking to."

It turned out he actually was her friend. She had known him for a long time. There wasn't some romantic conversation happening. There wasn't a plan developing behind my back.

There was a woman talking to someone she knew after a meeting. Everything else had come from me.

When a Feeling Becomes Evidence

It took me a while to understand that.

At the time, the story seemed so convincing partly because of what was happening in my body. I remember that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, almost like being punched there. There was fear, jealousy, hurt, and this awful sense of emptiness.

I wasn't only thinking that I might be abandoned. For those moments, I felt abandoned. And once I felt it, the feeling seemed to prove the story.

If nothing was happening, why did I feel this way?

That's a trap I've come to understand much better over the years. An emotion can be completely real without the interpretation that activated it being completely accurate.

My pain was real. My fear was real. The story I had attached to the situation was something different.

At the time, I didn't have the language I use today with CLEAR. I didn't know to separate the Circumstance from the Lens through which I was seeing it.

The Circumstance was fairly simple: my girlfriend was talking to another man after a meeting.

My Lens supplied the rest.

The Story Had Started Long Before That Meeting

As I started doing more work on myself in recovery, with help from other people, I began to recognize a pattern. Somewhere along the way, I had developed a deeply held belief about myself: eventually, people leave.

There was another piece underneath that one too. If someone really got to know me, eventually they wouldn't like what they found.

I don't remember consciously deciding to believe either of those things. They were conclusions I had collected from experiences long before that night.

So when I looked across the room, I wasn't simply seeing my girlfriend talking to somebody. I was seeing that moment through relationships that hadn't worked out. I was seeing it through old rejection and insecurity. I was seeing it through my assumptions about other men and what I imagined this man wanted. I was seeing it through what I already believed about myself.

My mind was using old information to explain a new Circumstance. And in some ways, it was probably trying to protect me.

If people leave, then I should be watching for signs that someone is getting ready to leave. If I'm likely to be hurt, maybe I can protect myself by seeing the hurt coming.

The problem is that when you're looking for evidence of something, you can become remarkably good at finding it. A conversation across a room becomes evidence. A facial expression becomes evidence. Someone being quiet becomes evidence. A change in tone becomes evidence.

And once the emotion gets activated, the whole thing can begin feeding on itself.

I see something. I interpret it through an old wound. The interpretation activates a powerful emotion. The emotion makes the interpretation feel even more true. Then I behave as though the interpretation has already been established as fact.

And now something really has happened.

I'm distant. I'm angry. I'm sarcastic. I withdraw. I say "nothing" when something is obviously wrong. The other person responds to my behavior, and their response can become one more piece of evidence for the story I was already telling myself.

The story changes what happens next.

A Different Hallway

This didn't disappear because I understood it once. I wish things worked that way.

I spent a lot of time working on this particular insecurity. My sponsor helped me with it, which made the whole thing even more uncomfortable because my sponsor and my wife were already extremely close friends. They had been friends before I came along. At one point, somebody who didn't know us well even assumed the two of them were married.

So naturally, in the strange way recovery sometimes works, one of the people I had occasionally felt insecure about became one of the people helping me work through my insecurity.

I had to tell him the truth about what was happening inside me. It took time. Probably a couple of years, if I'm being honest.

Then one night after a meeting, I was looking for my wife. I was ready to go home. I'm not much for long goodbyes. Once I'm ready to leave, I'm ready to leave.

She wasn't in the meeting room, so I walked out into the hallway.

There she was with my sponsor. They were well away from everybody else, having what clearly looked like a private conversation. They saw me. They both looked over at me and then went right back to talking.

For a split second, the old machinery came alive.

I recognized it. But this time something different happened.

I didn't have to follow it.

I could see what was actually in front of me: two people I cared about were having a private conversation. I didn't know what they were talking about.

And I realized something incredibly simple.

If their conversation involved me and they needed me to be part of it, they had just seen me. They could have said, "Hey Michael, come here."

They didn't. So I walked away.

I didn't convince myself that I knew what they were talking about. I didn't replace a frightening story with a comforting one.

I simply didn't know. And for the first time, not knowing didn't require me to fill in the blank.

I remember feeling proud of myself. Not because jealousy had disappeared forever. Not because I had become completely secure. The old reaction had actually shown up for a second.

What had changed was that I no longer had to use an old wound to interpret a present Circumstance.

Letting the Present Be the Present

Looking back, I think that's what I had actually learned. I had learned to let a present Circumstance be a present Circumstance.

That sounds simple. It wasn't.

Our experiences matter. The things that have happened to us become information. They teach us what to expect from people, relationships, and ourselves. Sometimes that information protects us. Sometimes it remains useful for a very long time.

But old information isn't necessarily current information. A Lens can make perfect sense because of where it came from and still give us an incomplete picture of what is happening now.

That's why CLEAR doesn't ask us to pretend our first interpretation is wrong or replace every uncomfortable thought with something positive.

Sometimes the Alternative is much simpler:

I don't know.

I know what happened. I know what I'm making it mean. I know what emotion that meaning activated. I can understand why my mind went there. But I may not yet have enough information to know whether the story I'm telling myself is true.

That little bit of space matters.

Because the story we tell ourselves doesn't remain a story for very long. It affects what we notice. It changes how we feel. It changes how we speak. It changes what we do. And what we do becomes part of the next Circumstance, for us and for the people around us.

Years ago, I looked across a meeting room, saw my girlfriend talking to another man, and within minutes I was emotionally living through the end of a relationship that wasn't ending.

Years later, I walked into a hallway and saw my wife having a private conversation with another man, felt that familiar old reaction flicker, and walked away content.

The difference wasn't that I finally knew nothing bad could ever happen to me.

I had simply learned that possibility is not probability, emotion is not proof, and the present doesn't always have to answer for the past.

Sometimes changing what happens next begins with allowing what is happening now to be enough.

The ReFrame: Explore More With Michael Green

The ReFrame is an ongoing article and video series from Michael Green, CAC-AD, at Recovery Collective in Annapolis, Maryland. Drawing from his clinical experience, personal recovery, and the CLEAR process he developed, Michael explores how our thoughts, emotions, and past experiences influence our stressors, anxieties, relationships, recovery, and everyday decisions.

If you recognize yourself in this story, whether through anxiety, relationship insecurity, addiction, or patterns you can't seem to change, Michael offers individual, couples, and family counseling to help you better understand those experiences and develop new ways of responding.

Learn more about Michael Green and explore Recovery Collective's addiction counseling and holistic therapy services. If you're interested in working with Michael, contact Recovery Collective to start a conversation.