The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Deeper Post

How many of my bad days began as five bad minutes that I kept carrying forward?

Something goes wrong. I get angry. I cuss. Then I keep the argument going in my head long after the event itself has passed.

The next inconvenience arrives, and I am already prepared for it.

Of course. One more thing.

Before long, I am having a bad day. There may have been several real problems. But I have also been carrying the feeling from one problem into the next, until everything seems to belong to the same unhappy story.

I recognize this because I do it.

I also recognize something else: sometimes I catch myself doing it. And that moment of noticing can change what happens next.

The Music Was Still Beautiful

In his TED talk, “The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory,” psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes a person who enjoyed a beautiful musical recording until a terrible screeching sound at the end seemed to spoil the whole experience.[1]

But the pleasure of listening had already happened. The ending changed the way the person remembered it.

Kahneman distinguishes between the experiencing self, living through the moment, and the remembering self, looking back on it. The two do not always give the same account.

Research he conducted with Donald Redelmeier found that patients’ later evaluations of painful procedures were strongly related to the worst pain and the pain near the end. Duration had comparatively little influence in those studies.[2]

This is often called the peak-end rule. It describes a tendency in retrospective judgment, not a law governing every memory.

Still, the question it raises stays with me:

How often do I let the screech become my description of the music?

The Story Travels Forward

Kahneman’s work concerns the relationship between experience and memory. What follows is my own extension of that idea: the story I remember can become the story I expect.

Suppose a frustrating morning leaves me thinking, Nobody respects my time. Later, someone is slow to answer a message. Now the delay feels like evidence. I answer sharply. They become defensive. By evening, I have another unpleasant interaction to add to the record.

My expectation did not create their delay. But it may have influenced my interpretation, my response, and the interaction that followed.

That is the domino effect I notice in myself.

An event becomes an explanation. The explanation influences how I approach the next event. My response then becomes part of what actually happens.

Over time, “That went badly” can become “Things always go badly for me.” A description of an incident begins to sound like a description of my life.

The Moment I Catch Myself

Sometimes I hear myself cursing and realize that I do not want to keep carrying this feeling forward.

That realization does not instantly remove the anger. It gives me something to work with.

I can pause before sending the message. I can deal with the actual problem. I can admit that I am frustrated without treating frustration as instructions for how to speak to the next person.

The first reaction may arrive before reflection. The next response may offer more room for choice.

Even that room varies. Exhaustion, grief, and overwhelming circumstances can make it hard to find. I do not want to turn awareness into another demand that I must perform perfectly.

Sometimes progress means catching myself sooner. Sometimes it means apologizing afterward.

Feeling It Without Feeding It

Research by Brett Ford and colleagues found that people who more habitually accepted their thoughts and emotions without judging them tended to experience less negative emotion during stress and better psychological health.[3]

That supports a useful distinction: accepting that I feel angry does not require me to keep rehearsing the case for being angry.

I can say, This upset me.

I do not have to add, And now everything is ruined.

A separate set of experiments by Ethan Kross, Ozlem Ayduk, and Walter Mischel found that reflecting on an anger-provoking experience from a more distanced perspective could help people understand their feelings without becoming as emotionally caught up in them.[4]

My practical version is to ask: What would I notice if I were watching this happen to someone I care about?

Perhaps I would see a tired person dealing with a frustrating problem. Perhaps I would suggest a break, a clear boundary, or one manageable action. I probably would not tell him that this inconvenience proves his entire life is against him.

I can try extending that same perspective to myself.

Is Life Working for Me?

There is a foundational story underneath many of my smaller stories.

At one extreme, life is working against me. At the other, life is working for me. Most days, I live somewhere between those two.

I find that leaning toward “life is working for me” makes me more willing to look for a useful response. An obstacle can become a steppingstone. A mistake can reveal something I need to learn. A disappointment can make a necessary change harder to postpone.

But I want to be careful about what I mean.

I cannot establish that every event was arranged for my benefit. Some things are simply painful, unfair, or destructive. I do not need to call them gifts.

The belief becomes most useful when I turn it into a question:

What can I make of this, given that it happened?

Sometimes the answer is a lesson. Sometimes it is a boundary. Sometimes it is asking for help or leaving a situation that needs to end.

Turning something into a steppingstone may require changing my circumstances as well as changing my interpretation.

Let the Good Moments Count

If I want to tell a fairer story about my day, I also need to include the parts that never demanded my attention.

A pleasant conversation. Something completed. A moment of laughter. Help that arrived. A problem I handled better than I would have a year ago.

Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough tested gratitude exercises in which participants recorded things they were grateful for. Across their studies, benefits appeared on several measures of well-being, with positive emotion the most consistent finding.[5]

That does not establish that gratitude fixes a difficult life. It suggests that deliberately attending to what is good can make a difference.

At the end of a day, I can ask three questions:

• What was difficult, and what still needs attention?
• What was good that I might otherwise overlook?
• What did I learn, or do differently, that I want to carry forward?

Some days, I may not find a lesson. An honest account can leave something unresolved.

But it can also include the good that happened alongside it.

The Next Moment Is Still Open

I do not expect to stop getting frustrated. There will probably be more cursing. Awareness has not yet made me a saint.

What I hope to change is how long one moment gets to speak for all the others.

When I catch myself carrying anger forward, I have a chance to respond differently. When I look back, I have a chance to give the day a fuller accounting. And when I look ahead, I can leave room for something I have not already decided will go wrong.

The story I tell myself matters because I carry it into what I do next.

I can remember the screech and still remember the music.

A bad moment belongs in the story. It does not have to become the title.

References

1. Kahneman, D. (2010). The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory. TED. See also TED’s summary of the music example.
2. Redelmeier, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1996). Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: Real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. Pain, 66(1), 3–8.
3. Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092.
4. Kross, E., Ayduk, O., & Mischel, W. (2005). When asking “why” does not hurt: Distinguishing rumination from reflective processing of negative emotions. Psychological Science, 16(9), 709–715.
5. Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.