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A question that I often hear in my work is how can I be less reactive? This concern will usually come up in relationship, since the way we try to see and understand ourselves is when we interact with others. Think about all of the people in your life as small mirrors that you interact with and you get to see and experience a version or part of yourself. When we interact with someone else, these different parts of ourselves are triggered and sometimes we do not feel that we have any choice of which part or parts comes through. Without a feeling of choice, we label the emotions and reactions as automatic and ‘who we are.’
Reactivity often leads to blame outside of ourselves and we are looking towards that other person for causing the emotions, when in reality, it is our own experiences and patterns that are coming to the surface. In our Western culture, emotions are often labeled as irrational and thoughts are highly valued as there is a suggestion that they are more grounded and coming from a less reactionary space.
To begin to address your reactivity, it is best to start with identifying your emotions. When you are triggered by something negative, ask yourself what am I feeling right now? How am I experiencing it in my body? It is important to use feeling words rather than thoughts and to identify which part of your body has a sensation and use adjectives to describe those sensations.
Many of us do not spend a lot of time in our bodies to assist with identifying how we feel and rely too much on our thoughts. Notice when someone asks you how you are feeling, do you attend to how your body feels? Do you respond with an emotion or a thought?
Once you are able to identify and express the emotions you are experiencing, the next step is to continue to develop skills to regulate the physical sensations that arise. These sensations may be a faster heart rate, sweating, tightness, or a flight, fight, or freeze response, etc. How we regulate our emotions stems from how we were soothed when we were young and how we have continued to co-regulate with others.
These two skills when practiced together will enable you to start to create a space where you will feel that you have choice in how you respond, which may produce feelings of being free from reactivity.
