Sometimes your mind exaggerates the gravity or threat of a situation

Here's what to do about that.

Today’s art is in homage to the wonderful late Gary Bunt. This one is “Rambling Roses.” This man’s back probably hurts but he is probably not telling himself that “it’s killing him”. (Read on to know what I’m talking about.)

Do you generally notice that you have an inner voice that’s speaking to you all day long?

Many of us don’t. Or we notice The Voice some of the time, but the rest of the time, it speaks and speaks and speaks, shaping our moods, shaping our days.

The Voice tells us stories. And we don’t even know it. We just think we’re experiencing reality.

Today’s Kindred Letter is about becoming aware of The Voice, and taking control of the stories it tells.

We’re going to do this courtesy of an excerpt from Eric Zimmer’s new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. We were lucky to host Eric recently as a Candlelight Chat guest; he’s an author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of The One You Feed podcast — an award-winning show with more than 75 million downloads. Most of all, he’s a treasure trove of hard-earned wisdom, which he loves to share generously — including here in the Kindred Letters. Here’s Eric:

“As I sit here and write this my back hurts. I’ve had the good fortune to be traveling for a bit and have been walking . . . a lot. So I woke up, as is often the case, with a sore lower back and shoulders.

And what my brain says to me is “My back is killing me.” If I am in a less than fully aware state, this is what I wander around saying to myself. If I stop and actually check in with the signals my back is sending, however, the reality is much more like “my lower back is kind of tight right now.” Which of those two messages do you think is more useful for my state of mind?

Gary Bunt, “The Man Who Found God.” (Interestingly, if you look at photos of Gary Bunt, he looks nothing like the man in these images; he strikes me as the type whose mind might exaggerate the gravity and threat of situations; I suspect that he painted in part as a way of telling himself different stories. Also - pls know that this is pure speculation on my part!)

Extreme language produces extreme emotions. Even if something like “it’s killing me” is obviously hyperbole, to use that script internally is to reinforce that what’s happening is fairly dire. To disrupt this, I use the basic perspective exercise from the last chapter, asking myself, What am I making this mean? and then What else could it mean? Then, following George Kelly’s personal construct theory, I ask myself a third question: What meaning is most useful to me right now?

This is where middle-way thinking comes in. This morning I realized that the best way to move forward with my day was to scale back how I was describing the pain to myself. (Internally, the whole conversation went more like “*eyeroll emoji*—I feel your pain, Eric, but a tight lumbar is unlikely to be your cause of death.”)

Take another situation all too common for some of us. Your two-year-old has another tantrum and you say, “I can’t stand it!” It’s a throwaway line, but it’s also emotional code for “This is relentless. I’m completely overwhelmed. And if this is what parenting is, I might not be cut out for it.”

Now imagine saying to yourself something more like: “Raising a toddler is an exercise in absurdist theater, where one finds oneself negotiating with a tiny tyrant over the existential importance of wearing pants. It will pass.” Not an easy thing to remember in the moment, I know. But parents—tell me that’s not the truth.

“I can’t believe they did that!!” Think about that statement. You mean you genuinely, as an intelligent human being, have an inability to believe that someone’s done something that you didn’t want them to do? Now let’s come back to the truth. You can believe it; you just would have chosen for that person to act differently. Try rephrasing to “I wish they hadn’t done that.” If you’re auditioning for The Real Housewives you may want to stick with the original, but assuming you want a calmer existence, the reframe is the right way to go.

Again: Extreme language produces extreme emotions. Whether we’re talking to ourselves or anyone else, more measured language creates space for a more balanced, middle-way perspective. Even our most basic linguistic tics can reveal deeply ingrained tendencies—so prepare to get dramatic with the grammatic. (Sorry.)

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Pronouns

I never thought I’d be treating the lessons of third-grade English like a red-string conspiracy board, but here we are. Adjectives (which modify nouns), pronouns (which replace nouns), and adverbs (which modify verbs and adjectives) can, if we’re not careful, become little bombs of extremity in our descriptions of reality.

An example of an adjective to watch out for is horrible. This one is a favorite of my mom’s (sorry, Mom), although it’s pronounced more “haaaarrible” when she says it. Describing things that are unpleasant or tedious as “haaaarrible” can tip our negative feelings over into despair or hopelessness. Similarly dangerous words include disastrous, unbearable, awful, and disgusting. Less common, but among my favorites to say (no one said drama-queen words weren’t fun): flabbergasted, flummoxed, catastrophic, astronomic, and preposterous.

Among adverbs, suspects worth questioning are always and never. Want to turn a discussion into a fight? Just accuse the other person of always or never doing something. It works like a charm. Why? Because when looking at our own behavior we know that it’s a patchwork, not an on-off switch. I have not forgotten to do the dishes every day, which is what the statement “You never do the dishes” would cause me to rebut. Or I don’t always get grumpy after work. Adverbs like these provoke defensiveness and shut down the productive, nuanced conversations that should happen about not only the dishes but why the dishes have been causing resentment in the first place.

These wonder twins of adverbs don’t just mess up our communication with others, they skew our internal monologues. I’ve seen this with countless coaching clients: “I never finish anything I start” . . .which, of course, is not true, but certainly keeps us feeling like failures. Or “I always mess up” . . . which is the reverse of the above but contains the same seeds of an anxiety spiral. We can add constantly, completely, absolutely, utterly, and totally to our mix.

Pronouns (she, he, they) seem innocent enough at first glance, until you add everyone and no one to the mix. “No one loves me” is a classic of the genre. “Everyone thinks I’m stupid,” you say after a presentation to five people goes a little less well than you had hoped.

When you notice yourself using any of these red-flag words, experiment with substitutions that reflect the nuance of reality. We could replace my mom’s old standby, horrible, with something like “That doctor visit was unpleasant.” We could say “I’m having a hard time right now” instead of “Everything is terrible” (two red-flag words for the price of one in that sentence). Describing a family visit that didn’t go well, try replacing “He astronomically miscalculated the impact of teaching his parrot swear words” with “Grandma did not like the colorful avian commentary.” And if your first thought is “You never listen to what I say,” try instead “Sometimes I think you don’t give me your full attention.”

Note that our goal here is not to gloss over things that are difficult or make us unhappy. It is to remind ourselves that reality is rarely black and white, and that there are a lot of benefits to seeing in full color.”

“My Master’s Garden,” by Gary Bunt

OK, this is Susan writing again. I hope you enjoyed Eric’s ideas as much as I did, and would love to know:

*When reading Eric’s words, did you suddenly realize that you actually do use overly extreme internal language?

*Do you generally NOTICE that you have an internal voice speaking to you, or do you identify your thoughts and inner monologue as reality?

*If you do notice your inner voice - what does it generally sound like? Is it friendly? Is it critical? Is it thoughtful? Other?

Please, share your thoughts!