I once heard an adult say “when I was younger, I didn’t have the language to express the fear, anger and despair that I felt in my family and community so I could only express it through the couple of angry explicit words that I knew.” Now, as an adult who has learned more about himself and the complex emotions and body sensations that accompany being in a human body, he is able to better articulate what he is feeling and express himself more clearly and without violence.
Gaining the vocabulary to describe your pain, discomfort, anger, sadness, anxiety, suffering and learning how to communicate these feelings effectively are powerful life skills to transform your relationships. The five main skills that increase our ability to be trustworthy and effective communicators are self-awareness, pause, not taking things personally, comfort with discomfort and learning to communicate.
Self-awareness is the ability to observe something before reacting to it. In yourself, you can build self-awareness of your body sensations and your reactions with curiosity. When sensations of tension, tightness or pressure arise in the body, you can notice and attend to them before they escalate into dysregulation.
This is where the pause comes in. First you have awareness, then you pause. That pause allows you to see what is going on inside or outside of you that may have activated these body sensations so that you may make an informed and more skillful decision about your next move. From pause you move to not taking things personally.
Not taking things personally will help you see a situation more clearly. Our minds tend to make up stories about someone or something which may or may not be true based on a lot of inputs from our childhood experiences. It’s important to discern what part of the challenge is your responsibility and what part is the other person’s or people’s responsibility.
For example, if a person had a dysregulated parent who could not be relied upon, that person may grow up to have insecure relationships and create false stories of current relationships based on their childhood experiences with unreliable caregivers.
To illustrate this, if someone is late to meet you for a date or has to cancel the date, you might create a story in your mind about how that person doesn’t really like you. When people always let you down, you might create a story that they are untrustworthy or disrespectful when, in fact, the reason could be that it was difficult to find parking, they were in an important meeting that went long or they were struggling themselves with social anxiety. Not taking things personally allows you to see more clearly what is true.
Humans are typically uncomfortable with uncertainty or the “gray zone.” We prefer answers or certainty when, more often than not, situations fall in the gray zone.
If you can recognize and understand this concept and the vast benefits of widening your “window of tolerance” for discomfort, you will experience less reactivity and more curiosity towards what may be happening in the world or in a given situation.
This curiosity and willingness to suspend judgment for a period to assess a situation more clearly creates a spaciousness in your body and mind. You stay more grounded, calm and avoid being carried away by ever-changing dramas.
From pause and comfort with discomfort for an extra minute or two, you can also see what may be underneath the anger, fear or anxiety. From there, you can discover words for the emotions and create the space that you need to articulate what you are feeling and, even more importantly, articulate what you need.
If you are feeling unsafe, what steps can you take to feel safer and communicate this need? If you are feeling anxious, what realistic steps can you take to reduce your anxiety and communicate this feeling and need? If you are feeling angry, can you look beneath the anger to see what other emotions might be under the surface and communicate these feelings?
Often anger can mask grief, sadness or fear. We fear being frozen or consumed by grief, sadness or fear. Anger helps us feel a sense of power when, sometimes, we are just avoiding the feelings that actually need some of our time, attention and compassion. Anger is good to mobilize us for short periods of time. But over a long period, anger can turn to bitterness, cynicism and resentment so it’s important to use it sparingly and skillfully.
The takeaway: We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And when we change how we see and respond to the world, the world itself begins to change.
Stacey Royce
Subtle Body Experience
subtlebodyexperience.com
503.258.7790
Editor’s note: Wellness Word is an informational column which is not meant to replace a healthcare professional’s diagnosis, treatment or medication.