I’m instituting a new rule experiment (seeing as it’s a listening week).
If someone else is freaking out, shut up and listen.
In other words, you’re only allowed to freak out if the other person isn’t.
Fear and anger make listening hard
I’m noticing that when I’m feeling one of the adrenalin emotions (fear, anger, and their more subtle siblings anxiety and irritation) I become much less able to listen.
For example, One of the People I Care About was having a hard time this weekend.
Did I calmly listen, allowing them to feel what they were feeling, holding them in a non-reactive heart-space to link them to their inner spark of divinity?
Did I buggery.
I interrupted them.
I contradicted them.
I shouted at them.
I told them they were wrong.
I told them they were ridiculous.
I basically didn’t implement anything I have been recommending here.
(Opening? Pah!)
Why?
Because their freak-out triggered my freak-out.
(Do I have a Thing about people close to me feeling sad? Hyuh, I do. There’s a part of me that thinks if people feel sad, they are going to feel sad for years, possibly forever, and so that very child-like part panics and tries all of its five-year-old tactics to please please cheer up.)
Thing is, in the middle of a reaction, it’s really difficult to remember complicated things.
Adrenalin seems to narrow the kind of data we can process, and limits our interpretation of that data.
Which is why trying to ‘talk sense’ to someone having a freak-out is patently unhelpful.
And it’s also why we (I) need a really clear rule to remember.
Hence – if someone else is freaking out, shut up and listen (until they stop freaking out).
Not suppressing
Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions.
The Buddhists (well, Pema C, anyway) talk about refraining.
This means (as far as I understand) feeling what you’re feeling but refraining from following the chain reaction, especially refraining from believing the reaction and speaking or acting on it.
So, the One Freak-Out Rule doesn’t mean you can’t feel like freaking out, but if there is someone else freaking out and you refrain, you will reduce unwanted (and probably unnecessary) conflict.
Also, maybe this will short-circuit your (my) instinct to get people to stop what they’re feeling.
Useful?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Smart stuff. I’d thought about how relationships were happier when you took it in turns to freak out/feel hopeless, I was always a bit unsure what happens when everyone freaks out (if it wasn’t happening it was a potential future I could scare myself with). I like the idea that listening needs to be happening by someone in order for conflict to be reduced. Knowing when I stop listening will help me keep the peace. ‘Refrain’ really does need a reintroduction into common parlance. It’s perfect.
The only thing I can think of for when everyone is freaking out is that it’s the job of the person who notices to refrain.
For me, that would, er, be me, not the other person.
Not sure how implementable this advice is though…