You can have more of whatever you want. Rinse and repeat.
My Sister made a visitations upon me last week in celebration of my Birthday and a fabulous time it was. A movie (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain), Dinner and after which, we played Pétanque in 0º temperatures. The rest of the evening was spent at mine and we filled the next few hours with diverse, funny and poignant conversation, interspersed with sprinklings of daftness. Once we get through the first hour of checking in on each other’s families, we start to get down to deeper stuff. It was this that has inspired this article.
There have been moments in life when my constant positive attitude makes a break-through and has even dissolved one or two of my harshest critics.
My Sister has always been a fan of mine, and I of her. She has always commented that despite anything that may be considered ‘challenging’, or just rubbish in my life, I always find the positives and move on.
This particular breakthrough had to do with shower gel. Not shower gel in itself, but it was the catalyst for another intense rant from her estranged husband – these are a regular occurrence.
This time, she chose to bide her time and not undertake any immediate reaction. Instead, after a few hours, she went to his shed to explain, in a calm and considered manner, the reasons behind the lack of available shower gel, and that her actions were not designed to cause him any inconvenience and were not, as alleged, a personal attack on him. He saw her point of view, and apologised for his knee-jerk reaction.
Of course, many of you would want to know more about this, but that’s not what this article is about. This is about how we look after ourselves in circumstances that could be confrontational. When that driver cuts you up, When your neighbour may be inconsiderate, even when your kids are doing something which would normally just drive you crazy, any time, when you might verbally lash out and produce an impressive range of hand gestures towards another. This is about emotional intelligence and positive reinforcement.
When we let the reactionary side of us get on stage and perform, our blood pressure rises, our stress levels start to move up the scale and our heart-rate increases. Unchecked, all of these factors are not good for us. Not only are they not good for us, we willingly dish these out to use every time we repeat these actions, and every time we re-enact the story to those who listen, we even suffer at our own hands when we think about the situation, we really can feel the same physical effects.
Re-telling the story, we re-live the experience.. You’re familiar with the phrase, ‘Oh! It makes me mad just thinking about it!’ This is because those physical, real-life feelings of anger and stress, start to reappear – they are real – again. So we end up not only reliving the incident, but also the detrimental physical effects of it too.
When we take a calm, considered, positive approach to these incidents, then we don’t suffer the negative physical effects. Quite likely, because we responded in a calm, positive way, we are less likely to feel the need to re-tell the story, if we do, we simply repeat the way we felt at the time – no ill effects. This is emotional intelligence at work.
The by-product of these actions in our refusal to engage in confrontation and use a positive attitude, does not only have a positive effect on you, it can have a similar effect on the aggressor. Even if it may not immediately diffuse the situation, over time, it will. When the aggressor has no-one to fight with, you remove their perceived power. That said, that bit is not important here. This is about us/you.
An ex of mine, was particularly vocal at voicing her opinion at the driving capabilities of other motorists, even as a passenger – when I mentioned about being calm, laughing at their indiscretions and knowing that no amount of screaming, shouting or horn-blowing was ever going improve the driving skills of the perpetrator, she reacted by saying that ‘it made her feel better’ – this is true. These outrages can make you feel better – but it’s not the outrage itself that helps. It’s the aftermath of the outrage, when you’ve calmed down and feel better – My way just eliminates the need to stress ourselves out in the first place – go on, give it a go!
When we express anger we:
- Increase stress levels
- Increased Blood Pressure
- Increase Heart Rate
When we re-tell this story, we re-live it and we start to experience the same levels of stress, blood pressure and heart rate, as we are putting ourselves back in the same situation.
A friend who lost a sibling in a car accident many years ago, unsurprisingly developed a dislike for driving anywhere that she didn’t know – go figure! Her Doctors have often tried to help her with her stress associated with this by recommending various talking therapy sessions – without fail, they have all tried to find the original ‘trigger’ and have tried to have her re-live it, which was just about, absolute terror – this achieved nothing. An intelligent person, she recognised the connection, but the therapies only resulted in getting her to feel immediately as stressed and upset as she did all those years ago when the accident occurred. Consequently, not only did this therapy not help, it managed to re-live the feelings and made it worse.
This is another case where the effects of fear, have an incredible effect on us, both emotionally, and physically. Reliving these fears of course, does not re-enact the the situation, but it does re-enact the emotional and physical effects and damage.
When you encounter a perceived threat — such as a large dog barking at you, your hypothalamus triggers an alarm system in your body. Nerve and hormonal signals combine to prompt your adrenal glands, to release a surge of hormones – primarily, adrenaline and cortisol.
Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. Cortisol is the primary stress hormone. This increases glucose in the bloodstream. It also reduces, or temporarily nullifies functions that you don’t need in these situations, such as your immune system responses, digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes, as you don’t need these right now. This natural alarm notifies the brain to take control over mood, motivation and fear.
This all happens when we are faced with fear. Both real and perceived. But more than that, it can also appear when we-tell the story and re-live the effects of the events.
Next time there’s no shower gel, stop and think about how you are going to react and deal with this situation. When you’re starting to learn this stuff, then you may just tell yourself there is no point in getting mad at someone else, but better to calmly enquire about how the lack of cleaning product came about. Of course, the more experienced exponents of this situation will of course just have a quick word with themselves. How daft they were to forget to buy some and next time will check on supply levels before steeping into the shower and getting wet!
