The Real Problem? Our Reactions to Our Reactions!

As a psychologist and seminar leader, I’m often asked by organizations and individuals to help them deal with their stress, frustration, anxiety, or resentment (or pretty much any reaction that keeps them from being effective). Of course, I’m happy to do this, however, the idea that we will never again be stressed or upset is, in my opinion, unrealistic. Therefore, rather than teaching people how to never react to challenging situations, I suggest we look deeper and discover the real problem.

In other words, rather than seeing difficult people or situations as the problem, or even emotion or behavior that is often triggered when dealing with these situations, I suggest that it is actually our reaction to our reaction (or the cycle of trigger/reaction) that is truly getting in our way.

For those of you who follow my “Life from the Top of the Mind” philosophy, you know that this has to do with how the brain processes information. The limbic system or middle brain is always scanning the environment looking for anything it perceives as negative or threatening. When it zeros in on a difficult person or situation, it tends to throw us into the lower brain (brainstem) which triggers the release of fight-or-flight chemicals such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol.

These would be perfect if we were indeed in a situation that called for fight-or-flight, however, given that this is rarely the case, what happens instead is that we find ourselves feeling more stressed, anxious, angry, etc., because we can’t change the person or situation that seems to be “making us upset.” This then triggers another round of reactions, and the cycle of stress/frustration is born and exacerbated.

In other words, the real problem isn’t the situation (we will be dealing with these for the rest of our lives), nor is it the first reaction (again, it’s unrealistic to think we will never be stressed again), it’s our reaction to our reaction!

So, what can we do about this? Well, we can begin to evaluate whether our reaction to our reaction is truly serving us. Rather than looking to justify how we feel, we can look at the reaction more objectively and determine whether we want to keep feeling this way… whether we want to “feed it,” so to speak. If the answer is “Yes!,” that’s fine we can feel as bad as we want for as long as we want.

If, however, the answer is “No!,” this reaction is not serving me (not helping me create the life I want, I would not recommend this reaction to someone I love), then we can begin to make a more purposeful choice with respect to how we would like to feel, think, and act going forward.

This more purposeful perspective comes from the upper 80% of the brain (the neocortex, what I call the “Top of the Mind”) and until we are able to shift from this unconscious, reactive state to a more purposeful responsive state, we will will not be able to influence our lives in the way we want.

Of course, this is easier said than done, which is why I have created a system that is designed to show people exactly what is happening in the brain during this experience, and how to have more influence in how we think, feel, and react/respond, when dealing with difficult people or situations.

If you would like me to work with you, and/or your organization so that everyone is coming from this clear, confident, creative state, I suggest you contact me by phone or email (DrBill@BillCrawfordPhD.com), because until we are able to break the cycle of reacting to our reactions, we will forever be trying to change the world around us (the situations and people we encounter) so that they don’t upset us. Not a way of life we would recommend to those we love, don’t you think?