00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 346, "How to Stop Reacting and Start Responding." 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. 

00:23 

Alright, hello there, my friends. I am in American Samoa right now. We have been here for about 10 days now. My husband, way before I came along, started coming to American Samoa to volunteer in the hospital here and he just does surgeries while he's here and he has loved it and I feel so blessed to be able to just tag along and be here. It's beautiful. The people are wonderful. The weather is amazing, especially when the polar vortex was going through the United States and we just happened to be down in American Samoa where the temperature is in the 80s every day. It's been really, really great. We love warm weather...not that our hearts and minds weren't with all of y'all suffering through the cold. Absolutely. We were thinking of you all the time and we were enjoying the warm weather for sure. Love coming here. It's been a great, great experience to be here and to get to know the people here better. 

01:27 

Before we jump in today, a couple of things. Talk with Tanya is February 11th. You're going to want to get signed up for that if you want to come. It is Tuesdays at 2 o'clock Eastern, which is 12 o'clock Mountain, and you sign up. You'll get an email that has the Zoom link on it and then you just come and you show up and we talk about whatever you want and get to discuss concepts, get some coaching, dive deeper. You can ask me questions about dating, about marriage, about divorce, about all the things. And whoever's there, we just chat and it's really it's been a really really great time. Love that. 

02:05 

Also, if you are interested in my next round of group coaching classes, they're going to be starting the middle of March. I'm gonna do two or three time options, but they're all going to be the same class. It's going to be on sense of self. This is just the content that has to be understood and put into practice in our lives if we are going to be able to incorporate all of these other tools and create for ourselves the lives that we want. We cannot be in a healthy relationship with someone else if we are not in a healthy relationship with ourselves. So I would love for you to figure this out. The group coaching is much more cost-effective and it still is really really great. Even clients who I have done one-on-one coaching with love that they come to the group coaching and they're just still amazed. They're just like "I can't believe how much I still get out of these classes even after having the growth and the progress that one-on-one coaching created." So this is a great opportunity for you to engage in deepening your understanding of your own sense of self and of how to be stronger in that and how to step away from the reflective sense of self parts that we all have. We all struggle with sense of self at some point, but the stronger we get the stronger our relationships will be. 

03:27 

Okay, and also if you want to be one of the first person to find out when those classes go live, when they're going to be open and available for registration, make sure that you are signed up for my "weekend win" email. I really do not use that. I know sometimes I sign up for an email and then all of a sudden I'm getting like 10 emails a week. That is not how I roll. You will get one a week generally. If I have a class going on you might get two. I might push it and do three, but that's that's kind of rare. Just I want you to know about it and if you're interested, that is a great place to do that. So just go to tanyahale.com. There will be a pop-up that shows up right away where you can sign up for that. 

04:04 

Okay, and also I not only do individual coaching, but I also do couples coaching now. So a lot of the coaching I do is either divorce coaching, which is "I don't know if I want to stay or go." Like, before the divorce, do I want to stay? Do I want to go? This is just tough. I don't know what decision to make. In the middle of divorce, like I don't want to be this jerk, but it's really hard not to be a jerk when you're in the middle of a divorce. And so I oftentimes help clients to keep their heads about them,  to stay in alignment with who they want to be, to show up the person that they want to be in their lives. After divorce coaching, how do we heal and move forward? How do we move on to next stage? I've helped people with dating after divorce and how do I really date and how do I create the kind of situations that I want in dating? How do I show up so that I am not settling. So I do a lot of that coaching, and then I also do a lot of coaching with people who say "listen, I don't want to get divorced, but I don't know what to do with this relationship. I don't know how to make it better. I don't know how to feel happier." So I do a lot of that coaching as well. 

05:16 

And I've started doing that with both individuals and couples. I am loving the new coaching that I'm doing as much as I love the individuals. So that's all available. A lot of different relationship options for you to jump into and I would love to chat with you about it if you're interested. Again, you can access that at tanyahale.com go to the "free consultation" tab. Oh, the Talk with Tanya is on the "group coaching" tab. So go there if you want to sign up for that. 

05:45 

Alright, so today we're going to be talking about how to stop reacting and how to start responding. So in my mindset group coaching class that I'm teaching right now, we've talked a bit about Viktor Frankl's quote that says, "between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom." So Viktor Frankl was an Austrian-born neurologist, psychologist and philosopher, and he spent time in Nazi concentration camps. And in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl talks not only about his experiences in the camps, but also about his psychological observations of himself and other prisoners while he was there. If you have not read that book, it's kind of a fascinating book and not too long of a read. But it's in this book, Man's Search for Meaning, that he gives the quote that's previously mentioned. 

06:39 

So, in essence, here we go, between a stimulus or something that happens to us and our response to that stimulus or how we choose to respond to it, there is a space. And in that space lies our growth and our freedom. And I'm going to say our power, okay, in the context of the coaching work that I do. If you've been around for a while, what we're doing is we're saying that between the circumstance and our actions, putting it in the thought model, right? We have a thought and a feeling. And it's in choosing our thoughts and our feelings that we find our greatest power. 

07:18 

Now, before I dig in, I want to mention a few things that make it difficult for us to take this quote and the thought model at 100% face value, 100% of the time. I think the majority of the time, we can absolutely use the thought model and it's really helpful. But here's a couple of times where it may not be. From what I've learned and read, when we have a trauma, especially significant trauma in our life, our brain rewires itself for survival. And when a circumstance happens, that triggers that trauma, we will have an involuntary reaction to the circumstance. Okay, we don't really have a lot of space in there. So of these reactions, though originally created to protect us, they can actually be detrimental as we later engage in safer relationships because we have these protective mechanisms in place. And trauma therapy is a specialized field that helps people to reprogram their brain's reaction to the traumas and the triggers for them. So I am NOT a trauma therapist. I'm not an expert in trauma even itself. So anyone who comes to me for help with trauma, I suggest that they work with a trauma therapist before working with me or even at the same time as working with me if they feel like that's appropriate for them. But trauma is something that really needs to be addressed. before we can really start saying, okay, I should have control of my brain because we just can't always. 

08:50 

So another place where things can break down with the idea of the thought model is that there's a space between the circumstance or the stimulus and the action or the response is when something scares or startles us, okay? I startle really easily and will jump a good two to three inches when something jumps out and scares me. And my kids hate sitting next to me on the sofa during movies for this reason, okay? In fact, a few weeks ago, I was watching a video on my phone and it was one of those where you're just watching this normal video and then all of a sudden they have this huge spider that jumps out, right? And I actually screamed and I dropped my phone. And so when that kind of stuff happens, our body's nervous system takes over and we react involuntarily. So for most of us, however, these types of situations are not the norm, okay? 

09:39 

So in my life, at least where I'm not consistently in fight or flight or where I haven't had trauma that hijacks my nervous system, I have the luxury of figuring out how to increase the space between the stimulus and the response. So one of the participants in the mindset reset class sent me that Viktor Frankl's quote on a picture and the picture showed a person standing in the middle with the stimulus on one side and the response on the other and it actually had lines driven or drawn down the side of the person with the stimulus on one side and the response on the other side. And I love this visual because it helps me to really visualize the space for response. There was a space from one side of the person to the other. So do I have a large space or do I have a small space? How much time do I need in order to cognitively respond rather than intuitively react? How big does that space need to be for me to choose my reaction? 

10:44 

So, here's my understanding of how the brain works in this arena. Our permitted brain, the place where so much of our intuitive protection resides, processes information really quickly, as in milliseconds quickly. And since it works from the space of past experiences, it has at its immediate disposal reactions, immediate go-to behaviors that it supposes will work to protect us. Most likely because they've been used or observed in the past. It has these behaviors that it just is like, "okay, we're going to do this." And that's a great thing when something needs an immediate reaction to keep us safe, like jumping out of the way of a vehicle recklessly heading in our direction. In those scenarios, we don't have a lot of time, and we don't need a lot of time, to consider our options and make a conscious decision. Our primitive brain just jumps in and says, "move," right? Thank you, primitive brain. That is the protective mechanism of the primitive brain that we're so grateful for. 

11:49 

But most of our lives don't consist of jumping out of the way of moving vehicles. We aren't generally in such a hurry to make decisions. And yet, so often when we're in a heated discussion with someone, we will behave as if our life depends on our immediate reply and rebuttal. We react to what others are saying or doing without much thought or conscious awareness of our words or our behaviors. A small space, right? I like to refer to this as reacting. I have little or no space between the stimulus and the response. I just go from one to the other without processing, without choosing my words and/or actions intentionally. And this is when we do so much damage to our relationships. 

12:40 

Now, our brains are pretty fascinating, even though we don't remember anything cognitively about the first three years of our lives. During that time, our brains were creating neural pathways faster than at any other time in our lives. Think of all the things that we learned how to do in those first three years. We go from being a little blob of a baby that can just eat and sleep and poop, right, to within the first year we have learned how to how to roll over and sit up and crawl and often walk or even run at that point. We have learned our name. We have started to learn language. We sometimes are speaking one and two words at a time. We can feed ourselves. We can...like all the things that we can do. And by the time that child is three, they're speaking generally in full sentences. Oftentimes three-year-olds can be potty-trained. All of this happens when we're in those times. 

13:40 

And during those first three years our brains were watching and learning and paying attention to how people behave, how they talk, the kinds of things they say, the words they use, all of these neural pathways were being created in our brains. So much of who we are today is a product of those early early years and we don't even remember them. As we get older our brains will refer back to those early neural pathways to help us make decisions about how to interact with others. This isn't to say that we can't choose something different as we get older, just that these neural pathways are our go-to thoughts and behaviors. It is our primitive brain reacting rather than our prefrontal cortex responding. And, anytime we rely on a neural pathway to direct our behaviors, we react unconsciously rather than responding consciously, and our brain continues to create neural pathways throughout our lives. 

14:44 

So, let's take a 30-year-old marriage. In those 30 years, you and your spouse have developed a lot of pattern behavior or a lot of neural pathways. We might even call these habits, ways that we behave, ways that we react to certain stimuli that don't require any pre-frontal cortex activation or conscious decision making. So, for example, let's say that within the first 5- 10 years of marriage, that your spouse started coming into the room and interrupting you when you were engaged in something. It annoyed you, but you didn't ever address it, you just kept getting annoyed over and over and over and over. And eventually, when your spouse would come in and say, "hey honey," you would start off with "yes love," and pretty soon that became a "what's up," became a "what," became a "why do you always interrupt me," became an "oh, you're so annoying, just leave me alone." 

15:50 

Notice this pattern of thinking that he was annoying you has now, after many, many years of repetition, become so ingrained in your reacting without thinking, without cognitively thinking. You're just reacting. Even if he comes into the room with a bunch of flowers or a sweet offer to take you out to dinner, he is met with annoyance and frustration. So, we respond to his, "hey honey," with an angry "what" reaction, even before we see the flowers or hear the dinner invitation. Patterned reactions, reacting from our primitive brain, are habits.So rather than responding with our prefrontal cortex, we are reacting to our primitive brain. Using the quote from Viktor Frankl, I see the space between the stimulus and the response being very small, if not even non-existent, in this scenario. We have patterned our brain to respond with anger and frustration because we see that behavior as annoying. 

16:59 

So though this isn't really how a neuroscientist would describe what's going on, because I'm not a neuroscientist, this is how my brain has figured out how to describe what's happening. The primitive brain, because it doesn't have to process new information, because it's just regurgitating old information and working from previous patterns, it can formulate a response milliseconds before the prefrontal cortex can do its magic. And while milliseconds doesn't seem like a very long time, it's enough for the primitive brain to have a thought and for our body to react to the primitive brain thought and start the motion, which is very difficult to stop once it starts. 

17:43 

So have you ever had the experience of reacting to your spouse, like in the example we talked about just a minute ago, and in the process of saying it and hearing the tone of your voice and your prefrontal cortex is over there saying, "no, that's not a good thing. That's not really how I want to respond." It's happened to me tons, right? For me, it almost feels like I'm watching my bad behavior from outside my body. But it's too late to stop it because a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Once the primitive brain has that thought and within milliseconds initiates the behavior, it is moving, right? The space between the stimulus and the response, my body moving, is not big enough for us to consciously choose. It's not enough space for our prefrontal cortex to catch up. 

18:36 

So how do we make that space bigger? How do we move from reacting, which is often the behavior we want to move away from, to responding in a way that we're really happy with, that a way that fills in alignment with our values? This is the question I work on with so many of my clients. They will say that they are saying something mean to their spouse before they even realize it. It might even take a few minutes or sometimes hours or days before they realize that they showed up being mean and hurtful. 

19:07 

So here's the process of creating space that I work on with myself and that I work on with my clients. So the very first thing, we have to start becoming aware of the bad behavior that we are engaging in. Here are some different scenarios of where we may be. Sometimes we're aware of it, we know that we're being mean, we know that we're being unkind, but we just don't want to do anything about it. We feel really justified in our behavior and feel as though our spouse actually deserves the way we're treating them. We can get stuck in this place of refusing to forgive them for whatever, and that's very different work to do, by the way, but work that needs to be done. When you're okay, though, with your hurtful behavior, I don't know what to tell you, except that maybe you're not emotionally mature enough to be in a relationship, and that's okay if that's where you are. Just be honest about it. Don't keep stringing the other person along with false hope that someday you'll treat them better. If you are genuinely okay with being mean to them, It may be time to look at another option. Why are you in relationship if all you want to do is be mean? 

20:35 

Okay, the second place. Other times it's like we see the bad behavior in our peripheral vision, but we just don't want to acknowledge it. We refuse to turn our heads and look at it. We may feel that it's better to be oblivious and not know about it, although we sort of see it lurking over there. We're afraid to look at it. We don't know what it's going to entail, but when you can kind of see it over there in your peripheral vision, this is your brain trying to create awareness, but you have to choose to turn your head and look at it. Will it be hard to see it? Yes. Will it take time and energy and possibly money to figure it out? Absolutely. But in the long run, it will be easier than continuing to live in this misery of a marriage every day. Choose to see your stuff, those small nagging thoughts and ideas. Turn your head and look at them. Ask your spouse about them. Ask your children to enlighten you. Bring these things out of your periphery and into your immediate line of sight. Be honest with yourself about how you are treating others and whether you're okay with it or not. 

22:02 

The third scenario. Sometimes we actually are completely unaware of how we're treating others, and if someone else in our life says something to us, we are genuinely honestly confused and we don't understand what they're talking about. So we dismiss them. We might even get defensive and we might just say, "listen, this is on you. This is all yours. You're in charge of yourself," which is true. But come on, if they're giving us some good information, doing that, getting defensive, dismissing them, this is really poor behavior if we are choosing to be in a relationship. If people you love are trying to show you your stuff by telling you about it, choose to see it. Take those defensive thoughts and feelings and look for the truth in what this other person is saying. If you're feeling defensive, there is truth there. Maybe it's 95% true, maybe it's just 5% true, but truth is truth and choosing to see it will be a gold nugget of information for you. 

23:12 

So remember when your spouse said you were controlling? Go back and openly and honestly ask them to help you see it. Remember when they said you were always critical? Go to them and ask for clarity. Ask them to help you understand yourself better by sharing examples with you of when you've been critical or controlling. I promise you, people in your life are seeing things about you that you are not seeing. Have the courage to go and ask them and receive what they share. 

23:51 

Fourth scenario, sometimes we really do start to see it. We recognize that it makes us feel horrible because we really don't want to be that kind of person. We want to be less reactive, but it seems to overtake us and we don't know how to stop it. This, my friend, is the jackpot. We are seeing our poor behavior and we are not okay with us treating others that way, especially this person that we claim to love more than anybody else. This is when our brain is becoming aware and now we can begin the process of doing it differently, of changing our behavior. 

24:33 

Okay, so that's all different spaces of awareness. Okay, so once we've created some awareness around ourselves, once we start seeing our reactive behaviors, now we're starting to create the space between the stimulus and our response. The awareness alone starts to create a bigger space. I just want you to know that when you can start catching yourself behaving badly, that means you are doing so much better. You're seeing something that previously your brain was hiding from you. Great job. Good job. This is what we're doing here, right? We are trying to see the things that previously were hidden. 

25:17 

So here's the next step. I want you to think back to the last time you reacted poorly, a time when you said the mean thing or did the mean thing or dismissed somebody that you love. Go back and think "before I behave that way what was I feeling in my body?" If you can't give it a name yet that's okay. What I want you to do is identify where it was in your body. Was it in your chest, your shoulders, your neck, maybe your head or your gut, maybe even your hands and arms or your legs and feet. I've had people identify the big surge of emotion in all of those places. For me it almost always starts in my chest and it's hot and then it spreads up my neck and into my face and my ears and sometimes my eyes even feel this the pulsing of my blood in them, like it's kind of crazy but that's what I feel. 

26:18 

Someone I was speaking to just yesterday said it started with her feet getting hot and then it seemed to just .shoot from their feet up out the top of her head. Someone else told me that their hands and their arms start to get tingly, while someone else has told me that their head feels tight and they start to get time tunnel vision. Okay, such good info. So ask yourself where does it usually start for you, how does it feel, where was the last time that it happened to you? Start to look at it. Start to become aware of that feeling in your body. 

26:56 

Now I want you to identify any other things about it. Does your breathing get shallow or do your lungs feel like they're being compressed and it's hard to breathe? Does your head start throbbing, does it feel like a buzzing vibration, does it feel tingly? Just identify everything you can about that feeling because once you started to identify where it was and how it felt, use that as a template for what to start being aware of. This will be your signal to know that you might just be preparing to react in ways that you won't be happy with later on. So the next time you are in a tight situation, pay attention to how your body is feeling. Is what you identified last time starting to happen this time? If you know you're going to be having a tough conversation, prepare yourself to pay attention to the body signals that you're going to react. This takes some time and take some practice, so don't get on your case if you don't get it figured out right away. Just practice. Notice what's happening in your body. And in the meantime, if you react poorly to something, go back through this and see if you notice anything different. We are creating more and more awareness around this. It's a part of the process. 

28:16 

Alright, so you're in a tough situation. You start to notice your body responding with the signals that in the past have meant you're about to blow, to say something you're gonna regret, to react. Here's what I want you to do. First, do not allow yourself to say anything until you have taken a breath. This gives your prefrontal cortex time to catch up to your primitive brain and it creates space for you to consciously decide how you want to respond rather than just reacting with your primitive brain. It's amazing how many hundreds of thoughts can go through your brain in a second or two. So much processing happens really, really quickly in our brains. So give your brain the time it needs to do this processing. And a breath doesn't take that long. It will seem longer in your head than it does in real time and it won't make the conversation weird, okay? And if it seems weird, it's gonna seem weird because you're not jumping in with something you're gonna regret. Or it may seem weird because they might be expecting a huge dramatic reaction and they're not getting it. But the second, the extra second or two that it takes to take a breath, is not going to be weird. 

29:31 

Next, and this is actually a bit simultaneous to the breathing, focus on what they're saying. Stop trying to figure out in your head how you're going to argue your point, how you're going to fight back, how you're going to defend yourselves, and really listen. What are they trying to say underneath the exasperated tone of voice? And if you don't know, and even if you think you do, ask rather than argue your point. Get clarity, ask questions, really try to understand what they are saying and why it's so important to them. This can include restating what they said: "Okay, so if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is..." and then fill it in, right? Restating, really letting them know that I understand. This creates space, it gives your brain time to catch up. Just stopping and restating what they said will give you clarity and give your brain time to process and show up with responding rather than reacting, okay? Also, some validating of their emotions can be really helpful here as well. 

30:48 

And admitting where you are wrong. Now, not that this is always about who's right and wrong, but because we need to own when we have dropped the ball in some way. Not only does this give you more information to understand them, but again, it also gives your brain time and information to process, to choose how to respond rather than react. So that can sound something like this, "Oh, you're right, I totally forgot to pick up those items for you on the way home, I am so sorry. I'll head right back out right now and do that," or "Wow, it sounds like this is a really tough place for you. And will you help me understand how I could have shown up better for you?" How about this one? "I can see why this is so upsetting to you, and you have every right to be upset with me". Or maybe even this one: "I can tell you're really angry with me, but to be honest, I'm just not really sure yet how I play into this. Will you help me understand what I'm missing?" 

31:54 

When we engage in these types of responses with genuine curiosity, and not with trying to be snarky or ornery, it's amazing the information we will get from the other person. Because it takes two people to fight, and when we don't fight back, but instead own where we have fell short, apologize and circle back around for our neglectful behavior, and have genuine concern for their situation, everything changes. And it feels like a time warp. So, I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but I'm going to go with time warp. Paying attention to the feelings in my body, taking a conscious breath to allow my prefrontal cortex to catch up, really focusing on what they're saying, feels like it slows down time. 

32:41 

And what does that mean? I think it means that I'm creating a bigger space between the stimulus and the response. And rather than an immediate reaction, I'm choosing to respond. I am intentionally choosing to behave the way that I want to, rather than giving into my primitive brain protective responses of fight or flight. And this feels amazing. Reacting always feels to me like I've been taken over by an alien, because my behavior when reacting is generally so far away from my values that it just doesn't even feel like me. I look back later and I'm going, "I don't even know who that was. That is not who I am at my core." But when I consciously create more space and choose my response, it is almost always more in alignment with my values, and that builds my self-respect. I feel stronger and more powerful in who I am at my core. I build confidence in myself that I can treat people the way that I want to, and I don't fly off the handle and out of control. 

33:57 

 For me, it's all a matter of learning how to be in control of myself, choosing to behave in the ways that feel in alignment with who I really want to be. And this is all part of learning to grow up into middle age. This is when the stars align and we have the experience, the wisdom, the discipline, and the awareness to really become who we want to be. I love growing up into middle age because I feel like all the pieces are coming together and choosing to create this space between the stimulus and the response is a huge part of learning to be in control of me. I cannot control anybody else. I can't control what accusations they throw on me. I can't control their behaviors or how they react, but I can control me. And that's a powerful, powerful place to be. 

35:05 

Okay, that's gonna do it for me. If you need some help with this, if you feel like it is time to start responding rather than reacting and if you're having a hard time with it, let's get some coaching done. We can do in three to six months what it can will often take you two to three, four years to do on your own, because I am an outside person. I can see things that you're not going to see. And my training is helping to helping you to see these things. My training is to be able to recognize the patterns that you don't recognize. You can go to tanyahale.com, you can go to the "free consultation" tab, you can sign up for a "free coaching consultation" session. So I'm going to I have those long enough that I give you time that we can coach you on something so that you get greater clarity and awareness around your own behavior. And then we talk about what coaching with me would look like. 

36:10 

And I'll tell you what, I I love coaching and my clients see some great progress. I know that you will too. So I would love for you to consider it. Is it is it an investment in time and energy and money? Absolutely, it is. But if you can be living in three to six months in a way that feels amazing and that strengthens and builds and heals your relationship, it is worth the investment. I will tell you three months with me or six months with me will do more for your relationships than a trip to Disneyland ever would do. Put that trip to Disney on hold and let's get some work done so that when you go to Disney, you can enjoy it rather than fight the whole time. OK, that's going to do it for me, my friends. I love you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this Work, capital W Work. That is going to make your life better. And please feel free to share this with other people who need this content. I love you. Hope you have a great, great week and I'll see you next time. Bye. 

37:20 

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!