I overreacted yesterday to a situation that has been bothering me.
It appeared as the embodiment of situations that I’ve experienced over a long period of time with a certain family member. Old wounds, common traumas.
When the energy of the emotion left me, I looked within and found my reaction to have been out of proportion. I wish I had paused a little longer and used some of the practices at my fingertips. But I didn’t. Instead, I said some things I wish now I had not.
That sucks.
I guess in a manner of speaking, the hard things that happen give us opportunities to learn to change our behavior. What I would have liked to have done would be to increase the space between stimulus and response. Especially when that response was in danger of being an unconscious one.
Let’s unpack this fairly common human experience.
When are reactions most likely to be unconscious? When the response is not strictly to an event, but to a trigger. And what is a trigger? It’s this: something happens that looks like something painful from our past.
Let’s say something happens that is distasteful in and of itself. The subconscious, which never sleeps, sees it and thinks, “this present event kind of looks like what happened a long time ago when…” So, we insert a response that’s disproportionate to the stimulus, because it’s not only the present stimulus that wants a response. The past also hops onto the bandwagon and demands a voice.
The ensuing reaction is called, “overreaction.”
Of all the footprints of our many egos, overreaction is the easiest to track. When we overreact, we aren’t exclusively responding to the overbearing guy in front of us; we’re responding to the childhood bully who had a similar expression when he was taunting us a half-century ago. We aren’t mad about our partner locking the back door to the apartment when it was agreed to keep it open; rather, the child within us is devastated by being locked out of the house when she was scared and needed to come in – and this looks like that. The overreaction that ensues is not only directed at a forgetful partner, but to an inattentive parent who now lives three states away.
All those old emotions now come out; far more than would be present if the only stimulus was that which was happening in the present moment. Instead, these emotions are out of proportion, borne now by a half-century of emotion that has been buried in the subconscious.
So, we lose our cool and say things that aren’t quite right. We’re inaccurate, presumptuous and self-righteous. We’ve fled Love. Most importantly, we bring all that energy from way in the past into the current situation where it doesn’t belong. The present moment becomes infected with old business. To use the words of Miguel Ruiz, we bring a kind of “black magic” into a space that is innately sacred, as each moment we live innately is. We do this with heavy energy, hatred or harsh words directed at someone with whom communication of a lighter quality was probably needed.
It’s said that one consequence of tundra melting might be the release of certain bacteria that have been entrapped since the last ice age. Bacteria that was never what we’d call, “eradicated,” and for which we no longer have immunity. What I’m talking about, with bullies and locked doors, is like that. The illness is caused by old bacteria, by old events, not merely the present one.
I could talk about a lot of things here. Like, “dying to the past,” something Alberto Villoldo teaches about. It has to do with releasing old traumas so they are no longer alive to our subconscious. That’s like killing those bacteria that were entrapped in the Ice Age. Since most of us have not done this work yet, and to continue the metaphor of the ice, I suggest that we have an inoculation to those old bacteria.
It’s “the pause” I spoke about, above.
When we pause, we create space to acknowledge that there is a stimulus. There are things that create frustration in our lives. That’s a given, and a normal part of human life if we exist with any expectations at all. (It’s debatable whether expectations are ultimately healthy to have. But most of us have them, so I’ll continue in this vein. For those who are advanced or blessed enough to have released all expectations, this essay will be a bit benign. I don’t expect these thoughts to meet the eyes of many in this category, however.) In short, difficult stimuli happen. When heavy emotions arise as a result, whether current or past, there is space for a response.
Within the space there is a choice.
If we are experienced at mindfulness techniques, we have trained ourselves to see thoughts without identifying them necessarily as reality. At the very least, they’re impermanent. The same practice can be applied to emotion. The better we are at mindfulness, the less likely we are to identify our emotions as “reality.”
A word of warning about this.
“Stuffing our emotions” is not a healthy practice. In fact, doing so is a good way to create future overreactions, let alone physical illness caused from unresolved stressors that we know can affect us physiologically. It’s better to acknowledge that we feel anger, for instance. In fact, “I feel anger” is a better way of saying, “I’m angry.” The latter assigns an emotion to the Self that is probably not true on a very deep level, because most anger primarily exists on the level of Ego, where expectation also lies.
Instead of reacting immediately, an instantaneous gauge can be applied within us: we can gauge the quality and quantity of the anger. If it’s “over-the-top,” too much for the circumstance, we can assume that an old trauma is involved. Further introspection may even completely dismiss the current stimulus as irrelevant, unworthy of further address. No matter what, the reaction has a chance of being proportional. When we are practiced at mindfulness, this can happen in less than a second.
Overreaction can be, in essence, overruled.
Why? Because in the space where anger as a reaction might have been, we can insert compassion, kindness or peace through simple inaction. Within that space, we might be able to feel more deeply the concern of the Other. The whisper of the Soul can be felt and Connection can be embodied in any number of ways; with a smile, a welcome touch, or a concerned word for their pain. This, rather than focusing on our own tired stories, the bacteria of past traumas.
Now, back to the beginning of this essay.
I overreacted yesterday to a situation that has been bothering me. It appeared as the embodiment of situations that I’ve experienced over a long period of time with a certain family member. Old wounds, common traumas. When the energy of the emotion left me, I looked within and found my reaction to be out of proportion.
This morning, I called my family member to own my error and to apologize without condition. He’s not willing to speak. It’s my responsibility as a “conscious man, becoming” to give him space to process his own new wound- that which came from my overreaction. It’s up to me to do this without becoming impatient with him, or otherwise triggered anew, myself. My job is to give space with compassion for both he and I. I may send a card and a handwritten note because I know this man well; he’s going to need some time.
That’s ok. I have to respect his process and release further expectation. Which, in some ways, put us here in the first place.
For sure, I will continue to cultivate mindfulness so I can increase the time between stimulus and response, so I can give my Soul a chance to speak. By so doing, I hope to bring healing to my own life and to those around me.
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Photo: IStock