The Psychology Hidden Inside Ordinay Moments

Come sit with me for a while. I’ve been thinking about something…

A grocery cart and paper grocery bag filled with food in a grocery store aisle.

How often do we judge a behaviour before becoming curious about what might be underneath it?

The Everyday Moment

There are ordinary human moments we rarely think twice about.

Someone sits in their parked car long after they’ve arrived home.

Someone cleans the entire kitchen while an important task waits upstairs.

Someone realizes they’ve been chewing their nails through an entire conversation.

A parent responds more sharply than they intended to a perfectly ordinary question.

Someone sleeps much later than usual on a Sunday morning.

None of these moments are particularly remarkable. And that’s exactly what makes them interesting.

We move through dozens of little behaviours every day without wondering about them. Sometimes we call ourselves lazy. Sometimes impatient. Sometimes avoidant. Sometimes we don’t think about them at all.

But there is usually more happening beneath a behaviour than the behaviour itself.

The Psychology

Rather than “nail biting means anxiety” or “cleaning is avoidance,” we talk about function and context.

The same behaviour can mean completely different things depending on the person and the moment.

Cleaning could be avoidance. It could also be regulation, a desire for control, habit, satisfaction, or simply cleaning.

Sleeping in could follow exhaustion, emotional depletion, disrupted routine, or just a really comfortable bed.

Snapping at someone doesn’t automatically mean you’re an angry person. It may be worth wondering what your capacity looked like before that interaction happened.

Curiosity gives us information that judgment cannot.

Not everything needs to be pathologized.
Not everything needs a psychological explanation.
But sometimes our ordinary behaviours are little pieces of information about what we’re carrying, needing, avoiding, protecting, or processing.

Gentle Reflection

Think about something you’ve been doing lately that you’ve already explained to yourself.

Maybe you’ve called yourself lazy.

Too sensitive.

Irritable.

Unmotivated.

Bad at boundaries.

A procrastinator.

What might change if, just for a moment, you became curious instead of certain?

Instead of “Why am I like this?” Perhaps: “I wonder what was happening for me there?”

Journal Prompt

Think of one ordinary moment from this week that made you judge yourself.

What happened?

What had happened before?

What were you feeling, needing, carrying, or perhaps avoiding?

If you didn’t have to criticize the behaviour or explain it away, what might you become curious about?

And then we don’t resolve it.

Until next time…

Keep noticing.

Carrin Adoma, MSW, RSW.

Grounded in Science. Guided by Soul.