00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 274, "When We Behave Badly." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth because, we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:21

Well hello there, welcome, everybody, to the podcast. So glad to have you here today. Alright, we are going to start off today talking about two group coaching options that I have going on. Now if you were around last spring, I did two groups that I called "Mastermind." I called those "Mastermind" because they were mostly content and discussion. These I am calling group coaching because I have moved them from one hour to one and a half hour classes, which is a lot, but I think you'll love the way that I've got these set up. We're going to be doing about 45 minutes to an hour of content and discussion. And then the last 30 to 45 minutes is going to be one-on-one coaching. So this is an incredible opportunity to have some of your situations that you want to work through, looked at one-on-one with me and I can coach you through them. Now the thing that's amazing about group coaching is that you can receive one-on-one coaching, but everybody else gets to watch and listen. That may seem a little bit scary, but it's actually pretty brilliant. I get some of my best insights listening to other people get coached. And so when you can hear other people get coached and see their situation and it's not your situation, so you're standing outside of it, it makes it really easy and clear to see the situations going on and then it's much easier to apply those to your own circumstance. So this is a really, really exciting prospect for me to be able to put out there for you to be able to get some one-on-one coaching in the context of learning some great content. as well. So the two topics that I am going to be covering this time are "parenting adult children" and also "dating after divorce."

02:09

So some of you are like, well I have issues with my adult kids and I'm not dating, I'm not divorced, I'm not dating. Next time around we'll catch you with something else. But this time around "parenting adult children" and "dating after divorce." And if this does not fit you, I can promise you, I'm pretty sure that you know somebody for whom these classes would be a really great fit. Send them to my website, tanyahale.com, at the top they can click on the tab that says "group coaching" and they can find out the information that they need to about these. These are going to be held this time on Monday nights or Monday afternoons depending on where you are. Starting October 16th and it's going to run six weeks straight through November 20th. So we will be finished before Thanksgiving, so before the holidays. And I also have some early bird pricing on there. So if you sign up for the group coaching before October 1st, or I guess October 1st is the last day, at the price that is on there. If you sign up before then, then you get the early bird pricing, and that's a great deal as well. All right, so I hope that those of you for whom these topics are pertinent, I hope that you'll take a good look at these and you'll join us. The opportunity to not only dive deep into these topics, but also to get some one-on-one coaching and to watch other people getting coached is an amazing opportunity. And I really, really hope you'll take me up on it, and you'll join us there, because I think they're gonna be pretty amazing. I'm super excited about them. Okay, that being said, let's jump into today's topic.

03:47

We are talking about when we behave badly. So I've had so many thoughts around behaving badly because of a recent situation where I behaved badly. Badly doesn't mean I'm horrible. It just means that I responded in a way that is not how I wanna do it. And this isn't an isolated incident, for sure. Like, we all do this, but I'm gonna share this one with you because I think that it was just a good example of how things work. So, and of course, these situations where we get to reflect and go, "hmm, not sure I love how I showed up there," these are some of our most fertile growing grounds. And so I'm gonna start today by sharing this experience. And in the week since, I've done a lot of reflecting and putting pieces together and working to figure things out so I can understand myself better, understand my brain better, what was happening, why did I step into this really blatant behavior? Which most of the stuff I do is not quite so blatant. And I guess this is why this one stands out to me. So this podcast is a culmination thus far on what I have come to understand about my behavior there.

04:55

So several weeks ago, my husband and I were in a situation for an entire week where I was pretty stressed about some stuff kind of...not highly stressed, I'm not a person that gets super stressed, but I had some low-key stress and anxiety going on. And going into this situation, I knew that it would be stressful, I might be uptight and so I had worked with my own coach for several weeks about how I wanted to think about this situation, how I wanted to think about these people in this situation, how I wanted to show up, how I wanted to really feel about myself and about them and the whole thing. So I had done a lot of work going into it, but meanwhile I always had my guard up, right? So I always was kind of like "okay I've got this going on." And I'll tell you what, for the most part I feel like I showed up pretty darn well, at least for the people I was working to manage my mind around and looking back I can see that with that low level stress, I was kind of always on guard, always watching out, making sure I was managing my mind and showing up the way that I wanted to, and pretty proud of myself in that regard.

06:10

And yet, this low-level anxiety and the hyperfocus on one area caused me to let down my guard in another area where I feel really safe in, and that's my relationship with Sione. So, here's a visual that in the last few weeks I've incorporated for me that I find really useful in seeing what was going on with me. I imagine that my stress or my anxiety that was going on as a low level is kind of like a bubbling, buzzing emotion that's just kind of sitting just below my ribs. That's kind of where I feel it in my body. And in situations like this week that I'm talking about, it was there pretty much constantly, almost imperceptible at times because I wasn't hyper focused on it, but it was still there. And anytime I would go, "am I doing okay?" I would kind of feel just this slight buds underneath my ribs, right? But it was almost like it was just bubbling, just waiting. So with this anxiety or this stress just sitting there, one night I was sharing some thoughts with Sione and he didn't immediately put down his phone and focus on me. Can you believe it? But here's what happens. Like, our brains are so crazy how they interpret things. So to be fair, I just kind of started chatting with him when he was already on his phone. But as he was scrolling Facebook when I was sharing thoughts with him, I felt that this anxiety start to bubble and boil a little bit more than it had been. And I found myself thinking thoughts like we're going into drama response, right? I found myself thinking, "oh great, I guess this is the beginning of the end. And he would rather check Facebook than connect with me. The phone's gonna take over our relationship and we're gonna lose it all, everything we've been working for."

08:03

 Okay, overreaction? Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's what happens when our nervous system is out of check. And for me, having that low level buzz going on is out of check. And so what happens then is that buzzing and that bubbling gets bigger and bigger and it starts to flow from my gut up into my chest and then up into my neck and into my prefrontal cortex where it floods that part of my brain and that part of my brain shuts down.

08:33

So I think of this, I remember driving the cars in the 80s, right? We had these cars that if you couldn't get it started, and you just kept giving it gas and giving it gas, it would flood the engine and you had to wait a certain amount of time for it to settle down before it would be able to start. We flooded the engine, right? So this is what I imagine happening when my prefrontal cortex gets flooded. The emotion bubbles up and up and up and it floods my prefrontal cortex and that part of my brain shuts down. So this is a problem because the prefrontal cortex, or our thinking brain, is what keeps us making logical, sound decisions. If it's not working, what's left is our primitive brain and she can be a little sketchy. Or if you're a man listening, I would call it a he, right? But primitive brain, for all of her amazingness, is not the best decision maker. She will go to the easiest of options and usually that is not the best of options.

09:37

So my thoughts created fear. The fear flooded, activated, that stress, that anxiety, and that flooded my prefrontal cortex and shut it down. And my primitive brain was like, "oh, I got you girl, I've done this thousands of times," and she went into my archive of patterned behaviors and popped out a passive aggressive statement. This sounded something like this: "Oh, I guess this is the time we start scrolling Facebook." Okay, totally agree, just no. But passive aggressive? Yes. And not the kind of communication that I'm used to in this new marriage with Sione, right? So I was kind of like, at the time, since it's not a pattern behavior in our relationship, it felt way off immediately. But I also froze and I wasn't sure what to do next since somebody else was sitting in the room with us. Had it just been us, I think I would have been able to step more into, "oh wait, never mind, I'm sorry, let me circle back around and do that." But with somebody else in the room, it interrupted that flow for me where I felt that I could just step into being honest and addressing it.

10:51

So I'm going to share with you a little bit later how Sione and I cleaned this one up. Mostly Sione cleaned it up. But in the meantime, let's look at this process a little bit deeper because guess what? We are not the only ones who behave badly sometimes. Other people in our lives behave badly as well. And generally, just as innocently as I did. I will say that that phrase was out of my mouth without consciously thinking about it. I just kind of felt like a jolt of something, which as I went back and cleaned it up, it was that fear and the fear from the thought that was, "oh great, this is the beginning of the end." I just felt that jolt and then I responded with this passive aggressive comment.

 11:40

So let me ask you this. Have you ever been having a discussion with someone and they have an unusually strong reaction to something that, to you, seems pretty benign? Okay, at that point it can be really easy to go into drama response, right? And start thinking that they are blowing things out of proportion, that something is wrong with them, or that they're just looking for reasons to get mad, or they don't care about the relationship, right? Something. But what if it's actually none of those things? What if they, like me, were just having a trigger that pushed them into reactions that happened without any sort of real cognitive awareness?

12:26

Now, first of all, I think that the reason that immediately I went, "whoa, that was something that was wrong," is because I work so hard to consciously show up the way that I want to. And so when I didn't, and it came out in passive[1]aggressive, for me it was like, "whoa, that's out of sorts." But if you are having this kind of situation with someone who is not working on that kind of cognitive awareness, they may not have that thing that says, "whoa, that doesn't fit here." Or if it's a very, very patterned behavior in your relationship, it's not going to have that same like, "whoa, that was wrong, that was not the way that I do things." It's just going to feel like, game on, this is how we do it.

13:12

So let me give you an example of what this might sound like. Okay? Let's say you need to bring up a tough discussion with your spouse. So you approach them and you start off by saying, "hey, we really need to talk about something. In a millisecond, you see the other person's eyes glaze over, you see their posture stiffen, you see their face and their jaw harden, and they make an excuse, and they're out of there. Now, for you, it can be really easy to start creating a story (this is our drama response, right?) about how they don't care about your thoughts. About how they don't care about the relationship. About how they're not as invested as you are. About how eventually you're going to get divorced or you're gonna not have a relationship with this child or whatever else, right? Etc. etc. Like the things go on and on. But what if none of that is true?

14:01

Each of us has in our brain what I call an encyclopedia of experience. This means that everything we see or hear or feel goes into our brain is processed through our encyclopedia of experience and comes out the other side in some sort of response. And none of us have the same encyclopedia of experience. For you, saying, "we really need to talk about this," might be a sweet invitation to clean up a misunderstanding and develop a deeper emotional connection. For them, depending on their encyclopedia of experience, it might mean that the two of you are headed into a blaming and accusing and attacking fight followed by the silent treatment for days. Something that seems innocuous to you could be a huge trigger for them.

14:58

So in the case of a second marriage, maybe every time their former spouse used the phrase "we really need to talk," it turned into such a huge confrontation that their encyclopedia of experience immediately and unconsciously interprets that as "this is going to be horrible" and starts putting up all the walls and protection that it thinks that it needs. All unconsciously, right? And in the case of a longer-term marriage, maybe you two have just created patterns of behavior that are hurtful, that need to be cleaned up. And maybe every time you've said "we need to talk," it has turned into a huge fight. And as you're working to clean up your stuff, and to say, "listen, I want to talk about this. I want to have an honest conversation. I want to show up as an equal here", if this is all new, your spouse's brain is going to go, "whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know what's going on here. I don't think this person can be trusted," and they think that it's something that's going to come back and bite them, right? So when your spouse immediately closes down emotionally and disengages, you feel hurt because your encyclopedia of experience, you start thinking that they are intentionally walking away from an opportunity to deepen your relationship, that they don't care about you, they don't care about your relationship. While their brain is in full[1]on protection mode, all their warning signals are going off and they go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. And often they're completely unaware of their response. So you interpret their behaviors with your encyclopedia of experience, which may mean that you interpret that as intentionally disengaging and not caring and not loving, and not being willing to invest in you. And a huge misunderstanding has just occurred. This is the thing that really glorious fights are made out of, right? These misunderstandings, the unawareness of what's going on and how we're responding. And if we don't figure this kind of stuff out, this is the sort of thing that drives a wedge into our relationships and can eventually split them apart. So how do we work through these types of experiences? How do we not let a situation like this turn into a fight that erodes a little more our connection and our relationship? How do we turn this situation into a conflict that connects rather than a conflict that becomes contentious?

17:38

Remember that I use the term "conflict" as two people having two different ideas, opinions, or perspectives; totally neutral situation. Conflict is neutral. Now I know that that goes against a lot of the pre-conditioning that we have with the word conflict, but stick with me here, right? So if it's just a difference of opinions, there's nothing wrong with you liking red and me liking blue. It's just a difference of opinion. It's a difference of perspective. So, how do we turn this into a conflict that connects rather than a conflict that creates contention?

18:15

Okay, first, recognize that something that seems non-threatening to you might seem emotionally lethal to them. Oftentimes we don't know and oftentimes they don't know. Like their primitive brain is going into protective mode and they don't even get it, they don't even see it. They don't even understand it, right? And neither side is right or wrong. It's just different interpretations of the same action based on our encyclopedia of experience. And just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it's not abundantly clear to them or at least to their primitive brain. This is where we give each of us 100% acceptance to be having our own experience.

19:07

Second thing, offer a lot of grace and compassion to the other person while they figure it out or not. They may not be in a place where they're ready to figure it out. But believing that the other person would never hurt you on purpose, that there must be something bigger going on that you don't understand, and responding in kind can help create a safe space that their brain can now start associating new experiences with. If you get angry and accusatory with their response, so the example we gave before: their eyes blaze over, everything tightens and they're out of there, if you get angry and accusatory with their response, their brain is going to reaffirm that that particular phrase is a dangerous one and will continue to respond to it by protecting itself. If on the other hand you start learning how to offer grace and compassion, their brain will start to clue in that maybe that phrase isn't so dangerous after all. Maybe this is a safe space to hang around in for a bit.

20:17

I have to say that grace has been my favorite word this year because I love the idea that Adam Miller gave: that it seeks to give people what they need even when I may not understand why they need it. I will never ever fully understand another person's pain or struggles or joys. Their encyclopedia of experience is so vast and so complex that even they don't understand it, just as we don't always understand ours. So just yesterday I was answering some questions in a course that I'm taking and I came across some ideas in my brain that really surprised me because it's in an area that I've done a lot of work in. But here all of a sudden was this thought digging a little bit deeper than I had before. And in the meantime, those ideas have been informing my decisions, my feelings, my actions, and I had no idea that those thoughts, those beliefs, those ideas were even in my brain still. I thought I'd cleaned them all up. So this space of grace to have an encyclopedia of experience that is doing its thing that I don't get, that I don't understand. And when we can create a space for everyone to have a complex and sometimes even disturbing encyclopedia of experience and also realize that much, if not all of it, is unconscious, our ability to offer grace multiplies. These thoughts where we connect with the ideas that people are different, people have difficult experiences, people have this encyclopedia of experience that just does its thing. When we can really understand that, our ability to offer grace multiplies. And the stories we start to create about how manipulative or scheming or uncaring or thoughtless the other person is, they start to seem ridiculous when we're wearing our grace glasses. We begin to realize how complicated all of this can be and our ability to offer grace compounds.

22:32

Third, when the timing is right, move into a discussion with curiosity and compassion. The owning your own process works amazing here. That can sound something like, "When you... (this is where you do the circumstance, right? keep it factual) "...didn't respond to me when I said, 'we really need to talk about this.' and then you left the room, I felt..." (here's our one word emotion) "...I felt confused. Because I was thinking..." (now we're gonna put in the thought that created that confusion, right?) "...because I was thinking, 'I didn't understand why that seemed to upset you.'" Notice that there is nothing in that that seems attacking or accusatory. It's just stating a fact, and then your own experience of your thought and feeling. As soon as someone feels attacked or blamed or accused, the primitive brain goes wild into protection mode. So as clear as we can be that we are sharing our experience and not putting them on the spot, the more likely it is that the conversation will go better. So is it guaranteed the conversation will go better? No. But highly more likely. This person probably wants to have a connected relationship with you and just feels very confused about how to get there. Especially when their primitive brain gets triggered and throws them into protective mode and they have very little understanding of why. So when we can stay focused on how we are showing up on turning this conflict into connection, we can use a tool like the "own your own" and hopefully create a safe enough space that their primitive brain doesn't feel threatened. But it might. It might just take continuing, continuing, continuing to show up this way until their brain starts to go, "Oh, maybe this isn't as dangerous as I used to think it was."

24:40

Next step, follow up with a question that allows them to explore the situation more for themselves and helps you to understand their point of view. For example, "Can you help me understand why you seem to shut down and then left the room? What am I not understanding about the situation? What was going on for you when I asked if we could talk? Tell me what your point of view is on this." And then with genuine curiosity and compassion, ask further questions to understand their experience. Remember, you're not asking questions so you can turn their answer on them or find information to strengthen your case about why they're horrible and wrong or use it as as a weapon against them. You are truly seeking to understand their point of view. This is where intimacy comes from: when we really understand the other person's point of view. When we can see why things are important to them or why certain things are painful for them, we understand them in a more intimate way and the relationship deepens. And there's a possibility that you asking some sincere questions may help them to understand themselves better, to see thoughts going on in their head that they might not have been aware of.

26:01

This is what I get to do as a coach. I get to ask questions that help people understand themselves better, why they think and feel and behave the way that they do. When we can allow grace and compassion to deeply direct our responses, not only do we create a safer space for the other person to explore the inner workings of their brain, but we also feel amazing for showing up in such a loving way and our own self-love and self-respect grows. And when we see this kind of growth in ourselves, our newfound ability to show up with grace and compassion, it creates greater hope around our own ability to change. And this is the Atonement of Jesus Christ in action: being able to change.

26:46

Okay, so combining all of this together. Let me tell you how things worked out with Sione after my passive-aggressive comment. About 20 minutes later we headed to bed and being the just amazing person that he is, he very quickly said something like, "I don't want to have a back burner issue. So can we talk about what happened earlier?" And then he 100% jumped into owning your own and he said something near as I can recall, like, "when you said, 'I guess this is the time we scroll Facebook,' I felt surprised because I was thinking that you don't usually respond that way. It was a little passive aggressive." It gets me a little bit choked up because of the compassion and the grace that he offers there. He didn't say "I felt angry." He didn't say "I felt attacked." He was just like, "I was surprised" because you don't usually respond that way. And because I felt that grace and that compassion, because I didn't feel attacked or blamed or accused, it did not trigger my prefrontal cortex to flood. And I was able to step into a discussion with him about what was going on. And the more we discussed it, and then as he asked me questions, I was able to identify my fear around the what ifs of his phone taking over our relationship and becoming distant and losing the connection that we have. And we were able to discuss that topic. And as we talked about it, he was able to see my fears around his phone use. And then we discussed how both of us can show up better around those scenarios. In fact, we ended up in a space where he said, "when I do this in the future, will you help me to see that I'm not looking up for my phone that I'm staying focused there." And I was able to say, "yes, tell me what help will look like for you." Rather than saying, thinking that I know what it looks like asking him, "what does it look like for you to have me help you?"

28:55

So it ended up being an experience where we came out the other side more connected than we were going in. This is how conflict can lead us to connection rather than contention. And it was something that if either left on the back burner or if handled with accusation or attack, it could have created some hurt feelings, some further misunderstandings and some distance, some disconnection. I really believe looking for opportunities to offer grace and compassion in our relationships is an amazing way that we can move our relationships into deeper connection and intimacy. And it's a way to continue our own growth and progression.

29:41

The greatest commandments are to love God. and to love others as ourselves. And when we take that law seriously and we seek to run everything in our lives through the filter of love, what would love say, what would love look like, what would love do here? I really don't think we can go wrong. In fact, I think this is when we grow into our possibility at unprecedented rates. So what relationship in your life can use some extra grace and compassion today? And how can you offer that? I challenge you to courage up and step into that grace and compassion. Is it scary? It can be for sure. But you've got this, my friend, when it moves you in a direction that you really want to go, it's so worth it. This is a concept that was not available to me in my 20s or my 30s or my 40s. I love growing up. I love my 50s so much. Like this is the beauty of middle age.

30:49

 If you would like some personal help working through these situations in your own life, figuring out seeing things that you don't see, that is probably the biggest part of one-on-one coaching that is amazing. I can help you see things that you are currently completely unaware of. And once we see them, once we know better, we can do better. But we can't do better until we know what's going on. So if you would like to work with me or want to find out more about my group classes, you can go to tanyahale.com. The group coaching is going to be talking about those two classes I have coming up. The free consultation is where you can get on my calendar and set up a time to talk with me about one-on-one coaching and how it's going to work, and if it's a good fit for you. Okay, that's going to do it for me, my friends. Thank you for being here. I just love sharing my growth, my understanding, all of that with you because it is making such a huge, huge difference in the kind of life that I'm living and I know that it will make the same difference for you. Coaching has changed my life without a doubt. So have a great, great week and I'll see you next time. Bye.

 32:05

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.