You two were dating, and everything felt like it was going SO well allllll the green flags: Excited to see you! Planned your dates! Took you to nice places! Texted you every day! And then, suddenly, after 3 fabulous months. And you were left staring at your old text thread and wondering what could have changed.
The relationship was it a relationship?! Now β pause for a sec. Human brains are meaning-making machines. Our brain does this because it wants us to keep us safe.
It thinks that if it can make sense of the world, then we will be safe. How does our brain keep us safe? By making up stories that minimise our uncertainty, soothe our discomfort, and help us to get our needs met.
Uncertainty feels scary and uncomfortable: back in the day when our brains were evolving, uncertainty meant that there might be something lurking in the shadows that could jump out and eat us! So our brains evolved to try to minimise uncertainty. And the way they do that is by making up stories. To the brain, discomfort feels unsafe. And what does the brain do with unsafe?
It tries to get rid of it: often with a story. As you can see, our brains loveeee a good story. In that sense, you can think about the stories our brain comes up with a little bit like conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories help us to explain a confusing or painful situation by giving us a version of events that feels less uncertain, and therefore, less scary.
