You make me so mad! This is a phrase most of us have used at one time or another but this is, of course, making someone else responsible for my feelings. Sure, what someone else does can affect us, but what we do with it is on us.
I am not a psychological authority, and I know that there isn’t consensus in the mental health world as to how all of this fits together, but I read something which made sense to me so I will share it here.
The authors of Crucial Conversations claim that the more accurate statement would be, “I make myself so mad”. They contend that in most conversations we do fine, but in those crucial conversations we often do our worst. (Crucial Conversations Video Link)
The authors divide up our crucial conversations into four basic parts.
1) The initiating event takes place–something someone does or says to me–maybe even on social media.
2) In an instant, I interpret what happened and tell myself a story about it.
3) I have feelings based on that story.
4) I act based upon those feelings.
A Missing Step! I have heard for years that I need to take responsibility for my own feelings but step two in the above list was something I don’t recall hearing.
Bear with me for this real life simple example. I went to the market, grabbed what I needed and went to check out. The cashier told me she was closed so I went to a different register. While waiting in line, I noticed that same cashier continued to help additional shoppers and did not close.
What story am I going to tell myself? Even without any baggage it would be easy to tell myself a story that would cause me to be upset or resentful.
Like it or not, we all have baggage. It typically doesn’t take more than a couple of bad experiences in a town to now believe that this is how they are–after all it is our experience. Now all of our thoughts about that town go through the same filter.
Let’s talk about a very practical example of how we tell ourselves stories about others. If someone says either “Black Lives Matter” or “All lives Matter”, what do you already “know” about that person. The truth is that people saying those words come from many different places in life with many of their own life experiences. Is my mission in life to set them straight or to give them a piece of my mind (careful–we don’t want to run short:))?
How much more value would I contribute to my world if instead of blasting them for their “incorrect” belief, I would actually listen to them and potentially care more for them because I now know them on a more personal level?
When we have taken sides on an issues, the above thoughts can be as foreign as Иностранных–that is pretty foreign–but being open to the fact that I might not have all of the information allows me to grow.
Back to being refused service in the market–the missing detail is that between the time when she told me she was closed and when she started helping others, her supervisor told her to stay open.
The stories we tell ourselves can be true, false, or a combination of the two.
It has been very revealing to me to ask myself when I have responded poorly, “what story did I tell myself?”. Often, I realize that my story includes the motive of the other person. Is it possible I am wrong? Yes, more times than I would like to admit.
Digital Epitaph–I think a valuable question for each of us to ask is, “if someone were to summarize my life based on my social media posts, how would they describe me?”
Angry? Patient? Caring? Obnoxious? Always ready for a fight? Loving? You never need to wonder what he’s thinking? Teachable?…
What memory are you leaving?