08/05/2026
The Lindsay Clancy trial has had me thinking about something I can’t shake..
The psychology of belief.
We often talk about whether or not we “believe women.” But I wonder if that’s only part of the story.
I wonder if what we believe has as much to do with the story as it does the person telling it.
As humans, we don’t approach every story as a blank slate.
We compare new information against the beliefs, assumptions, experiences, and narratives we already carry.
I think we’re watching that happen in real time.
Some people look at this case and immediately see a woman experiencing severe psychiatric illness.
Others immediately see a mother who planned to kill her children.
The same testimony.
The same evidence.
Yet people walk away with very different stories.
Psychology has shown us that our brains don’t simply absorb information…
We organize it into narratives that make sense to us.
Those narratives are shaped by our lived experiences, our values, our fears, our identities, and the cultural stories we’ve inherited.
We see this in conversations about race.
Gender.
Trauma.
Mental illness.
Motherhood.
Power.
Credibility.
None of us are immune to interpreting information through those lenses.
& certainty often arrives much earlier than curiosity.
As a therapist, that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.
Because it’s revealing something about how all of our minds work.
For me, this trial has become less about reaching certainty…
and more about asking better questions.
What stories do I find immediately believable?
Which ones make me uncomfortable?
What assumptions am I bringing with me before I even realize it?
I don’t know that I have the answers.
But I think those questions are worth asking.
