Have you ever found yourself reacting strongly to something, only to realise afterwards that your reaction might have been about more than what actually happened?
Perhaps someone doesn’t respond to a message, and you immediately assume you’ve upset them. Maybe someone offers feedback, and you interpret it as evidence that you’re not good enough.
Brené Brown’s idea of “the story I’m telling myself” offers an interesting way of understanding these moments. When we bring this idea together with the psychology of implicit learning, we begin to see how much our past experiences can influence the way we interpret the present.
The Things We Learn Without Realising
Implicit learning happens when we absorb information, patterns and expectations through experience, often without consciously recognising that we’re learning.
From our earliest relationships and experiences, we begin to develop unconscious assumptions about ourselves and the world around us.
We learn whether people can be trusted, whether it’s safe to express our feelings, whether mistakes are acceptable and whether we need to earn approval to feel valued.
For example, someone who grew up experiencing withdrawn affection whenever they made a mistake might unconsciously develop the belief that getting things wrong means they are unworthy of love or acceptance.
They may never have consciously chosen to believe this. It is an expectation they’ve learned through experience.
When The Past Influences The Present
These learned expectations can influence the stories we automatically create when something happens.
Imagine sending someone a message and receiving no reply.
The event itself is simple: someone hasn’t responded.
But if previous experiences have taught you to expect rejection or feel unimportant, you might automatically interpret their silence as:
“They don’t care about me. I’ve probably done something wrong.”
That interpretation can trigger feelings of anxiety, rejection or hurt, influencing how you respond. You might withdraw, become defensive or seek reassurance.
The important thing is that your emotional response may not be based entirely on what’s happening now. It may also be influenced by what you’ve learned to expect from previous experiences.
Creating Space To Question The Story
This is where Brené Brown’s approach becomes particularly powerful.
When we pause and say, “The story I’m telling myself is…”, we create an opportunity to interrupt an automatic response.
Instead of immediately accepting our interpretation as fact, we can become curious about it.
We might ask ourselves:
- What do I actually know about this situation?
- What assumptions am I making?
- Why am I interpreting this experience in this particular way?
- Could something from my past be influencing how I’m seeing things today?
This isn’t about dismissing our feelings or assuming our interpretation is wrong. Sometimes our concerns are entirely justified. It’s about creating enough space to distinguish between what we know and the meaning we’re attaching to it.
Learning A Different Story
The encouraging thing is that our learned expectations aren’t necessarily fixed.
Although implicit learning often develops through repeated experiences, new experiences can help us develop different expectations.
We can discover that making a mistake doesn’t mean losing someone’s acceptance. That disagreements don’t always lead to rejection. That expressing our feelings can be met with understanding rather than criticism.
Over time, these experiences can help us develop new ways of relating to ourselves and others.
It isn’t simply about thinking differently. It’s about experiencing something different, repeatedly, until new expectations begin to take shape.
Bringing It All Together
Perhaps we can think about this process in three stages:
Notice: What story am I telling myself?
Understand: What previous experiences might have taught me to interpret things this way?
Relearn: What new experience or response might help me develop a different expectation?
The connection between implicit learning and Brené Brown’s work reminds us that some of the stories we tell ourselves may have been shaped long before the situations we’re applying them to today.
And perhaps that’s an important place to start: becoming curious about the stories we automatically believe, rather than assuming they are always the truth.
A question to reflect on:
What if some of the stories we tell ourselves aren’t really about what’s happening today, but are patterns we’ve learned from what happened to us yesterday?
We will be focusing more on Implicit Learning in our workshop on Saturday 14th November. We look forward to welcoming our attendees there.