So….Here’s something fun.

We react and respond to our environment all the time and those responses create emotions. Normal. Something happens, we feel scared. Something else happens, we feel happy. External stimuli elicit internal responses.

And emotions are basically chemistry.

So. Nothing new: external stimuli change your internal chemistry.

BUT

We can also sit around or drive around and have entire convos in our head, reacting and creating emotions- when nothing is actually HAPPENING to create those responses outside of us.

(Hello sitting on the couch getting pissed about something that happened two weeks ago…two years ago etc etc. If that event isn’t happening anymore, we’re imagining/recreating it in our head.)

Right?

So those internal dialogues (or stories) are causing chemical reactions. Those internal convos change your chemistry too.

Right?

Then think about this. Seriously.
You will get yourself used to emotional spikes because you keep talking yourself into them.

You keep thinking yourself into them, rather, and all that thinking changes your chemistry.

You give yourself a whole “chemical normal” and think it’s real. (You stress yourself or depress yourself enough, you start believing it’s true.)

So then you go out into the world and create things, relationships, friendships, patterns etc to validate the emotional spikes YOU CREATED FOR YOURSELF. In your own head.

That thing we keep thinking about over and over on the couch? We rev our self up enough and then get to some kind of “fuck You” or “I’ll show you” or “I suck at life”- that becomes a choice or phone call or bar run or impulse purchase that you created from a convo you perpetuated in your head.

We go make choices to validate or relieve stress that isn’t technically even happening.

Get it?

So. While some stress is from life happening….

How much of it simply comes from You happening to You.