Sometimes It's All In Your Head

Jancee Dunn was adding unnecessary drama to her life by misinterpreting others’ actions—here’s how she stopped doing it for good.

- Jancee Dunn

NOT LONG AGO, I SENT some texts to a friend, and never heard back. It wasn’t like her to go quiet, so I followed up with a quick email. Nothing.

A few days in, her silence began to nag at me. I started obsessing over possible offenses. She’s mad because I didn’t go to that cocktail party with her. No, she’s upset that I said she was too attached to her dog. Jeez, I was kidding! She knows I love Barkley. What I should have done was pick up the phone and simply talk to her—but by then, my mind had conjured up such an elaborate story about why she was mad at me that I just couldn’t do it.

Nine days later—not that I was counting—I received a flurry of apologetic texts. She had been buried in a work project; at one point, she wrote a reply to my email, then got distracted and forgot to send it. (I’ve done that myself in the past.) She was busy. End of story. Yet for more than a week, I had tortured myself—and more important, I had automatically assumed the worst about a good friend.

Realizing the Problem