Our Brains Predict the Worst

Sitting on Brian's bed with his football-shaped telephone in my hand, the coiled cord stretched between us, I rehearsed the five words I'd been trying to build up the courage to say for the last hour. Brian was threatening to dial the number himself, acting like this was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Will. You. Go. With. Me?”

Go where? That was 1980’s middle school shorthand for “Will you be my girlfriend?” I wasn't asking someone to go anywhere, not even to the mall. But those five awkward words, at least for me, carried the emotional weight of a marriage proposal. I was convinced that if Kelly Brown said no, my life would be over.

Looking back, what fascinates me isn't the crazy level of nervousness I experienced. It's my intense certainty over the looming catastrophic future. I wasn't predicting that Kelly might say no. I was predicting utter humiliation, social annihilation, and the complete collapse of my life. I never stopped to ask where those predictions came from. I simply treated them as facts.

Why Do We Avoid the Things We Care About?

If you’re paying attention, you're making predictions. It’s how our brains work—to conserve energy, to anticipate what’s coming—basically, to keep us from being eaten by the giant lizard. We all live according to predictions. It’s a normal part of our survival instinct.

To be clear, we aren’t so much playing Nostradamus—although lately I’ve heard quite a bit of apocalyptic talk making a comeback. Most of us aren’t sitting around consciously predicting the future:

"Today I predict my boss will get upset with me. My spouse will find someone they like more than me. The people at the grocery store will judge me for looking like a slob. My client will find a more competent therapist.”

That’s not really how it works. Our predictions usually show up before important conversations or decisions, in moments when things feel uncertain. Before we even realize it, our minds are running predictions about what will happen, how bad it will go, and whether we’ll be able to handle what comes next.

If I answer this phone call, they'll ask me something I don't want to do.
If I tell my parents I can't come over for dinner, they'll be disappointed in me.
If I share this piece of writing, people won't even care.

And underneath many of those predictions are three basic questions:*

How likely is it that the thing I fear will happen?
How bad will it be if it does happen?
And if it happens, will I be able to handle it?

How Avoidance Makes Anxiety Worse

The problem is that we often treat these predictions (our answers to these questions) as facts.

We don't say, "They might reject me." We say, "They will reject me.”

We don't say, "I fear this conversation might go badly." We say, "This conversation will be a disaster and will destroy the relationship.”

The prediction feels inevitable before we’ve even slowed down enough to consider that there might be more than one possible ending.

And once we believe the prediction, we start organizing our lives around avoiding it.

We write the text but never send it.
We rehearse the conversation but never have it.
We set the boundary but don’t enforce it.
We don’t say we’re sorry.
We don’t apply for the job.
We don't ask for what we need.
We wait for certainty that never comes.

And for a moment, avoidance works. Anxiety diminishes. The “danger” appears to have passed. 

If it’s not already obvious, here’s the problem: When we avoid the thing we fear, we also avoid discovering whether our prediction was actually true. We never get new information. 

The brain (or our activated nervous system, or an overly protective part of us) says, "Good thing we didn't do that. That could have been terrible.” And because we don’t test the prediction, we reinforce it.

How Early Experiences Shape Avoidance Behaviors

My dad worked for IBM (International Business Machines). People joke that it stands for I've Been Moved. For me, it wasn't a joke. I moved in 4th grade, 6th grade, 9th grade, and 11th grade. Wichita. New Orleans. Atlanta. Boston. Los Angeles. (Don't get too excited—it was mostly suburbs*.)

I can still remember first-days at new schools—dreadful walks with the principal down empty hallways toward classrooms full of strangers.

Classroom door opens.

Twenty-five faces turn toward you.

Principal whispers something to the teacher. 

The teacher announces, "Class, this is David. Let's all make David feel welcome." As if a room full of 6th graders mock-chanting, "Hi, David!" has ever made anyone feel welcome.

Each new school had its own unique social ecosystem I had to learn. I was shy, so I kept a fairly low profile. I was a decent athlete so sports helped me survive. But dating—or, in middle school language, "going with" girls—was uncharted territory. 

By late middle school and early high school, I was feeling both the pressure to act like I knew what I was doing and a genuine longing for connection. I cared enough about girls to know this was something worth risking—but predictions of rejection and humiliation kept any possible teenage romance safely confined to my imagination. 

Looking back, I wish someone had asked me what it was like to be the new kid. Maybe I would have discovered that my experience wasn’t as unique as it felt. Maybe I would have realized that my fears weren’t evidence that something was wrong with me, but part of something deeply human: our tendency to protect ourselves from rejection, embarrassment, and pain.

My predictions probably helped me navigate being the new kid. But a prediction that once kept us safe can eventually become the very thing that keeps us stuck. And I’ve carried some of those predictions with me long after I needed them.

Why We Procrastinate, Overthink, and Ghost our Friends

The predictions we are automatically making are rarely as simple as they seem.

A client of mine who struggles with procrastination has a habit of not responding to texts. Not because he doesn’t care about people—in a way, it’s the opposite. He cares so much about how he comes across that the response has to be exactly right.

The problem isn’t the text. The problem is what the text represents.

Underneath the delay is a prediction: If I send something imperfect, people might see that I’m not as interesting, thoughtful, or creative as I need them to know I am.

So he waits. And while he is waiting, he is protected from the possibility of rejection—but he is also creating a different experience for the people waiting for a reply.

I asked him, “What would your friends rather receive—an imperfect text from you, or silence for two days?”

Often, the thing we are trying so hard to avoid is not the actual danger. It’s the feeling we imagine we won’t be able to handle—the embarrassment, the uncertainty, the possibility that someone might see us as less than we hoped.

The work is not convincing ourselves that nothing bad will ever happen. It’s learning that we can survive awkward conversations, misunderstandings, disappointment, and even rejection. The real work is discovering that we can survive those moments and still move toward the things we care about.

Understanding Yourself Isn’t Enough

Most of us already know what we’re struggling with.

We know we avoid conflict. We know we people-please. We know we procrastinate. We overthink every decision. We apologize too much. We don't ask for what we need. We stay in relationships we've outgrown.

Many of us can even explain where these patterns came from. We can trace them back to our families, painful relationships, or ways of coping that once made sense.

Insight matters. But understanding a pattern doesn’t mean we’ll change it.

For change to occur, I have to be willing to challenge my predictions. I have to slow down, notice the story I’m telling myself, and risk finding out if it's true. There are no guarantees, but I get to discover whether the thing I fear actually happens, if it’s as bad as I imagine, and how well I cope if and when it does.

This sequence, on good days, called a “corrective emotional experience,” is how change happens. My nervous system doesn't update because I gave myself a good explanation. It updates because I live through something I didn’t think I could handle.

There’s a big difference between understanding something intellectually and learning it experientially.

How to Break the Avoidance Loop

I still feel a tinge of embarrassment thinking back to how shy I was, how inexperienced and lacking in courage I was during those early teenage years. I wish the 13-year-old me, back in 1986, had someone help him see the difference between the dreaded future he was predicting and the possibilities available - including tolerating rejection.

I can speak now to that younger part of me that still fears rejection—that is still anxious for approval, that avoids conflict, that people-pleases:

"You are going to feel embarrassed sometimes. You are going to feel rejected sometimes. You had to move from school to school, making new friends over and over. That was hard work. There are good reasons you work hard to protect your heart. But you are also going to experience connection, love, friendship, and deep and complex relationships that can withstand all sorts of things. The risk isn’t that you will be hurt. The risk is that you will work so hard to avoid being hurt that you also avoid the life you want.”

I still care deeply about how other people perceive me. I still avoid conflict, people-please, and procrastinate. I have conversations in my head that I refuse to have in real life. I still find myself avoiding things because I am trying to escape outcomes I don’t give myself enough credit to handle.

The goal isn't to stop predicting—that’s just something our brains will keep doing to protect us.

But if we can learn that our predictions are not facts—that small shift can activate our curiosity to consider other possible outcomes.

And the real payoff is discovering how capable we are of handling rejection, or coping with disappointment, or maybe even hearing someone tell us “yes" when we just knew it would be “no." 

By the way, Kelly did say “yes.” And a short 24 hours later, she sent a friend with a perfectly folded note, stating, “I think we should just be friends.” To be fair, I spent most of those 24 hours avoiding her. 

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A note for readers:

As you read this essay, you may notice some of your own avoidance patterns—the conversations you keep postponing, the decisions you keep circling, or the things you keep telling yourself you’ll do “once you feel ready.”

I created a free worksheet to help you identify the predictions underneath avoidance and begin testing whether they are actually true.

You can download it here >> The Avoidance Loop Worksheet

Notes:

*Many of the clinical ideas in this essay regarding predictions and avoidance were inspired by the excellent Being Well podcast with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson. I especially recommend the episodes "Breaking the Avoidance Loop" (June 29, 2026) and "From Insight to Action" (July 6, 2026). They're a father-and-son team who do a remarkable job making psychology practical and accessible.

https://www.forresthanson.com/being-well

*The idea that change occurs through testing predictions and gathering new information is grounded in the work of Michelle G. Craske and colleagues on inhibitory learning and expectancy violation in exposure therapy. Their research suggests that lasting change does not come simply from understanding that a fear is exaggerated, but through experiences that create new learning and update our expectations. See: Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learning approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10–23.

Abstract: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005796714000606

*Suburbs