I've Got a Blank Space, Baby, and I'll Fill It with Chickens
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Why our brains fill in the blanks, how anxiety handles uncertainty, and how DBT can help us check the facts.
By Sarah Plassman MSW, LISW-S
Sheesh! And Other Thoughts on Being Human
I had Spotify playing while I was writing a blog post, but I wasn't really listening.
You know the kind of listening I mean. Music is technically happening, but your brain is somewhere else entirely.
Then Spotify's DJ played Justin Bieber's “Speed Demon.”
Now, I am not unfamiliar with Justin Bieber. I have listened to plenty of his music, particularly the Purpose era. I know “Love Yourself.” I know “Sorry.”
I have been around.
But I had never heard “Speed Demon.”
And because I was only half listening and had absolutely no idea what the lyrics were, my brain confidently supplied its own.
What I heard was:
"Keep checking. Keep checking these chickens."
And that was it.
Whatever I had been writing was gone.
All my brain could produce was an image of Justin Bieber at his estate, where, for reasons I cannot explain, he apparently has a chicken coop in the backyard.
Justin.
In overalls.
Walking out behind the mansion in the morning to check on his chickens.
Gotta keep checking these chickens.
I don't know why my mind created this.
I don't know why he was wearing overalls.
But once I saw Farmer Bieber, there was no going back.
Eventually I did what any responsible adult would do when confronted with an unexplained Justin Bieber poultry situation.
I Googled it.
This is how I discovered that he was actually saying “heat checking these chickens.”
Which led to additional Googling because apparently I was now enrolled in a continuing education course I had not signed up for.
And that is how I became formally educated on the concept of a heat check.
It comes from basketball. When a player has been making shots and is clearly on a hot streak, he may take a harder shot to see if he's still got it.
He's checking the heat.
Nothing makes you feel your age quite like discovering a phrase through a Justin Bieber song and then conducting independent research to understand what the young people are saying.
Apparently I am old now.
Fine.
But somewhere, in a completely unnecessary section of my brain, Justin Bieber still owns chickens.
And he checks them personally.
Our Brains Are Very Good at Filling in the Blanks
As funny as this was, it reminded me of something I have learned over my years as a therapist and through studying psychology and the brain:
The human brain is remarkably good at filling in the blanks.
Sometimes remarkably good.
Sometimes Justin Bieber owns poultry now good.
There is actually a psychological phenomenon called phonemic restoration that demonstrates this beautifully.
In a classic experiment published in Science in 1970, psychologist Richard Warren removed individual speech sounds from recorded sentences and replaced them with sounds such as a cough. Listeners often perceived the missing speech sound anyway.
Their brains used the surrounding information to fill in what should have been there.
The brain essentially said:
Don't worry. I got this.
And filled in the blank.
Our brains do versions of this all the time. They combine the information coming in with what we already know, what we have experienced before, and what we expect is probably happening.
The neuroscience gets much more complicated, but the basic idea is fairly simple.
Our brains learn patterns.
They notice context.
They remember what happened before.
And they use all of that information to make predictions when something is incomplete or uncertain.
This is a very useful feature.
Imagine if your brain refused to proceed until it had one hundred percent of the available information.
Excuse me, life. I'm going to need three forms of identification, a witness, and a signed statement before I determine whether that is a dog.
We would never get anything done.
Previous experience helps us move through the world efficiently.
Which is excellent.
Especially when the information your brain is using is accurate.
If you are a wise old guru sitting on top of a mountain with seventy years of excellent data, congratulations.
Your brain has quite a reference library.
The rest of us are working with a somewhat more questionable collection.
When the Brain Uses Old Data
There is one tiny problem.
Sometimes the previous experience was wrong.
Or incomplete. Or happened when you were eight. Or came from one terrible relationship. Or developed during a painful season of your life. Or was exactly right for what was happening then but does not actually apply to what is happening now.
And still the brain says:
Don't worry. I know how this story goes.
Then it fills in the blank.
Your friend does not text you back.
She's mad at me.
Your boss says, “Can we talk tomorrow?”
I'm in trouble.
Your partner seems quiet.
Something is wrong between us.
Someone gives you a strange look.
I did something wrong.
Someone you care about becomes distant.
People leave.
Notice what happened.
We received some information.
Then our brains supplied the rest.
And just like I did with Justin Bieber's completely imaginary chicken operation, we can become remarkably confident about a story containing quite a few details that were never actually provided.
Except Farmer Bieber. He is harmless.
The stories we fill in about ourselves, other people, and our relationships can influence how we feel and what we do next.
Psychologists study something related to this called interpretation bias. When information is unclear or ambiguous, people can interpret it in different ways. Research has found that anxiety and other emotional difficulties are associated with a greater tendency to interpret ambiguity negatively or as threatening.
That does not mean an anxious person is irrational.
And it certainly does not mean every concern is imaginary.
It simply means that when information is incomplete, anxiety may have a suggestion.
And anxiety is rarely sitting quietly in the back of the room saying:
I'm sure there are several reasonable possibilities. Let's patiently gather additional data.
No.
Anxiety has already made a PowerPoint, action plan and is ready to execute.
So the brain's ability to fill in blanks is not the problem.
The more interesting questions are:
What is my brain filling the blank with?
And:
Where did it learn that answer?
Check the Facts Before We Buy the Chicken Coop
Thankfully, there is a skill for this.
In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, there is an emotion regulation skill called Check the Facts.
I love this skill because it does not ask us to pretend everything is fine.
It does not say:
You're being ridiculous.
Stop worrying.
Think positive
It simply asks us to slow down long enough to notice where the facts end and our brain's story begins.
Take:
My boss said, “Can we talk tomorrow?”
Fact.
My boss is angry with me.
Interpretation.
I am getting fired.
Prediction.
I will lose my income, everything will fall apart, and I will eventually have to live in a van.
Catastrophe.
Possibly down by the river. Eating government cheese.
One sentence from your boss at 3:42 p.m., and by 3:47 you have apparently lost your career, your home, and access to indoor plumbing.
Check the Facts asks us to slow the runaway train down.
Start with:
What actually happened?
What would a camera have recorded?
Not what you think it meant.
Not what you are afraid it means.
What do you actually know?
Then:
What am I adding to the story?
What am I assuming, predicting, or interpreting.
Could there be another reasonable explanation
Next:
What exactly am I afraid is going to happen, and how likely is that based on the information I have?
Not:
Could this possibly happen?
A lot of things are possible.
I could wake up tomorrow and discover Justin Bieber has, in fact, purchased several chickens.
The standard cannot be possible.
We are looking for probable.
Then we can ask:
If the difficult thing actually happened, could I cope?
What would I do?
Who could help?
What options would I have?
Sometimes fear loses a little of its power when we remember that difficult does not automatically mean helpless.
Finally:
Does my emotion fit the facts?
And:
Does the intensity of my emotion fit the facts?
That distinction matters.
Maybe your friend really is upset with you.
Maybe your boss really does need to discuss something difficult.
Maybe your partner's distance is worth asking about.
Checking the facts is not about convincing ourselves that nothing bad ever happens.
Sometimes our emotions are giving us useful information
The goal is to respond to the problem that is actually happening instead of the twelve additional problems our brain constructed while nobody was supervising it.
Sometimes the Answer Is “I Don't Know Yet”
Sometimes after checking everything we know, the most accurate answer is:
I don't have enough information yet.
That is an answer too.
For those of us who like certainty, it is also a deeply annoying answer.
We want to know.
Is she mad?
Am I in trouble?
Did I say something wrong?
Is this relationship okay?
What is going to happen?
Our brains would often prefer an answer to no answer at all because at least then we can start making plans.
But sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is tolerate the blank a little longer.
Ask the question.
Have the conversation.
Gather more information
Wait for the email.
Notice what you know.
Notice what you don't.
Check the Facts gives us something incredibly valuable:
a pause.
A little space between what happened and what we decided it meant.
A chance to ask a question before making an accusation.
A chance to gather information before preparing for catastrophe.
A chance to notice the runaway train of thoughts and feelings and say:
Hang on.
Do we actually know this?
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Sometimes we need more information.
And sometimes our brains have taken three slightly confusing words in a Justin Bieber song and somehow constructed an agricultural lifestyle complete with overalls.
Brains are incredible.
They are also occasionally a little dramatic.
If you notice that your mind frequently fills uncertain situations with rejection, danger, failure, abandonment, or catastrophe, it may be worth getting curious about that pattern.
Therapy can help us understand where some of those predictions came from, whether they still fit our lives today, and how to respond to what is actually happening rather than automatically following the story our minds supplied.
Because we cannot stop our brains from making predictions.
And we probably would not want to.
But we can learn to pause before treating every prediction like a fact.
So the next time your brain hands you a fully developed story based on three pieces of information and a weird look somebody gave you in the hallway:
Check the facts.
Sheesh.
Want to Practice Checking the Facts?
Knowing the skill and actually remembering how to use it when your brain is moving ninety miles an hour are two different things.
We created a simple Agape Check the Facts handout that walks through the skill in five steps:
1. What actually happened?
2. What am I assuming?
3. What am I afraid will happen?
4. If it happened, could I cope?
5. Does my emotion, and its intensity, fit the facts?
A Few More Resources
DBT Check the Facts
Marsha Linehan's DBT materials are the original source for the Check the Facts emotion regulation skill. The official DBT materials walk through identifying the prompting event, examining interpretations and assumptions, considering threats and catastrophes, and determining whether an emotional response fits the facts.
The Science Behind Filling in the Blanks
Richard Warren's classic research on phonemic restoration demonstrated how our brains can use context to perceptually restore missing speech sounds. It is a fascinating example of how much of what we experience depends not only on the information coming in, but also on what our brains expect to be there.
Interpretation Bias and Anxiety
Research on interpretation bias looks at what happens when people are given ambiguous information that could reasonably be interpreted in different ways. Recent reviews continue to find that anxiety and other emotional difficulties are associated with a greater tendency toward negative interpretations of ambiguity.
About the Author
Sarah Plassman, MSW, LISW-S, is a therapist and owner of Agape Counseling Center in Centerville, Ohio, and the author of Sheesh! And Other Thoughts on Being Human. Being a therapist has shaped the way she sees people, relationships, pain, joy, growth, and all the complicated things we carry with us.Through her writing, Sarah shares some of what she has learned from years in the therapy room, her own life, and simply paying attention to what it means to be human, with clinical insight, compassion, curiosity, and usually a little humor.
Because apparently, if she goes too long without saying something weird, she starts becoming suspiciously well adjusted, and nobody wants that.
Educational Disclaimer
This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized mental health assessment, diagnosis, treatment, or professional advice. The therapeutic relationship and appropriate treatment approach will vary based on each person's needs and circumstances.
