Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Hello,

Recently, three different friends shared situations they were navigating. On the surface, their stories had nothing to do with one another. Beneath them, however, was a striking similarity.

The first friend, who professionally works in mediation and restoration of harm, reached out to someone she occasionally walked with. No response. She followed up. Still nothing. She was left wondering what she had done.

The second friend, a school principal, experienced an accident in her building. A child fell in the gym and had to be taken to the hospital. The child was supervised, and the accident could have happened under anyone’s watch. Still, while worrying for the student, my friend also worried about what others must be saying about her, since it happened on her watch.

The third friend had arranged a visit with a long-time friend. Before the trip, they agreed on some ground rules about boundaries and communication. During the visit, those agreements were not honored by her friend. Instead, my friend received an aggressive text accusing her of being out of line for things that she wasn't aware of. When she later tried to repair the relationship, she was told her messages would not be read or answered. My friend was confused and hurt, and immediately began wondering what she had done wrong.

All three of these women are thoughtful, empathetic, self-aware people. They are not reckless or careless. Yet in each case, their first instinct was the same: This must be about me.

To be clear, I am not suggesting we avoid responsibility for our own behavior. When we harm others, we should own it. What I am suggesting is that we often take ownership of other people’s behavior, too. We tell ourselves stories in which we are the central cause of someone else’s silence, anger, or disappointment.

The Map Is Already Drawn

Long before something difficult happens, we are carrying an internal blueprint for how to interpret it. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey describes paradigms as the maps we carry in our minds. We believe we are seeing the world as it is, but in truth, we are often seeing the world as we are. We project our assumptions, past experiences, and fears onto the blank spaces.

When someone doesn’t text back, the silence becomes rejection. When an accident happens, it becomes proof of failure. When a relationship becomes strained, it becomes our fault.

Occam’s razor reminds us that the simplest explanation is often the best place to start. Maybe the friend who ghosted is distracted or overwhelmed. Maybe the building staff were grateful to have a competent principal present during an emergency. Maybe the breakdown in communication is not a one-person burden.

Our minds rarely reach for the simplest story. They reach for the harshest one. Especially when the person writing the story is a woman.

When Confidence and Self-Blame Collide

There is a reason this pattern shows up so frequently in women’s lives. In their Atlantic article “The Confidence Gap,” Katty Kay and Claire Shipman describe a consistent pattern across studies: women tend to underestimate their abilities while men tend to overestimate theirs.

The gap is not competence. The gap is confidence.

That difference often appears most clearly after something goes wrong. Men are more likely to externalize difficulty: This is a tough class. Women are more likely to internalize it: I knew I wasn’t good enough. Over time, that internalization becomes habitual. It becomes a default explanation, even when the evidence does not support it.

Meet the Madwoman in the Attic

If that internal voice had a personality, many of us would recognize her immediately. In the book Burnout by sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski, the authors describe the “madwoman in the attic,” the critical voice that narrates our failures in the cruelest possible tone. She says the things we would never dream of saying to a friend. The Nagoskis suggest that if you have ever felt sure that a broken relationship was entirely your fault, that was the madwoman talking. She has a familiar script: You disappointed them. You weren’t careful enough. You are too much. You are not enough.

Because she lives inside our own minds, she is remarkably convincing.

Writing a Better First Draft

In Rising Strong, Brené Brown calls that immediate narrative the “Shitty First Draft.” It's the first story we tell ourselves. It is raw, emotional, and often filled with assumptions. It tends to cast us as either the villain or the failure.

Brown suggests that the goal is not to remain the victim or the hero of that draft, but to become the author of the next one. How? Her practice is simple but courageous: write down what happened in six or seven sentences. Then ask yourself, what is fact and what is assumption? Ask, what more do I need to know about the other people in the story? Ask, what part I played, and what part I did not?

Relationships involve at least two people. Accidents happen. Silence has many explanations. Other people’s reactions are often shaped by their own interior worlds, not ours. We need to stop assuming we know what happened or that our SFD is the final draft.

Choosing the Story That Moves You Forward

The stories we tell ourselves are powerful. They shape whether we move forward or retreat, whether we repair or ruminate, whether we act or freeze.

Confidence, as Kay and Shipman note, is “the stuff that turns thoughts into action.” That may be the invitation here: not to eliminate doubt entirely, but to refuse to let the madwoman in the attic write the final version of the story.

We cannot control whether someone responds to our text. We cannot prevent every accident. We cannot force another adult to communicate well. What we can do is pause before we turn confusion into self-blame. We can question the first draft. We can choose a simpler explanation. We can redraw the map.

Be careful what you tell yourself. Your brain is listening.

~Heather

P.S. This week’s Catch of the Week is vaccines. I usually get a flu shot every year, but this year it got away from me. Now I find myself on my third, maybe fourth, cold of the winter. Ugh. It has been a humbling reminder that prevention is easier than recovery.

The best time to get a flu shot is in September or October, before the virus begins spreading widely in communities. While the vaccine can be given as soon as it becomes available, early fall timing allows immunity to fully develop before peak flu season, which typically runs from December through February. That window matters.

Vaccines are one of those quiet public health tools that work best when we think ahead. You rarely feel the benefit directly. Instead, you feel the absence of something that could have been worse. I hope your cold and flu season has been better for you than it has been for me.

P.P.S. Please remember to...

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