Notes On…Emotional Predictions

What if I told you that your emotions are not just reactions to stimuli, but predictions your brain makes before you even realize it? That what you feel in any given moment is not simply a response to what’s happening now, but a projection—shaped by past experiences, expectations, and the patterns your brain has learned over time? #mindblown

The first time I truly grasped this, it changed everything. Not just as a therapist, but as a human being trying to make sense of my own emotions. I used to believe—like most people do—that emotions were automatic responses to the world. That fear was a reaction to danger, sadness a response to loss, and joy the natural consequence of something good. But then I came across the research of Lisa Feldman Barrett, who shattered that illusion.

Barrett, a leading neuroscientist and the author of How Emotions Are Made, argues that our brains aren’t passively responding to the world; they’re actively predicting it. In her book, she explains that emotions don’t happen to us—they are built by us. “Your brain is not reacting to the world—it is predicting the world,” she writes. Every moment, our brains are drawing from past experiences to anticipate what will happen next. And those predictions shape not only our emotions but our entire perception of reality.

In the therapy room, I see this unfold every day. A client who has been repeatedly hurt in relationships walks into a new one already anticipating betrayal, already predicting rejection. Another, raised in an environment where emotions weren’t safe, flinches at even the mildest expression of frustration from a partner. Their brains aren’t waiting for confirmation—they’re preparing for what they expect will happen. And often, those expectations shape reality.

But here’s the hopeful part: if emotions are constructed, they can also be reconstructed. We are not prisoners to old predictions. We can teach our brains to anticipate something different, something better. This is what healing looks like—learning to shape our inner world so that we’re not just reliving the past, but creating a future where new possibilities exist.