Take People At Their Word

Alan Watts said, “When we wake up in bed on Monday morning and think of the various hurdles we’ve got to jump that day, immediately we feel sad, bored, and bothered. Whereas actually, we’re just lying in bed.”

A lot of our misery comes not from experience but from the way we narrate experience. The Buddha called it “becoming”: the way we twist reality into something else with our inner commentary. A quiet day becomes “I’m wasting my life.” A feeling of uncertainty becomes “Everything's wrong.” A moment of distance becomes “I’m being abandoned.”

One thing that strengthens becoming is searching for hidden meanings behind what other people say. Someone says, “I’m happy to,” but we look for a secret resentment. Someone says, “I’m tired tonight,” but we wonder what we did wrong. Someone says “yes” or “no,” but we think: “If I love them hard enough, they’ll change their answer.”

Take people at their word. Not only does it reduce illusion and projection, it’s also a way of respecting their autonomy. Emotionally translating other people’s gestures and tone may feel like intimacy, but it's often a control tactic, a way of replacing authentic relating with fantasies about who we want others to be.

In my coaching practice, I'm often struck by how much thought and energy my clients can devote to decoding their partners’ psychology. Some of them practically have PhDs in this field. But of course, a hyper-focus on the other person is almost always inversely proportional to how deeply they understand and accept their own emotions.

I call it the “Two F’s”: fixing and figuring out. As soon as that becomes your way of relating, you’re caught in becoming. Remind yourself that people are whole and don’t need to be fixed. Remind yourself that figuring people out is a way of replacing them with your own interpretations.

And if what remains is some empty space, some silence, some mystery, remind yourself that it isn’t your job to fill it. That’s where true love grows, anyway, if you don't keep overwatering it with too many thoughts.

Katherine Bradford, "Communal Table" (2025)