Something happened. Almost simultaneously, the mind begins to produce a story. The story assigns cause, assigns meaning, assigns implication. And the story presents itself as identical to the event.
Most people cannot distinguish between the event and the story — because the experience of the story is the experience of what happened. The map and the territory have merged.
Epictetus: it is not things that disturb you but your judgments about things. The judgment is the story. The story is what produces the emotional response. The event produces the initial impact — the first arrow. The story produces everything that follows. And the story is, unlike the event, workable.
The Yoga Sutras identify Pramana — valid knowledge — as the discipline of distinguishing what is actually known from what is inferred, assumed, or narratively constructed. Most of what the distressed mind presents as what happened is substantially what was inferred and narratively constructed around a smaller kernel of what actually happened. The Byron Katie inquiry uses four questions that are essentially the Yoga Sutras' Pramana discipline: Is it true? Can you absolutely know it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought?
The story is not your enemy. Narrative is how meaning is made. The question is only whether the current story is accurate enough to serve as the basis for intelligent response — or whether it is the first draft of a panicked mind that deserves the revision that honest inquiry would produce.