Thoughts vs Reality

November 2024

The mind is amazing. It allows us the ability to have thoughts, to ingest and assess the incoming information and give us choices in how we could respond, and to dream, imagine and "walk" our way through possibilities of events that haven't happened yet. It processes a vast amount of information to control our thoughts, actions and emotions; But sometimes, how we think we'll react in a scenario, is quite different to how we actually do when it's happening in real life. 

Let me give you the example of this happening in a romantic relationship, because I've come across this exact situation so many times with different people over the last few weeks. If we jumped the gun, we'd call it jealousy, which of course stems from that person's own insecurities of their self worth, but I am jumping ahead. Let's start with the example:

Imagine a regular romantic relationship. (For the purposes of this example, I'm going with a male and a female, so I can distinguish between the two roles, but this isn't about gender.) In this relationship, they're committed to each other and they've talked about they're loyalty to each other, but at a party, she sees him chatting to a girl and getting a little too close (for her liking) and before she can approach them, she sees him put his arm around her and walk off into the crowd. She tries following him but isn't able to with the sea of bodies between them.

Deep down, she knows that he wouldn't cheat on her but her mind starts flashing a army of other scenarios of what could be happening. She tries pushing them down but then she's reminded of how sweet and charming he is, and a flurry of more scenarios flash through her mind. She reminds herself that they're loyal to each other, but it doesn't make a difference. Her head has already gone down the rabbit hole.

When she finally catches up to them, she's fuming mad and tries her best to hold back her anger. He turns to her as soon as she arrives and smiles as always. He has a hand on the other woman's shoulder, who sees her and gives her a hesitant smile. Before she can ask her partner or this other woman for an explanation, he introduces the other woman as someone who needed help getting away from a stalker at the party and he moved her into the other room for that reason.

Nothing intimate happened. The arm around the shoulder was to chase away the stalker. There was nothing to get worked up about. But she did.

I could give you many more examples of a similar situation, but the point is that even though you might discuss and imagine something with someone, it can be vastly different when it actually happens and your mind starts to add pieces to a puzzle that is already complete.

Like I said at the start, this is all about the emotion of jealousy, which rears its head when we feel threatened or fear that we're going to loose, something (or someone) that is important to us. We feel it because we're not confident in ourselves that we're worthy of keeping it, and if that's something that you feel, you need to ask yourself why. I'm not saying that it's a bad emotion - in fact, it's totally normal.

What I am saying, is that you need to ask yourself why you think you're not worthy of keeping it and why loosening your grip, might cause you to loose it entirely.

My other point here, is that what we might discuss and "think" we are okay with, can change completely when it's in front of us, happening in real time. And in these instances, communication is key: Free, open, no judgement type of communication. All the little things need to be discussed and not swept under the rug, or else one day, all those little things that actually happened and we didn't talk about, rears its head and is suddenly one big monster of mess.

Is there anywhere in your life that needs a reality check?