How to Stop Being Reactive
How often have you been in a situation when someone does or says something that triggers you into an immediate emotional reaction. This may make you feel out of control or you may regret your reaction later.
Most people can recall such instances. For some, they replay the event in their mind repeatedly, trying to figure out how they should have responded, preferably in a calm not reactive manner.
Brain research shows that reacting is fast, instinctual and automatic behavior, where your “reptilian brain” takes over. In his book, Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain, One Single Practice at a Time,neuroscientist Rick Hanson explains the difference between the responding brain and the reactive brain. He describes the reactive brain (amygdala and brain stem) as a reptilian brain, which seeks to avoid harm and protect self. In contrast, Hansen describes the responding brain (prefrontal cortex) is the mammalian brain which focuses on rationality and positive rewards.
When you feel threatened either physically or verbally your reptilian brain reacts instantly by flight, fight or freezing. These reactions were survival mechanisms in our distant past, but even today these still are in us. If the primitive activates repeatedly, this can lead to mental and physical health problems.
When you are in the reactive mode, your brain most strongly expresses fear and anger. In contrast, when you are in the responding mode, you feel safe and not threatened, your brain’s reactive system is calm and logical.
Responding is a conscious and learned choice, not an instinctual, automatic one. One way to be responsive is to notice how your body is reacting physically to a trigger, and consciously resist the urge to act, unless you are threatened with harm. Instead, pause and allow time for your calm rational brain to “catch up” to the situation at hand.
There are several basic keys to being able to consistently respond rather than consistently react. First, is pausing before you do anything. The second step is to identify and label the emotion without judgment, anxiety or impulse to block or eliminate it . The third step is reflecting on your inner state and what choices now lie in front of you. And lastly, decide how you will respond to the situation and do it.
How long should you pause? It depends on the severity of the need to respond. Sometimes 1 or 2 minutes or 10–20 minutes is sufficient, or longer if you need to reflect more.
Learning how to pause before responding is creating a good habit. Rick Hanson describes it in this way: “Each time you rest in your brain’s responsive mode, it gets easier to come to it again.” That’s because neurons that fire together, wire together, he says.
Responding is about emotional regulation, which is the ability to respond to the demands of experience with a range of emotions in a flexible way, as well as an ability to delay spontaneous reactions. By doing this you learn what are your emotional triggers and how they are set off.
Once you’ve identified and labeled your emotions in a situation, what then? The answer is nothing. Just being able to sit with them in a non-judgmental way, understanding that they are not permanent but will pass, is critical.
The Importance of Mindfully Labeling Your Feelings and Emotions
Why is putting our feelings into words beneficial? A brain imaging study by UCLA psychologists which appears in the journalPsychological Science, may give us the answer. In another study by these researchers they provided neural evidence for why “mindfulness” — defined as the ability to live in the present moment, without distraction — provides positive benefits as well.
According to one of the researchers, Matthew D. Lieberman, seeing an angry face and simply calling it an angry face changes our brain response. “When you attach the word ‘angry,’ you see a decreased response in the amygdala,” said Lieberman. “What we’re suggesting is when you start thinking in words about your emotions –labeling emotions — that might be part of what the right ventrolateral region of the brain is responsible for,” Lieberman said.
When we are mindfully noticing and labeling our emotions, we can do so moment to moment and become an observer of our thoughts and emotions. Instead of being lost in thought, ruminating over past or future events, we live in the present moment
We simply observe what is in our mind, noticing the wording of the thought(s), the intensity of the feeling(s), the location in our body of the sensation(s) without engaging with them.
We don’t have to wait for a potentially reactive event to learn how to engage in labeling our emotions. Labeling can be done as a part of a meditation sitting practice or informally throughout the day.
During a meditation, we choose a point of focus such as the awareness of the breath, or the footstep as in mindful walking and when our mind wanders, we kindly notice the “mental activity”, giving it a label and then coming back paying attention to being present with our chosen point of focus.
Noticing and labeling also helps us to gain some insight into our relationship with ourselves, with our experiences, with others and with our environment.
When we have “a thought”, we typically engage with it automatically, becoming one with it. With mindfulness, we can practice gently pulling away from thoughts, again and again, pausing, observing, creating more and more space between the “mental event” and the response.
Every time we do this, we are re-wiring the brain, and disengaging from what neuroscientists call the default mode network which is an automatic system.
Instead of automatically engaging with the thought or emotion, we are separating ourselves from it, creating a space between ourself and our thought. This allows us to choose how to respond, and at the same time, we become the wise observer of our mind. By doing we begin to live in a more conscious and intentional way. It promotes acceptance and reduces reactivity and cultivate equanimity.
A Habit System for Responding Rather Than Reacting
You can develop a good habit system for responding rather than reacting, so that it becomes automatic for you. Here are some of the elements of that habit system.
1. Be aware and alert to your triggers. Recognize the events and people who can behave in ways that trigger you to be reactive.
2. Focus on your breathing. When we are triggered and become reactive, our breathing often changes to become shallow, or we may even hold our breath. This can reduce the amount of oxygen going to our brains which in turn can negatively impact our rational abilities.
3. Be more aware of your body. We can increase our attention by noticing if any part of your body has tension or pain, and focus on that.
4. Release tension. If there is tension in your body, you can breathe into releasing it, so you don’t carry it or develop muscle or nerve issues.
5. Increase focus and attentiveness. As you develop and maintain your calmness and non-reactivity, you can increase your capacity to notice and observe, which subsequently enables you to respond more thoughtfully.
6. Label your feelings. Being able to identify and describe in words your feelings increases your ability to regulate your emotions and strengthens the value of the pause.
7. Suspend judgment. Suspend any self-judgment about the feelings or emotions that arise reactively. Rather, just notice them without criticizing yourself for having them. They are what they are.
8. Practice acceptance. When feelings and emotions arise within you, accept them for what they are. Trying to block them or repress them will only make them stronger.
9. Be more curious. Reflect on how and why you react to “triggers.”
10. Try not to personalize things. Events and others’ behaviors are not always about you. Many times they have nothing to do with you but the causes lay elsewhere.
11. Be an active and empathetic listener. If you are triggered to react, try to listen more and feel what the other person may be feeling.
12. Practice self-compassion. Refrain from being self-critical and self-judgmental about your impulse to be reactive. No one can be perfect.
13. Intentionally respond. Choose what is the best response to a situation or person, once having taken the steps and actions described above Learning how to intentionally respond to people and events rather than instinctively react to them will give you a greater feeling of self-control and increase your self-mastery.
Read my latest book: Toxic Bosses: Practical Wisdom for Developing Wise, Moral and Ethical Leaders.
