Eliminate Assumptions

The difference between facts, stories, and identity

I couldn't be prouder to introduce my daughter as our guest writer today. She is a college student with a genuine curiosity about psychology and a love for understanding people. And she loves to write even more than I do. She’s learning to navigate the joys and challenges of adulthood with a thoughtful, compassionate, and curious perspective. She has a way of putting into words the experiences many young adults naturally navigate. I think her words will resonate with both young adults and those who love them. Enjoy!

I’m 5’1. On a good day, with the right shoes on, I can almost convince people I'm 5’3”.

In most rooms, I’m used to being the shortest person, always having to look up to make eye contact with others. Growing up, I was also always the youngest. Youngest sibling, youngest cousin, youngest niece. My birthday falls in May, which means that every school year, I was also one of the youngest kids in my grade. 

What I’m sharing with you aren’t inherently meaningful statistics. They’re simply facts.

Yet somewhere along the way, my brain connected those facts with meaning. Height became importance, age became competence, and quietness became invisibility. None of those conclusions were facts; they were assumptions that slowly hardened into false certainty.

At no point did I consciously decide to believe these things about myself. I’m sure you can think of a few unsupported ideas about yourself you’ve created along the way. I never woke up one day and thought to myself, “Because I’m physically small, my ideas matter less.” But gradually, almost invisibly, it became a lens I began to see myself through. A lens I started to also believe other people saw me through. 

The interesting thing about assumptions is that they don’t always stay in our heads. They start to show up in our voice when we talk quieter than normal. If I already expected to be overlooked, that assumption would linger in my hesitation before sharing my ideas. And when I started to shrink myself to a narrative I convinced myself was true, it started to become a reality.

Don’t get me wrong, assumptions aren’t inherently flawed or unhealthy. Our brains makes assumptions to fill in gaps in information because uncertainty is metabolically expensive. Daily functioning would be close to impossible without them; they are essential. There comes a point, though, when our assumptions are more harmful than helpful, and understanding how to notice when they may be untrue is the important part. 

Assumptions, which are just conclusions reached without sufficient evidence, like to creep in and take different forms. Psychologists have long studied schemas, which can be simply put as mental frameworks that help us organize and interpret daily information. Schemas are broader than individual beliefs, they are deeply ingrained patterns involving thoughts, emotions, memories, and expectations. Normally, they’re developed in early life, and then they filter new experiences to reinforce themselves. 

To bring this back to my original example, my belief that I am “small” could fit into several schemas depending on how I had developed that thought over time. 

Imagine I share an idea in a meeting and nobody responds.

If a schema I had established was defectiveness or shame, my mind would fill in the silence: my ideas don’t matter, they don’t take me seriously, I shouldn’t have spoken. 

Someone else in that same situation would think differently: It’s nothing personal, just not the right time.

Nothing in the scenario changed, just the assumptions attached to it. That’s exactly why it’s important to be mindful of the assumptions your mind is creating. Because assumptions don’t create facts, they only invent stories. 

Attachment theory tells us that early relationships create assumptions about future relationships. The ways we learned to expect love, safety, rejection, or connection don't simply disappear. Instead, they become a perspective through which we interpret new and current relationships. Unaddressed assumptions in relationships cause unnecessary tension and misunderstandings that often lead to distance. 

Schemas and attachment theory are just two of many ways psychology explains why our minds create assumptions. Different researched theories such as predictive processing, fundamental attribution error, self-fulfilling prophecies, and confirmation bias all have something remarkable in common: the stories we expect often become the stories we notice. 

As I mentioned previously, assumptions aren’t all bad. Driving, reading, understanding language, recognizing faces, and having a conversation are just a few of the daily tasks that require our minds to come up with assumptions. The goal, though, is not to generate stories, but to make stories recognized. 

So what do we do with these stories once we notice them? Aaron Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, would encourage someone to approach their assumptions with a grain of salt. Instead of immediately believing the thoughts that pop in your head, take a step back. Give yourself to room to ask, what is the evidence supporting this assumption? What evidence do I have against it? Could there be another explanation? Am I confusing possibility with certainty?

Give yourself room to recognize when assumptions start poorly effecting your mood, relationships, decisions, or most importantly, your identity. Don’t try to replace negative assumptions with positive ones, that would be unrealistic optimism. Instead, learn how to separate observations with interpretations and slowly start to reframe your mindset.

Instead of holding yourself back because you believe “this will fail”, tell yourself, “there are many possible outcomes.”

Instead of assuming that “they hate me,” tell yourself, “I don’t know yet.”

Don’t distrust your mind. Just approach your thoughts with humility. 

My belief that I was small, or insignificant, wasn’t the only one I had to struggle to rebuild. Different experiences throughout my childhood that had reinforced themselves later in life allowed lies to ruminate in my mind. 

It took a lot of work and honesty with myself to realize that the voices I allowed in my head, telling me I’m “insignificant” or “weak,” never had substance in the first place. When I began to show up as the person I wanted to be, I realized how many false assumptions I was giving power to. 

I wonder, how much of my life have I lived in response to stories my mind created instead of reality itself?

About the Author

Written by Emma Ortiz

Emma is a current undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina, studying Public Relations with a minor in Psychology. She is passionate about understanding the psychology behind human behavior, cognition, and relationships, and enjoys translating psychological research into practical insights that help people better understand themselves and others. Through her writing, Emma explores the intersection of psychology, communication, and everyday life, intending to make complex ideas approachable and meaningful.