The Monster in the Shadows

by Trista Schoonmaker

Halloween is the season for monsters. We put them on our porches, hang them from trees, and invite them into our homes. They're imaginary, of course, and that's part of the fun. We like being frightened because we know that eventually, someone will turn on the lights and the monsters will disappear.

But there are other monsters we create without realizing we're doing it. They take shape in our thoughts, often beginning with something so ordinary that we barely notice what's happening.

Imagine getting an email from your boss late in the afternoon. It's brief: “Can we find some time to talk tomorrow?”

There's no explanation, no agenda, and nothing particularly alarming about the request. Still, you find yourself wondering what prompted it. You remember that your boss seemed distracted during your last conversation. Maybe she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about your latest project. And now that you think about it, she hasn't offered much feedback lately. Could something be wrong?

As the evening progresses, you keep returning to the message. You think about recent decisions, replay conversations, and consider what you might have missed. By the next morning, you've rehearsed several possible explanations and thought about how you'll defend yourself if your boss raises concerns. You're not looking forward to the meeting, and you enter her office feeling guarded.

All of this happened in response to an email that simply asked for a conversation. Somewhere along the way, you've created a monster.

How the Monster Takes Shape

Our minds are shockingly good at making sense of incomplete information. We notice details, look for patterns, and draw on past experiences to anticipate what might happen next. Usually, this serves us well; we couldn't navigate everyday life if we had to carefully evaluate every piece of information before deciding what it meant.

But this same ability can lead us astray, especially when uncertainty touches something important to us. When we care about our reputation, our relationships, or our sense of belonging, even a small ambiguity can take on outsized significance.

Organizational psychologist Chris Argyris described this process through a model known as the Ladder of Inference. It illustrates how we move from observable information to selected details, interpretations, assumptions, and conclusions, often without recognizing the steps we've taken. By the time we arrive at a conclusion, it can feel less like an interpretation and more like an established fact.

Think about what happened with that email. Your boss really did seem distracted. She really hasn't offered much feedback. And the message really did leave you wondering what she wanted to discuss. None of those observations is necessarily inaccurate. But as you connect them, you begin constructing an explanation that goes well beyond what you actually know.

Once that explanation takes hold, it begins influencing what else you notice. You remember the distracted expression—but not the friendly conversation you had the week before. You interpret the lack of feedback as dissatisfaction rather than the possibility that your boss has simply been busy. Each selected detail seems to strengthen the story, making it increasingly difficult to imagine that something else might be happening.

The monster grows not because you've discovered new evidence of danger, but because you've become more convinced of the meaning you've assigned to what you already know.

When Imagined Conflict Becomes Real

The consequences might be limited to an uncomfortable evening and an anxious walk into the office. But sometimes the stories we construct begin to influence the very relationships we're worried about.

Imagine that your boss opens the meeting by asking how your project is going. Because you're already expecting criticism, the question sounds less like an invitation to share an update and more like a challenge to justify your work. You respond by explaining why you made certain decisions, emphasizing the obstacles you've faced and the reasons your approach was reasonable.

Your boss hadn't intended to challenge you, but now she's puzzled by your defensiveness. She starts asking more pointed questions to understand what's going on, and you interpret those questions as further evidence that she's dissatisfied. Before long, both of you are experiencing tension that neither anticipated when the meeting was scheduled.

What's especially interesting is how easily this interaction can reinforce the original story. You leave thinking that the meeting was every bit as uncomfortable as you'd feared, without necessarily recognizing how your expectations helped shape it.

This is one of the ways conflicts can become self-reinforcing. We develop an interpretation of someone else's behavior, respond to that interpretation, and then experience their reaction as confirmation that we were right all along. The other person may be going through a similar process, drawing conclusions about our intentions based on the behavior they see.

Over time, these patterns can become remarkably entrenched. We stop approaching interactions with an open mind because we believe we already know what to expect. What began as an uncertain interpretation gradually becomes part of how we understand the relationship.

Turning on the Light

One of the moves in our Conflict EQ Compass is Expand Your Perspective. It's about recognizing that the explanation we've constructed, however convincing it feels, may not be the only one that fits the facts.

This isn't always easy. When we're worried about something, our minds naturally search for information that helps us anticipate and prepare for trouble. Considering alternative explanations can feel almost irresponsible, as though we're letting our guard down when we ought to be protecting ourselves.

But expanding our perspective doesn't require us to abandon our concerns or persuade ourselves that everything is fine. It simply means becoming more deliberate about distinguishing what we've observed from what we've inferred.

When you notice yourself building a troubling story, a few questions can help:

• What do I actually know? What have I directly observed, separate from the meaning I've attached to it?

• What am I assuming? Where have I filled in missing information with an explanation of my own?

• What else could explain this? Are there other interpretations that fit the same information?

• What could I ask? How might I learn more rather than continuing to build on what I've imagined?

The value of these questions isn't that they'll necessarily make us feel better. Sometimes the conversation we're anticipating really will be difficult. Our boss may have concerns about our performance, or a colleague may genuinely be frustrated with us. Expanding our perspective doesn't make those possibilities disappear.

What it does is create a little space between noticing something that concerns us and deciding what that concern means. Within that space, we have more freedom to choose how we want to engage. We can enter a conversation prepared to listen and learn, rather than already braced for a confrontation.

And sometimes, that difference changes the conversation itself.

What We Find in the Light

There's something appealing about the familiar Halloween scene in which a frightening shadow turns out to be nothing more than a coat hanging over a chair. The light comes on, we recognize our mistake, and the fear disappears.

But. . .real relationships are rarely quite that simple. Sometimes the shadow is exactly what we feared, and we have something difficult to face. Other times, what seemed threatening turns out to have an entirely different explanation. Often, the reality is more complicated than either possibility.

The challenge is that we don't always recognize how much of our fear comes from what's actually happening, and how much comes from the story we've created around it. By the time we've lived with that story for a while, it can feel as solid and familiar as the facts themselves. Maybe that's why the monsters we make can be so persistent. We don't necessarily recognize them as our own creations. We see them as something waiting for us in the other person's behavior, intentions, or decisions.

We may not be able to eliminate uncertainty from our relationships, and we definitely can't guarantee that every difficult conversation will turn out well. But we can learn to notice when our imagination has moved ahead of our understanding. And sometimes, that awareness is enough to keep a shadow from becoming a monster.