In some situations and conversations, many of us find ourselves stressed out and reactive when we’re missing information. It’s a common reaction, but it can seriously strain our interpersonal relationships. Nearly all of us do it at some time or another: We experience a situation and create a story around it in our heads. We then react to the story that we created, not what actually happened.
Dr. Kavetha Sundaramoorthy, M.D., who often goes by Dr. Kavetha Sun, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who often shares impactful ways to change our mindsets. She uses simple tools to reframe our thinking so that instead of responding to our emotionally-tinted, self-written fables, we are able to zoom out, detach, and gain clarity.
In a clip posted online, Sun shares the first thing she teaches “every patient” she treats. She pulls out a whiteboard and places three Post-it notes on it. The first reads “Experience.” The second says, “Story.” The third reads, “Reaction.”
Experience, story, reaction
She shares, “Your mind operates at three levels. The first one is a direct experience. So for example, ‘My wife rolled her eyes at me this morning.’ For most of us, our mind immediately makes up a story about that experience, using the word ‘because.’ ‘My wife rolled her eyes at me because she thinks I’m stupid.’ This story agitates our nervous system and causes us to react, either by yelling, shutting down, or walking on eggshells. THIS is the cause of human suffering.”
She asks, “How do we break this cycle?” and then places a smaller Post-it note on the board between “Story” and “Reaction.”
“We break it by a tiny step called ‘awareness,’” she says. “It sounds like this: ‘I notice a part of me feels angry.’ This language, ‘I notice that a part of me,’ allows you to have a little bit of distance between you and your thoughts and emotions. And that’s all you need to remember that thoughts and emotions are like clouds in the sky. They come and go. You are the sky, itself. And when you do that, instead of reacting, you’ll be able to respond in a calm and wise way.”
Buddhism awareness
People in the comments section were quick to point out that Sun’s ideas are similar to Buddhist philosophy. One writes, “This is synonymous to Eastern spirituality, what the Buddha said, what Ramana Maharishi said and what HH Sri Sri Ravinshankar says. This philosophy has been around for thousands of years. Now psychiatrists are confirming.”
Another therapist weighed in and agrees. “Buddhism helped me practice this. Became a level therapist, studied Gestalt Therapy, where I learned to drop the story, and work with resistance,” they shared.
Filling the spaces
Dr. David Simonsen, PhD., LMFT, has been helping people who sometimes struggle with relationships for decades. He shares with Upworthy, “There is a space between the ‘Stimulus’ and the ‘Response.’ The goal is to increase the space between the two. You do this by recognizing that this space exists and then find ways to stay in it a bit more. This is done a variety of ways: breathing, taking a break, talking about it, self-reflection, naming what you are feeling rather than responding. It’s a practice. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.”
Dipesh Patel, MBA, MSW, LCSW/LICSW, and founder of Dipesh Patel LCSW Counseling Services also shares insight with Upworthy. “The human mind always loves to fill in the gaps, it’s these built-in process improvement systems all of our brains have,” he explains. “The human mind is always scanning, trying to identify patterns and looking for ways to improve—really for the main purpose of survival.”
He gives examples, saying, “When we feel like we don’t have all of the information or data about a situation, the mind might try to color in the picture, with often not the most positive data. A simple ‘no’ from our partners might all of a sudden feel like a rejection, waiting for a job offer might start to feel like I didn’t get the job because I wasn’t qualified enough, or a change in routine might suddenly feel like something has gone horribly wrong.”
CBT comparison
Patel also notes how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help people tap into the loop: “Both CBT and mindfulness practices teach us to identify our conclusions before they become reality. Cognitive diffusion is also a wonderful strategy to help take a step back and think about your actual thoughts before also accepting them as reality. Here, there’s a difference between I’m going to fail versus I think I’m going to fail. Having even a little bit of space between our thoughts and reality can make a huge difference in how we experience our emotions, perceptions, and overall reality.”
