A Haunted House, but it’s Just All Your Worst Thoughts About Yourself

I’ve never been one to enjoy the spooky or scary. You won’t catch me sitting down to watch a horror movie, and I will always actively steer clear of a haunted house. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way and sees Halloween as an opportunity for candy and costumes, not ghouls and gore.

Yet, ironically, I see that so many of us construct our own haunted houses within our minds, filled with the ghosts of self-doubt and insecurity monsters. We make our heads the scariest place to be. 

Imagine stepping into a hall of mirrors, each one distorting your reflection and amplifying your deepest flaws. The critical voice is relentless, echoing thoughts of inadequacy and failure. We look into these mirrors and see a warped image of ourselves—one that is unworthy, broken, and unlovable.

We encounter bloody writing on the walls, all the terrible names we call ourselves that we’d never dream of calling anyone else. “Lazy,” “stupid,” “ugly,” “too much”—each criticism is a haunting reminder of our perceived shortcomings.

As we continue through the house, maybe we get chased by a few zombies—relentless creatures that embody the regrets that we wish would simply just die already. They feel like constant reminders of our failures, eventually leading us to believe we will always be running if we don’t want these mistakes to catch up to us.

We build this haunted house, sometimes without even knowing it. We amplify all of our perceived shortcomings and most unpleasant traits. We craft elaborate scenarios in our minds, reliving past failures and projecting our fears of the future. It’s as if we believe that dwelling in this darkness will somehow prevent us from making the same mistakes again in some future scenario when we’re out of the haunted house and back in the real world.

But what actually happens is we get stuck there. We become trapped in this haunted house we’ve created, losing sight of the fact that it is not meant to be a permanent dwelling. Without realizing, we might start moving some stuff in, and eventually we live there full time. We begin to believe that this distorted reality is representative of who we are and what we deserve. 

Like I said, I’m no expert in how to navigate a Halloween haunted house, but I do have some thoughts on how we escape this haunted house of our minds. 

The first step is to notice it and trust we will be able to navigate it. Once we can learn to walk through the house, recognizing it for what it is–a creation of our own fears and doubts, our brain feeding us the worst in order to keep us safe–it loses some of its spookiness.

Like with a Halloween haunted house, the best way to stay grounded when you start feeling scared is to remind yourself that it’s not real life. As we journey through our internally constructed houses, we can learn to start to see the smoke and mirrors. The words on the wall are just words, the mirrors are a funny illusion. Maybe the zombies catch up to us, but the game is no longer fun for them if we’re not running. This shift in perspective allows us to see these thoughts as the thoughts they really are, as temporary as the Spirit Halloween store in the local strip mall–visitors rather than a permanent truth.

This might be when the house pulls out some new tricks, trying to spook you into sticking around. Maybe it throws something meaner, darker, and scarier at you. The key is to keep moving forward and keep seeing through the facade. The words are letters, the mirrors are glass, that zombie is just some guy.

Ultimately, we have a choice. We don’t have to live in the haunted house. Maybe it won’t go away, but at least we can decide when we want to visit, how long we want to spend there, and how much we want to buy into the scary stuff. 

So this spooky season, let’s acknowledge the very normal existence of our internal haunted houses while refusing to let them define us. Instead, we can choose to walk through our houses, greeting the ghouls and ghosts, but not allowing them to be our permanent residence. We have the power to leave that creepy mental space and spend more time in a place more deserving of our time (ideally, one that still has candy and costumes.)