Our brains love to play Mental Health Mad Libs.
“I feel a sensation! It’s different! What is it?!”
And then—off they go—filling in the blanks with possibilities that range from the predictable to the wildly imaginative. Just like the old game, you never quite know what you’ll get, but one thing is certain: things are about to get interesting.
I’ve seen it in clients, and I’ve seen it in myself.
The insomniac feels heavy and foggy and fills in the blank: “I’m depressed.”
But sometimes, the truth is simpler: “I’m just tired.”
The perimenopausal person wakes in the night with a pounding heart and declares, “I’m anxious!”
Then the brain adds its favorite follow-up stories: “I’m failing as a parent.” “I’m losing my edge.” “I’m in crisis.”
When really? It might just be “A hot flash woke me up.”
And then there’s the perfectionistic adult with undiagnosed ADHD who sits down to work and—thirty seconds later—gets up for tea, then laundry, then a random scroll.
By noon, they’re declaring, “I’m lazy. I can’t focus. I’ll never finish anything.”
But if we slow it down, the story might change.
It might be, “My brain needs novelty to engage,” or “I’m overstimulated and don’t know where to start,” or even, “This task doesn’t align with my strengths.”
When we fill in our blanks too quickly, we skip the real story.
We go from sensation → interpretation → identity before we ever pause to check the facts.
Our brains mean well—they’re trying to protect us—but they’re not always great fact-checkers.
The stories we tell about our experiences matter. They shape our nervous system’s response, which shapes our next thought, our next breath, our next choice. And while some of us catastrophize, others underplay. Both pull us away from the truth.
So what if, instead of rushing to fill in the blanks, we practiced pausing?
Before labeling the sensation, we take a breath and ask a simple question:
“What else could be true?”
That tiny pause might be the most radical act of self-kindness we can offer.
When we slow the story and don’t rush to a conclusion, we stop mistaking daily survival for lifetime failure.
We let the body weigh in before the brain headlines it. And maybe that pause, that breath, and that gentle curiosity is where wisdom and relief live.