It was late enough that I should have been asleep when I opened the conversation again. Earlier that day, a friend and I had been making plans to see “Citizen Kane” at a local theater during a weekend retro screening. It was one of those repertory events that made the ordinary theater feel slightly different: an old black-and-white film on the big screen, the lights going down in a room full of people who had chosen to spend an evening watching a movie from 1941. We’d talked about getting there early enough to find seats and maybe grabbing something to eat afterward. Nothing complicated. But now, lying in bed with my phone lighting up the room, I was staring at one line from our exchange: Sure, that works.
I read it again. Then again. The period bothered me. Had he sounded more enthusiastic earlier? Was “sure” dismissive? If he actually wanted to go, wouldn’t he have said something like Sounds good? I put the phone down, waited a minute, then picked it up and read the conversation from the beginning. By then I was looking for evidence that my friend didn’t want to spend the evening with me.
I knew this routine. An ambiguous cue would appear—a short reply, a pause in conversation, a change in someone’s tone—and my mind would quickly supply an explanation. Usually, it wasn’t a neutral one.
At first, this felt almost useful. If I could figure out what people really thought of me, maybe I could adjust before I was rejected.
I felt a strange comfort in believing that careful observation could keep me prepared. If I could spot disappointment before the other person showed it, perhaps I could avoid being blindsided by it.
It took me longer to notice what the habit was actually doing. The more closely I watched other people’s reactions, the less settled I felt around them.
I started writing down my snap judgments instead of immediately believing them
The next morning, I still had the conversation about “Citizen Kane” in my head. I checked the theater’s showtime, looked at the message again, and noticed how little actual information there was in those two words: Sure, that works. Everything else had come from me.
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Later that morning, my friend texted again. He’d checked the theater’s schedule and realized the screening started earlier than he had thought. He suggested meeting outside the theater twenty minutes before showtime and grabbing something to eat afterward.
There had been no hidden irritation in his message the night before. He had simply been answering while distracted and trying to settle the plan. I felt a little foolish when I saw it, but I also recognized something more useful: I had spent hours trying to solve a problem that wasn’t there.
I didn’t suddenly decide that my interpretations were unreliable. One wrong prediction didn’t prove that every anxious thought was wrong. But the exchange gave me an idea. What if I stopped arguing with these thoughts and simply started keeping track of them?
I made a small note in the Journal app on my iPhone after the interactions that bothered me: what had happened, what I immediately assumed it meant, what I felt, and what eventually turned out to be true.
I wasn’t trying to cure myself or force every situation into a positive interpretation. I wanted to collect some evidence. If my mind was going to make these predictions so quickly, I wanted to see what those predictions looked like when I wrote them down—and how often reality actually matched them.
I was surprised by how hard it felt to sit with uncertainty about other people
Over the next several days, I started noticing the pattern in ordinary moments. On Monday, I sent a client a question about a project and got back, “Yep, looks good,” without the extra explanation I had expected. My first thought was that I had asked a stupid question and they were trying to end the conversation. I wrote that down instead of sending another message to clarify.
On Tuesday, I was standing in line for coffee when someone I knew walked past without acknowledging me. For a few seconds, I wondered whether they were deliberately ignoring me. Then I realized I didn’t even know whether they’d seen me. These were small things, but they gave me something concrete to track: what had actually happened, what my mind had added, and how quickly I wanted to turn uncertainty into an answer.
The harder part was not knowing. When I left an interaction without a clear explanation, I felt an almost physical demand to find one. My jaw would tighten. I’d reach for my phone and reread the conversation. I’d replay a sentence while driving home, trying to locate the moment when someone’s attitude had supposedly changed.
Uncertainty felt unfinished, and my mind wanted to finish it. A definite explanation was strangely comforting, even when it was a painful one: They’re annoyed with me. They don’t really want me there. At least I knew where I stood.
Several days into the experiment, I could see that this was part of the protection the habit had been offering me. If I predicted rejection early, I wouldn’t have to be surprised by it later. The problem was that I was often experiencing the emotional impact of rejection before there was any evidence that rejection had happened.
By then, the “Citizen Kane” screening was only a day or two away. I had done enough tracking to recognize the pattern, but not enough to stop it from happening. That distinction mattered. I was heading into the theater with a slightly different question: when my mind gave me an explanation about what someone else was thinking, could I notice it without immediately treating it as the truth?
I noticed my anxiety changed when I stopped treating every judgment as a warning
On the evening of the screening, my friend arrived looking distracted. He said hello, checked his phone, and glanced toward the entrance as if he were expecting someone. When I asked whether he wanted to grab something to eat before the movie, he paused and said, “Maybe. We don’t have a ton of time.”
I felt the familiar shift almost immediately. He’d rather be somewhere else. Normally, that thought would have been enough to start the whole process: watch his face, measure his tone, compare this conversation with the one we’d had earlier, and quietly decide what I’d done wrong.
Instead, I noticed the judgment as it appeared. I wrote a few words in my Journal app: He’s annoyed. Feeling embarrassed. Don’t know if it’s true.
The anxiety didn’t disappear because I’d written it down. For a while, it actually got stronger. I became more aware of every small thing I might otherwise have missed. He looked at his phone again. I wondered whether I was making the evening uncomfortable. I had the urge to ask him directly if everything was okay, partly because I cared and partly because I wanted the uncertainty to end.
But I waited. There were other possibilities I hadn’t been giving much room to. He could be tired, distracted, worried about being late, or simply having a different kind of evening than I was having. None of those explanations was guaranteed either. That was the uncomfortable part. I let several possibilities sit there without choosing one.
A few minutes later, the conversation loosened. We found something quick to eat, and he started telling me about a problem he’d been dealing with at work. I listened, and somewhere in the middle of it I realized how much energy I’d been spending trying to determine what his behavior meant instead of noticing what was actually happening.
I was still anxious. I was still capable of misreading him. But the feeling had changed shape. It became something I could notice while remaining in the room.
By the time we took our seats and the theater lights began to dim, I was thinking less about whether he wanted to be there and more about how quickly I’d wanted certainty. That feeling helped me understand why the judgments arrived with such urgency.
I still use my old mental shortcuts, but I protect this slower habit when it really matters
I still catch myself doing it. Someone takes longer than usual to reply, and part of me immediately wonders whether I’ve said something wrong. Someone sounds distracted on the phone, and my mind supplies a reason before I’ve asked what is going on.
What has changed is what happens next.
The judgment could show up, and I could leave it unresolved long enough to see what actually happened. Sometimes my first impression turned out to be right, and sometimes it didn’t. More often, the situation became ordinary before I ever found out which one it was.
If I were starting the experiment again, I’d keep it small. For a week, I’d choose one judgment that keeps returning and write down the prediction before rushing to act on it.
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When a prediction meets an actual day, you start noticing which fears keep asking for your attention, and how often life continues even when you never get a definite answer.
I’m a freelance writer and mindfulness advocate behind this blog. I started my meditation practice in 2014, and in 2017 I launched this website to share what I learn with others.
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