Ep: 217 The Story You Make Up About What Everyone Thinks of YouEp: 217 The Story You Make Up About What Everyone Thinks of You
The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast
Allison K. Dagney talks about the habit of assuming others think negatively of you, especially after emotional abuse. She explains why the brain does this and outlines practical steps to stop treating anxious stories as facts.
24:03•19 May 2026
Rewriting the Story in Your Head: Why You Assume Everyone Thinks the Worst
Episode Overview
- Emotional abuse and early criticism can train the brain to scan for what you did wrong and assume others’ behaviour is your fault.
- Anxious mind-reading turns neutral events, like a missed text, into stories that always cast you as the problem.
- Intuition feels calm and neutral, while anxiety is urgent, loud and packed with dramatic stories about what others think.
- Separating facts from the story in your head helps reduce spiralling and keeps you grounded in what you actually know.
- Creating space without rushing to assign meaning allows new, healthier patterns to form instead of automatic self-blame.
“You’re not responding to reality, you’re responding to a story.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation from The Emotional Abuse Recovery Podcast zooms in on a different kind of addiction: the mental habit of assuming everyone is thinking something bad about you. Host and emotional abuse recovery mentor Allison K. Dagney talks directly to women who have lived through emotionally unsafe relationships and now find their minds racing any time a text goes unanswered.
She shares the story of a former client whose brain wrote entire scripts about what partners, kids, and friends "must" be thinking, always casting herself as the problem. As Allison puts it, "You’re not responding to reality, you’re responding to a story." The episode breaks down why this pattern forms, linking it to childhood criticism, unpredictable caregivers, and emotional abuse that teach you to scan constantly for what you did wrong.
She also draws a clear line between intuition and anxiety, noting that calm, neutral observation is very different from the loud, urgent, story-filled drama of trauma-driven worry: "If your mind is writing a full script about what someone thinks of you, that is not your intuition." To help break this cycle, Allison offers a five-step process: catch the story in the moment, separate facts from the narrative, stop trying to solve what you can’t know, bring the focus back to what you actually know and need, and finally, let there be space without rushing to make meaning.
Allison explains how the nervous system hates uncertainty and fills in the blanks with worst-case scenarios, especially when old beliefs like "I’m too much" or "I always mess things up" are still running the show. Anyone dealing with overthinking, self-blame, or the lingering effects of emotional abuse will find both validation and practical tools here. Could it be time to question the stories your brain keeps writing about you?
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