The Stories You Tell Yourself May Be Creating Your Emotions
Have you ever had something happen and suddenly felt your entire body change? Your heart starts beating faster, your chest gets tight, your energy drops, or you suddenly feel angry, hurt, anxious, or sad. It can feel like the other person or the situation caused the emotion. But what if there is another step happening in between?
What if the story you are telling yourself about what happened is creating much of what you are feeling in your body?
We Experience What We Make Things Mean
Something happens. Your husband doesn't respond the way you expected. Your friend doesn't text you back. Someone makes a comment. Your boss gives you feedback.
The event itself is one thing, but almost immediately, your mind starts filling in the blanks.
He doesn't care. She thinks I'm incompetent. They don't respect me. He always does this. She must be angry with me.
Before you know it, your body is responding to that story as though it were fact.
Our emotional response isn't based only on what happens. It's also influenced by the meaning we assign to what happens. And our stories often include assumptions about another person's internal world. We assume we know what they're thinking, feeling, or believing about us, even though we can't actually know what's happening inside someone else's mind.
Anger Usually Has a Story Behind It
Think about the last time you were really angry. There was probably more happening than simply, "Something happened." There was a meaning attached to it.
He shouldn't have done that.
She doesn't care about me.
He thinks he can treat me however he wants.
That interpretation is the root of the emotional response.
The same thing happens with sadness, anxiety, resentment, and hurt. The emotion can feel like something that simply happened to us, when there may actually be a story underneath it that we haven't stopped to examine.
I Used to Be the Queen of Creating Stories
I know this because I used to be really good at it. I could take a situation, create an entire narrative around it, and then spend days living inside the emotion that narrative created. I had been doing therapy for years and no therapist had ever addressed it.
There were times when I would feel sad and have no idea why. I blamed hormones. I blamed other people. I blamed circumstances that felt inevitable. I told myself, "This is just how I am. I'm an emotional person. I'm a sad person."
I realized that even "This is just how I am" was a story.
Once I began recognizing that I was participating in the creation of the emotion I was experiencing, I could start doing something different. I learned to question my assumptions, redirect my thinking, and create a different internal experience.
And something remarkable happened. I started feeling better. I had more energy. I felt more motivated and engaged with my life. Slowly, the sadness that had seemed to randomly appear began to disappear. I was suddenly in control of how I felt, no matter the circumstances.
I feel like I have reclaimed my life because I now understand where so much of the "random sadness" I used to experience was actually coming from.
Your Stories Affect More Than Your Mood
The stories you repeatedly tell yourself can affect your emotional state, your energy, your behavior, and your relationships.
If you repeatedly tell yourself that your partner doesn't appreciate you, you're going to show up differently with them. If you assume your spouse is judging you, you may become defensive or withdraw. If you believe other people don't like you, you may walk into social situations already feeling anxious and disconnected.
The story creates a feeling. The feeling influences your behavior. Your behavior affects the people around you. And then their response to your behavior can seem to confirm the original story.
That's how these patterns become self-reinforcing.
This doesn't mean that every difficult emotion is something you've created. Some people really do hurt us. Some relationships really are unhealthy. Some situations require boundaries, grief, anger, or action.
The goal isn't to convince yourself that everything is fine or to "think positive."
The goal is to become better at distinguishing between what you actually know and the story you've created about what you think is happening.
You Don't Have to Believe Every Story Your Mind Creates
When you can catch yourself in the middle of a story, you have an opportunity to pause and ask: What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What else could be true?
That pause creates space between what happened and how you respond. With practice, that space can change the way you feel, the energy you bring into your day, and the way you show up in your relationships.
This is part of the work I do with clients. Traditional therapy can be incredibly valuable for understanding where our patterns and emotions come from, but I also work with people around what they’re doing in the present moment that may be continuing to create the feelings and patterns they want to change.
You don't have to believe every story your mind creates. And you don't have to spend the rest of your life feeling the way you've always felt.
Sometimes changing your life begins with changing the story you're telling yourself about it.
About the author, Carrie Michael, LMFT
Carrie Michael is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and mindset coach who loves helping people take greater control of their lives by shifting the patterns of thinking that keep them stuck and healing unresolved trauma. Her work goes beyond simply understanding why you feel the way you feel—it’s about creating meaningful change in how you think, feel, and show up in your life and relationships.