The Story Beneath the Behavior: What Curiosity Helps Us Uncover

What if what we see is only part of the story?

When I was younger, I remember being called "sensitive" and "moody."

I learned to view those words as negative. They described something other people observed, but they didn't necessarily describe everything that was happening underneath.

There were feelings. Thoughts. Reactions. Things I didn't yet have words for. Things I didn't know how to explain. And, like most kids, I didn't always have the tools to understand what was happening inside of me, much less communicate it clearly to someone else.

I also got pretty good at creating explanations when I didn't have them. If someone was upset with me, pulled away, or stopped talking to me, my brain tried to figure out why. And often, the explanation I landed on was that I had done something wrong or that there was something wrong with me.

I didn't know that for sure, but it felt true.

Years later, as a therapist, parent, and someone who still has plenty of big feelings of my own, I keep coming back to the same idea:

What we see on the outside is rarely the entire story.

A child yells.

Someone shuts down during an argument.

A friend doesn't respond.

A partner becomes defensive.

Someone cries over something that seems small.

A person who promised to show up for us doesn't.

We see the behavior. We experience the impact. And very quickly, our brains try to make sense of what happened.

They're rude.

They don't care.

They're being difficult.

They did that on purpose.

Or sometimes:

I shouldn't be reacting this way.

I must have done something wrong.

There must be something wrong with me.

Sometimes our interpretation may be accurate.

And sometimes there is more to the story.

What might be underneath?

This is what I mean when I talk about The Story Beneath the Behavior.

Behavior is often the part we can see.

Underneath it might be feelings, thoughts, body sensations, needs, expectations, previous experiences, sensory experiences, learned patterns, interpretations, or something about the context that isn't immediately obvious.

The word might matters.

Curiosity isn't about looking at someone's behavior and deciding we know the underlying explanation for it.

It isn't replacing:

They're being difficult.

with:

They're overwhelmed because of something that happened in childhood.

We don't necessarily know that either.

Curiosity means allowing ourselves to say:

I know what happened. I know how I feel about it. I may not know the whole story yet.

And that curiosity can turn inward, too.

Why did this affect me the way it did?

What did I think was happening?

What was I expecting?

What did I need in that moment?

What information did I actually have, and what did I fill in myself?

Sometimes we eventually get more information.

Sometimes we don't.

Curiosity doesn't require certainty. It simply allows the possibility that there’s more to the story than we realize.

Two things can be true at the same time

This is something I say often in my work.

Two things can be true at the same time.

I can be hurt and recognize that I don't know someone's intention.

I can understand why I reacted the way I did and take responsibility for the impact of my reaction.

I can have compassion for someone and set a boundary.

I can trust myself and know that sometimes I'm going to get things wrong.

Holding two truths at once can be uncomfortable because our brains often want a cleaner answer.

Was I right or wrong?

Was it their fault or mine?

Was my reaction justified, or was I overreacting?

But human experiences don't always fit neatly into one side or the other.

One of the phrases I use in my BIG Feelings work is:

Feelings are real. Thoughts aren't facts. We choose how we respond.

That distinction matters.

A feeling doesn't have to be justified to be real.

Whether we should or shouldn’t feel something doesn’t matter. If we are feeling it, it’s real.

And feeling something deeply doesn't automatically make every thought we have about the situation true.

I can be hurt without knowing why you did it

For a long time, not knowing was really hard for me.

When I was younger, I had friendships end without ever really knowing why. Someone would stop talking to me, and I was usually too afraid to ask what had happened.

So I filled in the missing pieces myself.

I assumed I had done something wrong. Or that there was something about me that made people leave.

The hurt was real. Losing those friendships hurt. Not understanding what happened hurt.

But the explanation I gave myself wasn't something I actually knew.

I didn't know what the other person was thinking. I didn't know what was happening in their life. I didn't know how they had interpreted something I said or did. I didn't know whether there was one specific reason at all.

I just knew what had happened, how I felt about it, and the story I had created to make sense of what I didn't know.

That's part of why this distinction matters so much to me now.

My feelings are information about my experience. They aren't proof of someone else's intention, and they aren't proof of something being wrong with me.

I can be hurt by what happened and still leave room for what I don't know.

And when I don't have to turn every unanswered question into a judgment about myself, I have more choice about what I do next.

Intention, interpretation, and impact are not the same thing

This becomes especially important in relationships.

We usually know our own intention.

Other people don't experience our intention directly. They experience what we say and do through their own lens: their history, expectations, experiences, needs, sensitivities, fears, knowledge, and the context of that particular moment.

They interpret what happened.

And what we say or do may have an impact, whether or not that impact matches what we intended.

Those three things don't always match.

I may genuinely have meant no harm, but someone else may have experienced what I did as hurtful.

Both can be true.

This is where conversations can get stuck.

Someone says, "That hurt me."

And the immediate response is:

"But that's not what I meant."

Maybe it wasn't — our intention matters — but our intention doesn't erase impact.

I can explain what I intended without using my intention to erase someone else's experience.

I can listen. I can become curious about how the situation looked from their side. I can recognize that I may never fully understand the lens through which they experienced it.

And when appropriate, I can apologize for the impact I had without pretending I intended something I didn't.

Understanding doesn't require us to decide that everything is okay.

Which brings me to another piece of this that matters deeply to me.

Having a reason doesn't make every behavior okay

When I encourage curiosity about what is underneath behavior, I'm not suggesting that if we understand someone's reason, the behavior no longer matters.

Understanding gives us more information. It doesn't remove responsibility for what we choose next.

There may be a very understandable reason I became defensive, and I can still owe someone an apology.

A child may be overwhelmed. We can validate that overwhelm and still stop them from hitting someone.

Someone may have learned to protect themselves by withdrawing whenever conflict appears. That pattern may make complete sense when we understand more of their history, but it may also be hurting their relationships now.

Understanding and accountability are not opposites.

Compassion and boundaries are not opposites.

A reason and responsibility can exist at the same time.

Again, two things can be true.

Every choice gives us information

In my clinical work, I often hear clients describe something they did as a "bad choice."

Maybe the choice didn't lead to the outcome they wanted. Maybe they regret what happened next. Maybe, looking back, they would do something differently.

But simply deciding that was a bad choice doesn't give us very much information.

I'm much more interested in what we can learn from it.

What was happening at the time? Why did that choice make sense in that moment? What happened next? What worked? What didn't? And knowing what we know now, what might we want to do differently next time?

That doesn't mean pretending every choice is equally helpful or that the impact doesn't matter. It means that even when a choice doesn't lead to the outcome we hoped for, we can still learn something from it.

This is also why I think about self-trust a little differently.

Self-trust isn't trusting yourself to make the right decision every time.

I don't think that's realistic.

We're going to misunderstand situations. We're going to make choices that don't lead to the outcome we hoped for. Sometimes we'll fall back into old patterns. Sometimes we'll make decisions with incomplete information. Sometimes we'll hurt someone or realize later that we wish we had handled something differently.

The goal isn't to guarantee the outcome before we choose.

For me, self-trust is much closer to:

Trusting yourself to meet whatever happens next.

I can make a choice.

I can pay attention to what happens.

I can be honest with myself about the outcome.

I can ask why that choice made sense to me at the time.

I can notice what worked and what didn't.

I can repair something if repair is needed.

I can decide what I want to do the same way next time and what I might want to do differently.

Then I can choose again.

Every choice gives us information if we're willing to reflect on it.

And that information helps us understand ourselves.

These ideas eventually found their way into Brightlight Orchard

I didn't have a name for all of this when I was younger. But looking back, I can see these ideas showing up again and again: through my own experiences, my work with clients, my research into authenticity and self-presentation, becoming a parent, and eventually creating BIG Feelings.

And when I started writing children's stories, they showed up there too.

Angry Apple and the Playground Problem is the first book in my Brightlight Orchard series.

On the surface, it's a story about an apple who gets angry after something happens on the playground.

Children get to decide what Apple does next.

Their choices lead them through different paths and ultimately to four possible endings.

There isn't one "perfect" path.

The story was designed this way because every choice leads somewhere.

I originally thought about that in terms of consequences, but over time I started using the word outcomes instead. Consequence can sound like punishment, and that isn't what I mean.

An outcome is simply what happens next.

Sometimes we like the outcome. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes things work out the way we hoped, and sometimes they don't. Real life doesn't always give us a happy ending or wrap everything up neatly in a bow.

But whatever happens next gives us more information.

We can reflect on the choice we made, what was happening when we made it, what happened afterward, and what we might want to do the same way or differently next time.

That's what I wanted children to be able to experience through the story.

I didn't want to write a story that told children:

Here is the feeling.

Here is the correct coping skill.

Here is the good choice.

Here is the lesson.

I wanted them to experience the story.

Something happens.

Apple has thoughts about it. His body responds. He feels something.

He might react right away. He might pause. Either way, he has a choice about what comes next.

And that choice leads somewhere.

The reader gets to see what happens.

Then they can go back and choose again.

Not because the previous choice was a failure, but because now they have more information.

One path isn't the whole story

There's a moment in Angry Apple involving another character, Bouncy Banana.

From Apple's perspective, something unfair has happened.

That's real.

But Apple doesn't initially have access to everything that may have been happening for Banana.

Neither does the reader.

As the story unfolds, there's room for more information and another perspective. Depending on the choices made, there's also the possibility of repair.

A younger child may simply see that Apple is angry and decide what they want him to do next.

An older child might begin noticing what Apple thought was happening. They might wonder what Banana thought was happening. They might notice the difference between what someone intended and the impact it had.

And a grown-up reading alongside them might notice something entirely different about the way they interpret behavior in their own lives.

I want these stories to grow with the reader.

The story can stay the same while the reader's understanding changes.

As Brightlight Orchard grows, the characters will experience the world differently. They'll misunderstand one another. They'll make choices that help in some situations and choices that make things harder. They'll have different needs, perceptions, reactions, strengths, and ways of processing what happens around them.

I don't want the books to explain all of that.

I want readers to notice.

To wonder.

To discover.

The stories are the experience, not the lesson.

Understanding allows for more choice

I don't think curiosity guarantees that we'll understand every person.

It doesn't guarantee that we'll always understand ourselves.

And it certainly doesn't guarantee that we'll make the "right" choice every time.

That's not the point.

The point is that when we understand more of the story, we have more information to help us choose what to do next.

Sometimes that means compassion.

Sometimes it means a boundary.

Sometimes it means an apology.

Sometimes it means trying something different.

Sometimes it means understanding why a choice made sense to us at the time, even if we wouldn't make the same choice now.

Sometimes it simply means admitting:

I don't know yet.

What we can see is real.

It just may not be the whole story.

And maybe we don't need to know the entire story before we move forward.

Maybe we just need enough curiosity to keep learning, enough honesty to take responsibility for our choices, and enough trust in ourselves to know that whatever happens next, we can meet it.