The Power to Choose Your Response - Part II

Photo by Taylor Heery on Unsplash

“Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.”
~ John C. Maxwell

Happy Thanksgiving! This time of year is filled with beautiful traditions, including reminders to be grateful for all we have, and especially, for each other. I hope your holiday will be a happy, peaceful one.

Unfortunately, despite our best intentions, some aspects of a a day spent with family can be challenging and lead to heightened tensions. In Part I of our discussion about how to handle hurtful remarks, I talked about the first step of emotional regulation, which is to pause and calm yourself in the moment so you don’t defensively strike back, potentially causing further damage to the relationship. That skill may be especially useful when gathered around the Thanksgiving table with relatives. If you find yourself facing strained relationships and less-than-civil conversation, perhaps some of the suggestions in this post will help.

After experiencing the sting of an unkind or uncalled for remark, before we can move towards a resolution to the conflict, we need to process the interaction. The starting point involves turning inward and listening to our inner dialogue. You may be tempted to skip this important step, but the insight you gain will help you decide how to act on your feelings.

Addressing your emotions involves first being present with them rather than trying to brush them aside too quickly without reflecting on them.

It’s important to pay attention to what your pain is trying to tell you so you can learn from it.

To get started, it can help to ask yourself the following questions:

What was your initial reaction to a comment that rubbed you the wrong way? Try to be specific. Did you feel pain, anger, frustration, or a combination?

Did it make you want to lash out, recoil, or flee?

What was the first thing you told yourself about the interaction? Did you interpret their remarks as insensitive, unfair, or even cruel?

Did the intensity of your emotions seem to fit the situation?

It can help to take a walk to clear your mind while you are mulling these over. You might also consider writing your responses in a journal. Often, when we write, we’re able to tap into thoughts and emotions of which we are unaware. Pay particular attention to the emotions that feel especially deep or painful.

When something hits a nerve and causes a strong reaction in us, it often indicates the need for us to take a closer look at it to understand and work through the underlying cause.

In many cases, when we discern that the pain we feel is too intense for the situation at hand, what’s happening is that we are being triggered related to a prior traumatic experience. The distress we feel is actually a result of those unconscious memories.

Often we’re not even aware of our sensitivities in a given area until our buttons are pushed.

The underlying source of our strong emotions may not be obvious to us at first. It can take some time for this realization to bubble up to the surface, which is why it is best to allow sufficient time for self-reflection.

It’s also important to pay attention if you feel compelled to blame others.

The reason many of us respond reflexively when we’re hurt is that our egos try to protect us from emotional pain.

In doing so, they block our realizations that we might be overreacting. We are especially sensitive to someone implying that we might be doing so! But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that sometimes we take what feels like stinging comments too personally.

It’s so easy to put the responsibility on others. Much as we’d like to think our loved ones should know our triggers, in his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, author Eckhart Tolle explains why it’s not the world’s job to learn all our sensitivities and to stay away from them.

It’s our job to explore them and work through our triggers so we’re not affected by them throughout our lives.

Otherwise, we just collect hurts, and over time there is less and less room in our wounded psyches for happy thoughts. (For more on this, see my previous post “Dig Deep for True Emotional Healing.”)

Once you’ve given some consideration to the questions above, talking with a friend can bring some clarity. If you’re in therapy, exploring the issue with your therapist can help. There may be unresolved pain around the issue that needs expression.

Often, especially when it comes to childhood trauma, once we open up with a supportive listener about what happened to us and view it with an adults’ eyes, we can come to some understanding about it that can ease our pain. That can help free us from having such strong reactions in the future.

Still, every difficult interaction requires a decision about how to respond, even if that means not responding. In Part III, I’ll discuss the factors that go into that decision.

Today, I’m grateful for your presence here and for your appreciation of The Authentic Lane. I feel blessed to have you on this journey with me.

Affectionately,

Elaine