What You Make It Mean: Why Your Circumstances Are Not the Source of Your Stress

A complaint lands in your inbox. You read it once, then again. Within minutes your mind is spiralling. By lunchtime, the frustration has coloured the entire day. You are snappier in handover, less present in clinic. You continue to ruminate about it when you’re at home and are distant from your family.

In another scenario, you discuss a patient with a colleague and they are somewhat curt in their reply. You leave the conversation certain that they are avoiding responsibility, not pulling their weight, making your job harder. The story is already fully formed before you have reached the end of the corridor.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Most of us have been taught that our circumstances create our emotional reality. That a bad interaction causes frustration. That a complaint causes anxiety. That a difficult day causes exhaustion. The event happens, and the feeling follows directly from it.

But this is not actually how it works.

Your thinking about what happens is what actually creates how you feel. Your mind is subconsciously creating a story about what happened which in turn generates your emotional response. This distinction is known as event-interpretation.

The complaint does not cause the spiral. What causes the spiral is what you make the complaint mean. That you are not good enough. That your judgment is being questioned. That this will have consequences. That you should have done something differently. Those thoughts, running fast and largely below conscious awareness, are what generate the feelings that follow.

The curt colleague does not cause the frustration. The story you construct about why they were curt, that they don’t care, that they are dismissive, that you are being left to manage alone, that is what creates the emotional weight you carry out of the room.

This is not a small distinction. It is one of the most significant reframes available to anyone working in a high-pressure environment.

Because if your circumstances are the source of your stress, you are largely at the mercy of them and will forever be a victim to your circumstances. Medicine will always produce difficult circumstances. Whether it’s the complaints will land, a colleagues having a bad day, a challenging interaction with a patient or their family. If those things are inherently stressful, there is not much to be done except endure.

But if the story is the source, then the story can be examined. And a story that can be examined can be changed.

The cumulative weight of small frustrations

One difficult interaction, one piece of negative feedback, one curt reply, these are manageable in isolation. What makes them exhausting is the accumulation of these micro stress doses over time.

Each small frustration adds a layer. The story about the complaint sits alongside the story about the colleague, which sits alongside the story about the meeting that went badly last week and the patient who seemed dissatisfied and the registrar who did not complete the task you asked of them. Individually, none of these feel significant. Together, they create a persistent frustration that impacts how you feel.

This persistent low level frustration and dissatisfaction has a cost. It shows up as tiredness, irritability or emotional numbness. You might try and avoid the feeling through doom scrolling, over eating, alcohol or Netflix but the root cause doesn’t go away.

The stories are running in the background, shaping how you see and respond to everything, and most of the time we do not even know they are there.

What it looks like to look closer

The invitation here is the practice of pausing when you notice the frustration or the spiral beginning. To ask yourself: what happened and what am I making this mean?

Not what happened. You know what happened. But what story have I already constructed around it? What have I decided this says about me, about the other person, about the situation? How certain am I that story is accurate? And is this story serving me, or is it costing me?

More often, there is at least some part of it that does not hold up to scrutiny. A catastrophised consequence that is unlikely. An assumed motivation that may not be accurate. A judgement about yourself that you would not apply to a colleague in the same situation.

And once you can see the story clearly, you now have a choice: you can choose to hold on to the story or let it go and rewrite a new one. Let me be clear, I’m not talking about toxic positivity where you paint a sparkly paintbrush over everything. This is seeing a situation for what it really is and deciding how you choose to frame it.

A practical place to begin

Think of a situation that is currently causing you irritation, frustration, or low-level stress.

Write down what happened. Just the facts, as a neutral observer might report them.

Then write down what you have made it mean. All of it. What you have decided it says about you, about the other person, about how things are going. Let the story come out fully rather than editing it.

Then ask: if a trusted friend were looking at this situation, what might they say? What might they notice that you cannot see from inside the story?

What would it look like to let the current story go and approach the situation with fresh eyes?

If you are tired of carrying the weight of stories that are costing you more than they are worth, and you would like support to begin working with them differently, I invite you to book a discovery call.