Have you ever caught yourself saying, why am I like this? Why can’t I stop overthinking. Why am I still replaying that conversation three days later. Why do I apologize when nothing is wrong. Why do I say yes when every part of me wants to say no. Or maybe you’ve never asked those questions about yourself. Maybe you’ve asked them about someone else. Why is my partner so angry. Why can’t my spouse talk about feelings. Why would anyone stay in that relationship. Why does my mother criticize everyone. Notice that almost every meaningful question we ask about ourselves or the people we love starts with the same word. Why. We are desperate to understand behavior. But I don’t think we’ve ever really been taught how. I think we were taught something else. I think we were taught how to judge. We label before we ask a single question A child melts down in a grocery store and before anyone has asked anything, someone decides that kid is spoiled. Someone drinks too much and we say no self control. Someone doesn’t leave an abusive relationship and we ask why don’t they just walk away. Someone cries easily and we say too sensitive. Someone takes care of everyone else and we say they need boundaries. Lazy. Needy. Manipulative. Weak. Difficult. Codependent. Selfish. Dramatic. Toxic. Broken. Sometimes the labels aren’t completely wrong. Here’s what I wonder instead: do labels create understanding, or do they sometimes stop us from being curious? The moment I believe I already know why somebody behaves the way they do, I stop asking questions. I stop wondering. And I think curiosity is exactly what’s been missing. What a detective knows One of my favorite things to do is watch detective shows. Not because I’m fascinated by crime. I’m fascinated by the investigation. Think about what a detective does not do. They don’t walk into a scene, look down at a footprint and say well, there’s the problem. The footprint isn’t the problem. The footprint is a breadcrumb. It tells us someone was here. It tells us something happened. It points toward a story. What if behavior works the same way? What if anxiety is evidence. What if perfectionism is evidence. What if people pleasing is evidence. Or emotional shutdown, or controlling behavior, or rage, or avoidance. Not evidence that someone is broken. Evidence that something happened, or something was learned, or something had to be adapted to. I think most of us spend our lives trying to erase the evidence instead of understanding what the evidence is pointing to. We spend years trying to stop a behavior without ever becoming curious about why the behavior existed in the first place. Before you write back to tell me I’m excusing people I know some of you are already pushing back. Are you saying every behavior makes sense? Because some behaviors are flat out awful. It’s a fair question, and it’s one of the biggest misunderstandings of my work. When I say behavior always makes sense in context, I am not saying every behavior is acceptable. I’m not saying abuse is okay. I’m not saying coercive control gets a pass. I’m not saying manipulation should be tolerated because we understand where it came from. Understanding is not excusing. Understanding is not permission. Understanding does not mean staying in an unsafe relationship. Understanding does not remove accountability from the person doing the harm. When someone is violent or controlling, safety comes first. Always. No wavering. We can work to understand how a pattern developed while also saying clearly: this is harmful, this has consequences, this cannot continue. Compassion and accountability are not opposites. If we only have accountability, we become judgmental. If we only have compassion, we become permissive. Healing requires both. Curiosity asks how did this happen. Wisdom asks what needs to happen now. Two very different questions, and we need them both. The sentence that guides almost everything I do Behavior always makes sense in context. Not because every behavior is healthy. Not because every behavior is acceptable. Not because every behavior should continue. But because every behavior has a history. Every behavior has a function. Every behavior solved a problem for someone, or at least tried to. So the question is not does this behavior make sense. The better question is this: What context would have to exist for this behavior to make perfect sense? The moment you ask it, you’ve stopped judging. You’ve become an investigator. And curiosity opens a door that judgment slams shut. The smoke detector If your smoke detector keeps going off, you might be tempted to rip it off the ceiling. I’ve watched people do it. But that’s not where we should start. We should ask what does it think it’s detecting? Maybe it’s a real fire. Maybe it’s burnt toast. Maybe my oven is at 500 degrees because I’m making pizza and there’s no fire at all, just heat. Either way, the detector is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s working with the information it has. Sense heat, go off. It doesn’t have eyes. So I wonder how many of us are walking around with nervous systems that respond to burnt toast as though the house is on fire. For years I thought anxiety was attacking me. That my body was betraying me. Then one day I asked a different question. What if anxiety isn’t the problem? What if it isn’t trying to hurt me? What if it’s trying to help me, just with dated instructions? That is a completely different conversation. Two children Imagine a little girl who learned that the safest thing she could do was never upset anyone. So she becomes agreeable, helpful, easy. She learned to read a room before she ever learned to read herself. She noticed when mom was overwhelmed. She sensed when dad was frustrated. She figured out that if everyone else was okay, she was probably okay too. Everyone praises her. So mature. Such a good kid. And she grows into an adult with no idea how to ask for what she needs, who feels responsible for other people’s emotions, who apologizes for taking up space and feels guilty for resting. Should she keep abandoning herself? Of course not. But should she hate the little girl who figured out how to survive something? I don’t think so either. That little girl did exactly what children are wired to do. She adapted. Now imagine a different child. This one isn’t anyone’s favorite. Impulsive, reactive, loud, labeled defiant. Constantly corrected. Why can’t you just behave. What’s wrong with you. You always cause problems. Maybe there’s a diagnosis. Maybe there’s chaos at home. Maybe the only attention available came from creating more of it. Hear those messages enough times and they stop sounding like something other people say. They become something you say. I’m always the problem. I mess everything up. People would be better off without me. A child doesn’t just learn how to behave. A child learns who they believe they are. And once those beliefs take root, the brain gets remarkably good at collecting evidence to support them. Neither of those children is broken. One survived by becoming the good one. One survived by becoming the problem. One adaptation was rewarded and one was punished. Both made sense in the context they developed in. The part that gives me hope If those beliefs were learned, they can be questioned. If those patterns were learned, they can be updated. If your nervous system adapted once, it can adapt again. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t an event. It’s a relationship with yourself. It’s the slow work of teaching your mind and body that the world you’re in today is not the world you learned to survive. Which brings me to the biggest misunderstanding about healing. People think healing means becoming somebody else. It doesn’t. Healing is becoming less driven by survival and more guided by your Self. The version of you that existed before fear started writing the script. Healing isn’t creating a new self. It’s uncovering the one that’s been there the whole time, dimmed out in the background. That’s why I say healing begins with safety. No nervous system gives up protection until it believes the protection is no longer necessary. You don’t argue a nervous system into feeling safe. You help it experience safety over and over and over, until one day you pause instead of panic, or you say no without apologizing, or you ask for help, or you finally rest. Three questions to sit with this week * What’s one behavior you’ve spent years criticizing that now makes a little more sense? * What’s one person you’ve judged whose story you’re suddenly a little more curious about? * What’s one belief about yourself you no longer want to accept without getting curious about it? My hope isn’t that you finish this episode thinking well, that was interesting. My hope is that you finish it thinking, maybe I’m not broken. Because when behavior begins to make sense, people begin to make sense. When people begin to make sense, shame begins to loosen its grip. Curiosity replaces judgment. Self compassion replaces self criticism. And healing finally has somewhere to begin. Until next time, please be curious. We cannot heal what we don’t understand. P.S. If you’ve been asking what’s wrong with me for a long time, the HURRT Survey is a good place to start asking a better question. It maps how what happened before 18 may still be running the show today, and you get a personal snapshot right away. Take the HURRT Survey P.P.S. The smoke detector analogy in this episode is one of the core frameworks inside The Calm Code, my program for people who are done managing anxiety and ready to understand it. Learn more about The Calm Code Want to talk it through with me directly? Book a free 75 minute consultation. Listen elsewhere: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Instagram This is a public episode.
