Inside-Out

Ever watch the movie Inside Out?  It is so good!  I particularly love how the movie beautifully illustrates the concept of “getting triggered”.  We get triggered when someone or something “triggers” an old insecurity, emotion, fear or what have you.  Once triggered we often over-react to the triggering stimuli AS IF it were connected to the old memory.  This usually results in whoever we are in the experience with getting very confused (or worse) by our reaction.  

It can really complicate conflict resolution.  I listened as a couple described a repetitive triggering event in their marriage.  Everyone was A-OK with the idea that the issue was not the issue.  But when the husband “triggered” the wife, her response was so over the top that he was starting to get twitchy.  He was backing up rather than leaning into the relationship.

She felt judged by his response.  Until the day he said this, “I feel like I keep getting beat up for the ghosts of your past and I have decided that it is not just hurtful but destructive and unfair.”  Ghosts.  The image worked for her.  She was living in a dream and fighting against shadowy ghosts but hitting her flesh and blood beloved in the process.  

To work through this both spouses had to take responsibility for their side of the street.  It was hard but they found some fun ways to hold each accountable for reactions that were making the situation more difficult than necessary.  It took a while but today she has coping strategies in place to manage her triggered moments and he has new skills in place for addressing times when his wife trips over one of those traumatic memory wires.  

Whatever side of the equation we are on - triggered or triggering - we can work on improving our response!

Winners and Losers

I appreciate winning as much or more than anyone I know.  I am particularly competitive in the arena of board games.  Who doesn’t love being a winner?  So when I began to study conflict resolution, I frankly was looking for material to teach me how to win at conflict.  Those books are out there and are readily available for our competitive consumption.

However, I found far more compelling literature that ultimately shook my preconceived notion that winning was the best game in town.  I have decades of experience at playing to win.  I was not easily convinced that winning is not everything.  What I learned is that I’m not even sure it is a thing at all.  It depends on our viewpoint.

It is no secret that I both love to win and have never won a set of tennis playing against my husband.  I’ve written reams of material on all the humbling lessons I have learned standing across the court from him for almost 50 years of tennis playing and losing set after set after set.  But that perspective is ONLY one that I can find on the scoreboard.  It doesn’t tell the whole story; it doesn’t even address the most important point of the story!

See, I may lose at tennis, but together Pete and I win at life when we enjoy going out and playing tennis, especially since we figured out how to more accurately measure success.
Tennis is something we have done together since we were kids; how many people are still in relationship with the same person they first learned how to play tennis with using a wooden racket?  

Together, we have literally grown up on the tennis court.  In terms of years, that’s a fact.  But it is also true when we consider our maturity and even our capacity to live in the moment.  If tennis was once a way we competed for points and got in our cardio exercise, it has morphed into sacred space.  We do not take for granted that we will have decades MORE to go out on a warm summer night, turn on the lights and push the ball through the air with a sturdy wallop of our racket.  We know what it is like to be side-lined by a shoulder injury.  We are aware that several of our friends are no longer healthy enough to stand out in 90 degree heat and run from one corner of the baseline to another as if the point really mattered.  No longer bothered with the burden of having something to prove, life has become far more enjoyable on many fronts.  I suggest that for today - consider what competitions you can set aside so that you can experience a bit more sacred space.

My way or the highway

Last night I was teaching a class on conflict management and asked the group about their super powers.  In particular, I wanted to know what unique super power each of them possessed that they could abuse in such a way as to reduce their connection with other people.

I got crickets. After a couple of minutes of silence, my husband chimed in and volunteered to share MY super power.  Seriously.  According to my husband, my superpower is my tendency to perhaps, just maybe, exaggerate the danger of a situation to such ridiculous heights that the possibility that there is any danger present AT ALL is missed. He is right.  It is my superpower.  After he gets out of the dog house for talking about my power rather than his, I might tell him so!  Evidently...this super power can be a lot to live with!  For years my husband traveled weekly for his job, usually flying.  I rarely flew on a commercial airline and when we fly together, I make his experience a living hell...according to him.

It begins days before we travel.  I write all our children love notes, just in case I never see them again and dispatch these off in early morning emails on the day of the flight.  I insist that Pete and I consider our footwear carefully in case we need to exit the plane in haste with the cockpit on fire.  (Who wants to burn the bottoms of their feet?)  When we select our seats, we need to be within two rows of an exit to give us our best survival rate.  No window seats for us, what if the window broke in mid-flight? (Who is laughing now? Google Southwest Airlines.)  I would get really irritated if he didn’t read the inflight instructions and watch the instructions given by the steward.  For a man accustomed to calm travel every week, this is overkill.

Here is what a healthier me can do.  I can make the same choices for me and stop managing my anxiety by controlling his perspective.  We will be flying this weekend!  Wish me luck!

P.S.  Update:  without prompting, my husband, knowing my flying fears, paid EXTRA for us to sit in an exit row.  Some cynical types may think the guys was going for extra leg room; I choose to believe he did it because he loves me and thinks I am cute.

Violating boundaries

I love thinking about boundaries.  The more I study them, the more ways I find that I have violated my own or another’s boundary.  Lately I’ve been considering how boundary violations make it more difficult to deal with conflict.  Obviously, boundary violations result in someone losing their sense of safety.  Conflict is neither resolved nor managed when safety is compromised for any one person in the disagreement.  Here are a few ways I have been rethinking the applications of boundaries during a conflict.  Boundary violations include:

1. Assuming that we know what others think, feel or why they do
2. Trying to solve other people’s problems
3. Asking other people to solve our problems

I am amazed at how certain I can be about what someone else’s motives are AND how often I am completely off-base.  It’s incredible to me how many times I have sought to help someone solve a problem that they did not believe they had.  But what flabbergasts me about myself the most is the number of times over the years, in both small and large ways, I have asked someone else to solve a problem that was my responsibility to tackle.  This doesn’t mean that we are all alone and without resources; this doesn’t mean we are never given the opportunity to provide our opinion on a subject. We can invite people to help us, we can offer help to others, we can ask for and/or ask to give feedback, but none of this is ok without permission.  And none of it gives us the right to expect others to follow our advice OR requires us to follow the advice given us.

Today, think about boundaries in terms of how our misuse of them can exacerbate conflict and how being sensitive to what is ours to do can free us up to work on ourselves (or play tennis)!

What are your dreams for yourself?

My friend, who is obsessed with her daughter’s success, is in trouble with her daughter and doesn’t know it - yet.  She is unwittingly teaching her kid things that I do not actually think are true.  For instance, my friend wants her daughter to get into the business school at UVA and come out a shark.  She dreams of the days when her kid can work really really hard and make a ton of money and then retire at 40 (it’s the new 30 after all).  

But what her daughter explains to ME is that she dreams of becoming a guidance counselor and working in an at-risk school.  She wants to make a difference in the world by leaving a small footprint (i.e., a minimalist lifestyle) and focusing on relationships not achievement OR material possessions.  My friend’s daughter is sad that her mother does not “get her” and I am concerned that this conflict may lead to not only a relationship schism but an array of mutual misunderstandings.

Of course, there’s another side to this story.  This mom got pregnant with this child when we were in high school.  My friend who is brilliant and capable and filled with drive and ambition chose to become a single mom rather than accept the invitation to go to her dream college (too far from family support).  She chose to ditch her dream of going to medical school (too hard without a husband to help raise her daughter).  Does she resent this?  She says not.  But she is acutely aware of feeling under-educated and she mourns the loss of her own unrealized goals. 

Lately I’ve been pitching the idea that mom consider going back to school and studying anything that makes her heart sing.  She is coming around to giving it some thought.  All I know is that these two lovely women really love each other and I have a feeling they will work this out.