Regulating Yourself in an Ever-Increasingly Unregulated World...

When was the last time you recognized yourself as either emotionally regulated versus dysregulated?  You know, being self aware of those times when you didn't go straight into a trauma response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) as a result of being disrespected/dismissed/devalued/denigrated (you name it) by offenses real or imagined.  

When you can keep yourself in check and yet appropriately present during times like that, you are considered to be "regulated" emotionally speaking.  It helps, of course, when you know how to immediately respond to someone who is instantly scaring you, confusing you, or upsetting you by what they say and/or do in your presence.  One response I particularly like is this one:  "Are you o.k. right now?"  That is the nice way of responding to someone who you believe is being offensive to you---by focusing on THEIR own current emotional status.  The skills we need to learn here allow us to "Say what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean, and say it in a timely manner to the person who needs to hear you."

It is true that emotionally mature adults are better at regulating themselves generally speaking when offenses both large and small whiz past us at lightening speed.  For me, that would mean all those "near miss" moments while I am driving these days.  I don't know what makes us so goofy on the roads as we drive, but I am certainly not interested in treating any street or expressway as if it was my own personal race track, just saying.  And yet, what can I say?  I am completely surprised there aren't a larger number of people wrapping themselves around trees, trucks, or medians on a daily basis.  But that's another subject for another post not this one today!  I just know that when "it" happens to me and I am startled by what just happened that could have injured me or the other driver, I thank Jesus and keep driving!  I don't chase down the other driver, flip them off, scream at them...or any of the other stunts I see drivers pull with each other way too often.  Not. Worth. It.  Instead, if I can get a license plate # and make/model of the car, I do call the police to let them know what just happened so they know.  Drivers who are consistently careless on the roads do discover that one day their time is going to be spent in the court system, hospital, prison, or morgue.  It is just a matter of time.

When we are practicing the fine art of emotional regulation on a daily basis, we need to possess specific skills that teach us to comfortably say what we mean, mean what we say, etc.  In other words, we can't "fake" emotional regulation.  It takes many skills to bring us back to baseline when we feel suddenly on fire---or suddenly numb and somwhere "else" other than the here and now of present day reality.  

If you wonder what our emotionally unregulated selves look like in today's day and age, just look around you.  The whole "Karen" phenomenon is about emotional dysregulation.  I don't know why our culture decided that being a "Karen" was specific to white suburban females, but o.k.  In fact, we can find Karens everywhere and anywhere so long as she's female with an entitled attitude towards others while on steroids. (LOL!)  The last time I had an emotionally dysregulated experience with a Karen in my hometown, I actually wondered if a cognitive impairment on her part was partly to blame.  But I digress.  Karens come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders...and they've been around since the dawn of mankind.  You don't think so?  Get a clue.  For as long as people have felt entitled to what they want from whomever they want it from on demand, emotionally dysregulated status will follow when things don't go perfectly enough for him/her/them.

Now a days, I see that "Karens" will even fake fights and injuries (falling down unprovoked and untouched...screaming as if they were physically assaulted when nobody touched them in real time...etc.)

So what can you and I do to regulate rather than dysregulate when we get hit upside the head with an offensive act directed at ourselves---or in our presence?  Well, as I will say to my clients, "Even if you see someone knocking the stuffing out of another human being,  your job is NOT to insert yourself in the middle of that nightmare.  Call 911 immediately."  I actually had a good friend who was a passenger in a truck when someone on the side of the road threw a female under the tires of the truck as it approached.  By the grace of God the truck "missed", but this long and sordid tale ended up in a court case where (thankfully!) the perp was imprisoned for his actions.  Sheesh!  I tell ya, this emotional dysregulation thing is its own pandemic in our modern culture of today no kidding!

Stop! Relax! Think! Act!  So simple and yet we forget to do this whenever we are instantly offended by whatever we see, hear, or otherwise "experience" through our five senses.  Don't act first.  Stop, relax, and think first!  Then you can decide what the "best" course of action is without making matters worse.  And be sure to live by the edict:  "Check yourself, before you wreck yourself."  There is nothing worth getting yourself in a twist over when the "incident" is purely verbal in nature and you don't even know who you are tussling with verbally in the first place.  Just STAHP!

In the above example, with my friend in the truck, they called 911 immediately.  As would be true to do in any genuine emergency situation.  No time to stop relax and think before you act.  Yet for any other "non-emergency" situation, this is a very important skill to practice so as to make emotional regulation your own default status no matter what you experience directly or indirectly.

Breathing slower and more deeply is another skill we have to practice like it's our job.  When we can breathe in and out six or fewer times per minute...and then do that for at least 3-5 minutes, whatever high anxiety we feel will decrease down to about zero.  No kidding.  So you can practice Box breathing, Square breathing (as the Navy Seals are trained to do!) and as explained online....in your car, while you walk, while you ride a bike, no matter where you are or what you are doing, make breathing better a skill you can use to be and become more emotionally regulated!

I also suggest having your favorite "go to" responses memorized as you would your own name, address, and phone number.  I mentioned earlier in this post the "Are you o.k. right now?" response.  That's just one of several that really work to divert and distract an offender from continuing on with his/her/their brand of harsh judgment, false accusation, and/or other forms of bullying behavior.  Here's some of my personal favorites:

"Why do you need me to agree with you so badly?"

"From the way you are speaking to me right now, I need to remind you that I don't need your approval."

"When you talk to me like that, I have to wonder why you are so willing to use disrespect as a way of elevating yourself at my expense?"

"Are you speaking this loud because you are under the impression I can't hear, because I can...and now I'm going to give my ears a rest." (by leaving the area) :-P

"Your word salad speaks more to your anxiety about whatever it is than it does to logic and rational thought."

"Hearing you say that reminds me that denial is not just a river in Egypt."

"When you start telling me who I am, I need to remind you that I already know."

"I have to say for a person who keeps repeating yourself about who you are that's "good", maybe you want to consider demonstrating that quality to others more often."

"You know when you are most invested in being right, your arrogance and pride are showing just saying."

"It is clear you feel very passionately about this issue, so good for you!"

..and on and on we go!

These "responses" by the way, are typically between ourselves and people we do know rather than random strangers.

When you can practice saying what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean, but say it in the moment of the "thing" happening between you and that other person (offensive words or behaviors)...this is how you learn to become COMFORTABLE with this new, and more effective way, of regulating your own emotional landscape on a daily basis!  How about that?!

Don't misunderstand, emotional dysregulation is much easier for us to "do" without even thinking about it at all when we are "triggered" by circumstances, situations, and events that are negative in nature.  When we can, however, stop ourselves from doing the easy/wrong/harmful thing when we are tempted to---we have just empowered ourselves to move past the "junk" of this life without it piercing us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically speaking.  

Just this morning!  7:30AM at Meijer's!  Some random stranger started talking to me in the water aisle telling me that my purchase wasn't good for me and it's filled with chemicals AS IF he was my ???  (Nobody!)  Instead of the "old" me who would have immediately said "Buzz off Shrek!", I turned towards him, smiled, and said this:  "Well, if you haven't tried it, you certainly don't know what you're missing chemicals and all!"  And then I walked in the opposite direction away from him.  Score!  And I'll never see him again, and maybe he'll think twice before he starts yappin' at random women in Meijer's trying to be ???? whatever he believes he is!  :-P

And isn't that the whole point?  To be whole and to be free within ourselves without adding insult to injury by our own emotionally dysregulated actions.  I said what I needed to in the moment "it" occurred, and it was "done".  LOL

Until next post...

Mike Nichols and His Politics of Character...

Mike Nichols, when alive, was a very famous guy.  As the husband of long-time broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer, Nichols was no mere "Mr. Sawyer".  As one of 21 individuals in this life who have been awarded the highest industry awards for their work in television, music, film, and theatre, Nichols achieved EGOT status after having received his Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award during his illustrious career.  To give you a small glimpse of Nichols' talent, he was the most in-demand theatre director in the country going back to 1966.  He was nominated a total of 42 times for the Oscar, and won seven of them.  He directed or produced more than 25 Broadway plays.  The first film he was invited to direct was "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  If you have ever watched such films as "Barefoot in the Park", "The Graduate", "Silkwood", "Working Girl",and "Postcards from the Edge", you have seen Mike Nichols' work, just to name a handful.

So what does all of that have to do with today's blog post?  Well, Nichols was an interesting guy who had been interviewed hundreds of times about his take on relationship life.  One that intrigued me greatly had to do with his work in directing Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, which I often refer married couples to watch as homework.  In his interview about WAoVW, Nichols said that all marital relationship dynamics involve three things.  Here are the three things:  Seduction, (Self-Serving) Negotiations, and Fighting.  

I agree.  Which is a sad reality when you think about it.  Nichols' bigger point was that we are all so codependent as people in our marital relationship lives, that we have no other basis of understanding but to function as Men or Women on a mission hoping that we will get what we want (when we want it!) which results in our own desired "I Win!" outcome.  Any "I Win!" outcome translates to Win/Lose status (I won, and you lost!).  The additional resulting outcomes of self-serving negotations can also include Lose/Win or Lose/Lose.  (I lost, and you won!) and (I lost, and you lost also.).  This does not make for a happy marriage when these outcomes translate to you and your spouse feeling like you each "lost" more times than you would care to count over the course of your relationship.  And we wonder why the divorce rate keeps rising with each successive generation?  Hah!

No talk or discussion of course when we operate this way in our marital relationship about how to achieve Win/Win outcome status. (I won, and you won also!)  This is because no codependent person authentically knows how to successfully negotiate to the point of reaching mutually-satisfying compromises that lead to Win/Win status.  Win/Win means you get some of what you want...and I get some of what I want also.  In its way, pursing Win/Win outcome status is too difficult to for too many married couples who are most invested in being right instead of focusing on what's right.  We just want what we want when we want it, dammit---and we have been conditioned to operate this way by those who came before us and surround us now!  Self-serving negotiations is what comes most naturally to any of us;  we have been conditioned to treat each other like objects instead of as equals----we so conveniently forget about what "mutual respect" in all things even is---and we are dishonest instead of being truthful in all exchanges of information and care with one another.  No wonder our attempts at genuine "negotiations" based on equality, respect, and honesty go out the window!  No wonder we do not know or understand what genuine "Into-Me-You-See" intimacy is or feels like when we are experiencing it!  By the way, there are three forms of genuine intimacy for any couple:  Emotional, Spiritual, and Physical.  Emotional = honestly understanding each other's minds, Spiritual = honestly understanding each other's hearts, and Physical = honestly understanding each other's bodies.  We become and are too busy focused on self-serving outcomes than to even think about what a "Win/Win" outcome actually looks like with our chosen partner.

Seduction is a tool to get what we want from others.  With codependency, everybody treats each other including the way we treat ourselves, like objects.  So if you are not an attractive or appealing or entertaining enough object,  you're pretty much a sunk ship.  I have often used the analogy of identifying what "type" of person doesn't have to worry about being seduced in today's modern world when we put SO much emphasis on how we present physically (and within 7 seconds no less!) to others.  This is an unfortunate practice, because we do lose our humanity when we won't even engage with people who we immediately judge as being "beneath" our standards for seduction-worthy interaction(s).  Am I kidding?  No I am not.  

You let me know the next time a stranger approaches you wanting to get to know you better or asks you out....and this person doing the asking is (1) old, (2) ugly, (3) disabled, (4) too fat or too thin, (5) of a racial/ethnic profile currently most reviled by the majority of people in this country, and (6) is not well spoken in one's own personal opinion.  Notice I didn't even mention gender status or socio-economic status as revealed by clothing, hair, nails, makeup, "smell", etc.  Yep.  We decide constantly in our day to day life whether or not we view ourselves or ANYbody else as seduction worthy as if that's a good thing.  Believe me, it is not.  It feeds the beast of objectification of self and others which feeds right into the palm of the codependent relationship trap lifestyle.  Ultimately, someone ends up functioning as the all good "giver" in their chosen relationships--while the other falls into the trap of functioning more comfortably as a "taker".  Last time I checked "givers" put themselves in the one-down position rather than being viewed as truly "equal" to others---while "takers" are in a one-up position because their seduction skills were/are quite advanced.  If you have never thought of "seduction" in quite this way before, now is your time to consider how major a role it plays in "any" relationship which matters to us.

Fighting, as everyone knows, is how we get and go postal when our own emotions are dysregulated enough when we sense that our desired "Win!" outcome may actually not be happening.  Some people will never "lose it" emotionally in front of their adult children, but have no problem getting hoarse from arguing with our spouse over money, sex, children, and religion.  Who we fight with and when is our own choice.  Fighting, by the way, never works to genuinely solve, resolve, and/or dissolve anyone's real life and right now actual problem(s) and/or challenge(s).  Fighting is just a way to distract oneself from truly understanding each other regarding the issue under discussion---while at the same time getting our bodies all jacked up physiologically with "fight" hormones as if we are battling for our very lives.  This is pure silliness.  Fighting achieves no useful purpose except to create and maintain one's own status as either a "bully" or a "victim" (or both!) depending on the situation which led to the drama/fighting between you.  

It's the Negotations part of Nichols' take on human relationship dynamics that is most interesting to me.  When we negotiate at work, we don't use seduction or fighting as tools to get what we want.  I should say, at least that is the way it used to be in corporate American back when everyone shared the same values and standards for doing "honest" business with one another as equals with mutual respect!  Now a days, seduction and drama/fighting/violence have become their own online industries borne out of a pandemic that sucked out the souls of many a bored and isolated "influencer/star" and/or "subscriber".   

Negotiation based on equality and mutual respect relies on the objective facts of any given situation to help the other person(s) best understand your point of view and vice versa.  If you don't know how to present the facts that bring clarity about your point of view into the negotiation process, nobody is going to get anywhere good to satisfy both parties.  The whole point of successful negotations is to come up with mutually-satisfying and beneficial compromises that work for all involved. If you can't do that, or if the other person can't do that...you two aren't going to get anywhere productive or positive.  You'll end up with everything BUT the Win/Win outcome that represents the desired end result of a successful negotation and compromise between any two people...

If you haven't watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, I recommend it highly to every couple struggling with these issues.  You will see the Seductions and the Fighting on blast;  you will see very little genuine negotiations, let alone successful ones resulting in Win/Win outcomes.  And you'll see a lot of game playing involving people who, tragically, represent innocent bystanders to the chaos of one specific husband and wife duo.  The movie serves as a template of what couples can fall into over time that basically ruins them individually---and as a couple.  In way too many cases, making a bad habit out of Seduction, Self-Serving Negotiations, and Fighting in the way Nichols presents it is a sure way to end up miserable and alone in the end without any clue as to how one got there....

Until next post....