REACTING TO OUR INTERNAL STORIES
SOMETIMES WE CAN BE WAY OFF MARK WHEN WE LET OUR INNER DIALOGUE TAKE OVER FROM THE FACTS
It’s no secret to those who know me well that I’m in my head a lot, if not most of the time and when I share that with others, I realise there are many like me.
The busyness of our external day to day life is often accompanied by constant cacophony of internal chatter, aptly summed up by Susan Scott in the phrase; “I’m always having a conversation with myself, sometimes it includes other people”.
You may resemble this, particularly if you’re someone who prefers to process information internally. But is that a problem? Not necessarily, but it can be.
Being in our head can lead to overthinking, talking ourselves in or out of something, sometimes during the same internal conversation and just going round in circles.
Add in the potential for negative unconscious bias, which can be hard to overcome, unless and until it’s exposed, and we can get ourselves into a bit of a pickle.
If the processing helps us to solve a problem, plan something or just get clear on our thinking, then it can be helpful.
However, if it’s just ruminating about something that has happened in the past or may happen in the future, then maybe not as that can lead us into rabbit hole, and we may get stuck there.
What potentially trips us in these situations is assumptions; I’ve written a bit about that before but feel it’s worth adding to as it’s easy for us to make assumptions about situations and people and for others do the same to us.
Whichever way around it is, it’s not helpful because we’re making sketchy evidence mean something which is possibly untrue and, without any real evidence to the contrary, create an assumption or ‘truth’ which can seem plausible … to us anyway.
An example. We receive an email or message or engage in conversation which troubles or upsets us.
Instead of mentioning it or asking for more information from the source, we focus on what we think it means and make assumptions based on previous experience, embellished with emotional attachment to past hurts or grievances.
If we continue with our internal, negatively biased, representation of the situation, we may well react ie continue to build a story around what has or hasn’t happened and decide to either disengage from the person or situation but say nothing or build up a head of steam and then engage from our position of hurt and emotional loading and fire off an email or message without any consideration or filtering or handle any interaction poorly.
Whether we choose to engage or disengage, we’re still reacting and either way we’re choosing a solution, which is entirely ineffective.
If we choose to engage from reaction (with emotional load having hijacked any reasoning ability), we’re likely to trigger a reaction in the other person and then react to their reaction and so on.
As a result, we may risk losing a friendship or alienating someone which can cause more unnecessary hurt.
If instead we choose to respond, in other words stop, take a breath, and seek perspective by voicing our concerns without judgment or assumption when we first feel the impact, things are likely to go much more smoothly.
Seeking to understand and communicating in a way that is nonemotional, honest and transparent vs jumping into assumption, will create a different result.
It is more likely that the other person will make clear what their intention was, responding to our questions rather than reacting to accusations, so the situation doesn’t escalate, misunderstandings or assumptions are quickly dissolved, and the relationship or friendship is preserved and perhaps made stronger due to the honest interaction.
It’s a challenge for any of us to rein in our reaction when triggered; and that reaction might equally be choosing to numb the hurt we’re feeling with our personal choice of chocolate, sugar, carbs, alcohol, drugs, excessive exercise, TV, Facebook or surfing the web – a temporary relief which offers no solution.
But it is possible when we take time to seek perspective, work on our emotional regulation and recognise that responding rather than reacting will always be the more effective choice for ourselves and others.