Listening empathetically and integrating an unhelpful survival reaction.

Have you noticed what happens when you startle a dog? It barks and appears threatening.  It responds like this as a protective, survival reaction.  As humans, we can do that, too.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when a message feels like a personal attack? It takes you so by surprise that you take offence and fight back as a defence.  You turn the conversation around so that it is no longer about you, but instead you make it about them.  You attack them with accusations and blame. 

I witnessed this the other day when a male friend, let’s call him, Pete, was being teased by one of his buddies, let’s call him, Jack, about his poor driving.  Instead of receiving the jest, like a ‘good sport’, Pete lashed out at Jack by accusing him of speeding and being dangerous on the road.  All of the mates in the group were quite thrown by the interaction.  It was reactive and changed the tenor of the whole conversation and didn’t make sense..  The mates were kind of lost for words, until someone tried to move the conversation onto another topic. 

Later I reflected on what had happened.  I had witnessed a ‘fight’ response to danger.  My friend didn’t see the humour in being teased, but instead felt personally attacked.

If you are the kind of person who has this fight response to stressful situations or conflict, then when this happens to you, it is likely because you are triggered.  Your survival response to stressful or threatening situations is ‘to fight’.  You may find yourself getting angry and saying something unkind about the other person. You are unable to function in that moment; totally emotionally wound up and operating automatically in your survival mode, the fight mode. When you recover from the emotion and look back at that moment, you wonder why you responded so dramatically.  What happened to your rational self?  

Fight is one kind of survival response.  It is a strategy that most likely developed early in life when some kind of trauma occurred.  What that early trauma was is now maybe lost to history. It just was something that happened. But it doesn’t matter what the original trigger was, the fight response stays with us into adulthood as an automatic survival behaviour. Unless we recognise it and make efforts to change it, it can repeatedly impact our connection with ourselves and others. 

We can decide to react differently …. by pausing in the moment and self-connecting.

One way to self-connect is to talk to self, noting that there may be more than one voice internally, such as a rational self and an emotional, protective self.  When we are in survival mode, we are usually out of control. To get back control, a useful process that I have found is to give the voices names, such as, Fight Back for the protective voice and Clarity for the rational voice. It then becomes possible to engage with our internal voices through dialogue.

I thought about Pete and decided to write a fictitious, internal dialogue between his Clarity and Fight Back. This demonstrates what I mean by self-connecting at times when we are trying to regulate and manage our instinctive ‘fight’ reaction.

Clarity doesn’t like Fight Back’s behaviour. The dialogue opens with Clarity asking curiously about his reaction.

Clarity:

Fight Back, I’m curious to understand your response to Jack teasing you on the way to football training…

Fight Back:

Everybody thinks it is so funny when they tease me, but I hate it. It makes me look like an idiot.

Clarity:

Wow, I’m guessing you’re feeling anxious. Do you want acceptance for being just the way you are? … And recognition that you are doing the best you can?

Fight Back:

Yeah, I am.  I don’t like being singled out. And my driving is fine.

Clarity:

Ok.  I understand.  So, you are needing inclusion…. and recognition that you are a competent driver, right?

Fight Back:

Yes.  

Clarity:

Well, when you react with judgements, I get anxious, you know. I really value Jack’s friendship.

Fight Back:

Oh, I didn’t know that. OK…I’m imagining that you’d like me to respond differently, then? When I’m being teased? 

Clarity:

Yes, I would.

Fight Back:

Actually, thinking about it right now… when I’m feeling inadequate and wanting to fight back, I just need some kind words of reassurance from you.

Clarity:

No worries. I can do that.  In fact, it would help me to feel more connected with you, too.  And if we feel connected to each other, then maybe we’ll do better socially.    

Fight Back:

Yeah, maybe. It’s been good getting this off my chest. Thanks.

Clarity:

You’re welcome.

This fictitious, self-connecting dialogue is a kind of reflective process we can do with ourselves, in our own time, to better understand our own feelings and needs. It offers us a strategy to regulate our survival responses, making life more wonderful for ourselves and for others.

Next time you are feeling triggered, why not stop, pause, breath and self connect?

If you would like to learn more about how to recognise and use language which is positive and compassionate without judgement and blame, then check out our Courses on the language of compassionate communication. 

Our next Foundation Course in Compassionate Communication starts July 20.