Who’s Really Being Negative?

If I say “I’m feeling pain,” that’s a statement of perception — it’s about how I experience certain sensations.

It’s like describing the weather: if I say “it’s cold outside,” when it’s 55 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m stating my perception. Your perception might vary based on your cold tolerance.

In and of themselves, statements of perception are neutral; they are like statements of fact about our experience.

When Statements Become Stories

The potential problem arises when I take a neutral statement of perception and add meaning to turn it into a story.

My observation that it’s cold is neutral on its own.

When I start to talk about how the cold weather makes me miserable, how I hate getting out of bed when it’s cold, and how I feel claustrophobic when bundled up in jackets and scarves, you might say I veer into a “negative mindset” about the cold weather.

More diplomatically, I’d say that’s a story about the cold that isn’t serving me.

Similarly, my statement that “my hip hurts” is neutral on its own. It only veers into a “negative” statement — or a story that doesn’t serve me — when I ascribe meaning to it, either in terms of its cause or impact.

Ascribing Cause

For example, statements ascribing cause sound like this:

“My hip hurts because I have a broken body.” “My hip hurts because I lifted too heavy.” “My hip hurts because I sit too much.”

Note that none of these stories is provable as true (or false). Hips can hurt for a variety of reasons, including biomechanical, psychological, and emotional.

Statements of Impact

Statements of impact sound like this:

“My hip hurts so I can’t lift today.” “My hip hurts so I need to fix it.” “My hip hurts so I need to not move at all.”

These are also stories. They are ascribing meaning and forming conclusions.

The Impact of Interpretation

The point is not whether the story is provable as true or false, and not whether the prediction will happen, but whether it serves me to believe in it.

The story creates meaning that might not be necessary or helpful to any constructive aim.

What is the potential impact of believing that when my hip hurts it means I “did something wrong” or “I can’t lift”?

What’s the impact of believing that “there’s something wrong with me?”

When we are talking to ourselves, our job is to watch for where we move from neutral statements of observation into meaning and story.

How Others Hear Our Words

Of course, in real life we don’t talk only to ourselves. We also talk to other people.

What is our responsibility when it comes to how others interpret our words?

Let’s go back to the weather.

If I observe “it’s cold outside,” in a neutral tone without saying anything more, and you interpret that as a “negative” statement, that’s on you.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of your subconscious, you’re creating a story that “cold weather” is a “bad” thing. You’re giving it that meaning.

Similarly, if I tell you that “my hip hurts” and you interpret that as a “negative” statement, that’s because of the meaning you are inferring and the story you are telling. That “negative” veneer is your filter, not mine.

Our Mental Filing Cabinets

As humans, we have “mental filing cabinets” in the recesses of our subconscious. Every time we have a conversation with someone, we file little bits of information about them in those cabinets.

These bits of information create filters and expectations that shape our future interactions with others.

It’s similar to how ChatGPT can create a “memory file” with pieces of information from different conversations, which can help it offer more useful responses tailored to you.

When Memory Shapes Perception

If you conclude my statement that “my hip hurts” to be “negative,” that’s because you’re making a judgment based on a meaning you’re ascribing to an otherwise neutral statement.

Even though it’s your filter, you’ll file that piece of information in the file with my name that you keep in your mental filing cabinet. The next time we talk, you will be more likely to filter my neutral statements through that “negative” filter, because it’s what your memory bank held on to.

How Perception Becomes Reality

The story we tell about an experience becomes our experience.

Similarly, over time, the filters we use to interpret someone’s words become our fixed perception of who they are. The more you interpret my neutral observations as “negative,” the more you reinforce your view of me as being a “negative” person.

You’ll come to expect negativity from me, and because you expect it, you’ll hear everything through that lens.

(As a side note: this explains why people from your early life tend to see you the way you were then, even if you’ve changed drastically over the years.)

In ongoing relationships, this can become a self-reinforcing cycle: eventually, you stop hearing what the other person is actually saying because you’re hearing only through the filters of your expectations.

When we can no longer hear each other’s true words beyond our filters, relationships break down.

A Lesson From Communicating with AI

Ironically, this is a place where we can learn something from AI conversations.

Consider how, before the addition of built-in memory, ChatGPT could not remember anything across different conversations. Claude AI is still like this: it starts fresh with each new conversation, like you’re a new person.

When you’re trying to create content with continuity, that lack of memory can be frustrating. But when it comes to relationship dynamics, starting with a “cleared cache” can help us give others the benefit of the doubt in a new conversation.

A Guide to ‘Clearing Your Cache’

When we find ourselves interpreting someone’s comment as “negative,” it’s a good practice to pause and notice that we are in judgment, then ask ourselves:

• Why am I judging this statement as “negative?”
• What meaning am I giving their words that may not be coming from them?
• What stories from my own experiences are shaping the meaning I’m ascribing?
• What files from my mental filing cabinet are shaping my interpretation?
• How might I hear this differently if I cleared out those old files?
• How would I interpret the same statement from a stranger?
• Would I still judge this as negative if someone else I know said it?