While growing up, almost all of us on one level or another have inherited some negative traits from our parents and authority figures. Perhaps we have a tendency to be stubborn and dig our heels in when frustrated. Perhaps we lose our tempers and yell at the people closest to us when we become overwhelmed. Maybe we badmouth people when we get angry or even act out physically by throwing things.
It’s an unfortunate fact that many of the traits we disliked in our parents are the same ones we display when we’re under stress. These traits don’t mean we’re bad people, they are things we’ve internalized during our lives and may resort to when under pressure. Some of the actions we take are counter-productive and may harm us, our families, and our careers.
Passing Down Dysfunction
For example: If you had a father who was quick to anger and said mean, hurtful things to you, it’s possible you may have internalized some of that anger and are quick to lash out at people yourself. You may not always lash out in a mean way, but it’s there in the background because it’s how you saw adults dealing with frustration when you were young. The sad truth is that many hurtful situations that occur in families happen because the person who is lashing out was at one time a victim of the same actions. That’s why it’s so important for parents to understand their own triggers and what causes them to become reactive, so they don’t resort to behaviors that are not the choices they want to make.
The difference between reacting and choosing your behavior is a relatively simple distinction. Reactions are powerful emotional responses that can take over and cause you to behave in ways you may later regret. Choices are when you’ve had the time to consider your options and then move forward thoughtfully. When people are in their reactive state, they tend to make snap decisions that often don’t resolve the situation and can even make it worse. When reasoned choices are made, people tend to have less regret because they’ve explored a number of options.
Acting on Your Triggers Can Do More Harm Than Good
Making choices that benefit us rather than harm us is in all of our best interests. The problem is that when we become triggered, we often escalate the situation before we’re even aware that we’re being controlled by our emotions. These triggers can be extremely powerful when activated. This is why we often don’t realize we’re in a reactive state until we’ve already done the damage. When we get upset, we often get scared, and, to feel safer, we try to grab control of the situation as quickly and forcefully as possible. We may feel at risk; we may feel we’re not heard or respected; or we may feel people are not taking us seriously. This can cause us to react in ways that ultimately come out of our emotions and not our logic.
Often, our feelings of not being heard or respected come from our own childhoods. If you think back to when you were young, you may recall times when a parent or an authority figure lashed out at you because of their frustrations. Perhaps you did something to upset them, or perhaps they were just angry and took it out on you. Either way, this type of lashing out from an adult to a child can cause upset and trauma. The point here is that you don’t want to pass that down to your own children.
To avoid doing this, it’s important to understand how overwhelming emotions can be and how they push us toward taking immediate action! Emotions want us to handle the situation right now! We then raise our voices and often make declarations out of anger instead of logic. We escalate situations by raising our voices, trying to grab control, and lashing out in anger. This rarely leads to a positive outcome.
Noticing Emotional Escalation
To try and mitigate this knee-jerk reactiveness, we can work on noticing what happens to us when we start to become escalated emotionally. Are we raising our voice? Are we more interested in making our point than listening? Is winning the argument more important than whether we have a valid point to make? These can be clues to see if we are open to a discussion or just want to win the argument and get our way. The more time we take to consider not only our view, but the view of the person we’re talking to, the more likely we will make a reasoned choice rather than just an emotional reaction.
Controlling our reactivity is not easy to put into practice. When our emotions are activated, they think they speak for us and don’t feel they have to consider anything other than what they want at the moment. Unfortunately, when we allow our emotions to run rampant and lash out at others, including our kids, it can lead to hurt feelings and potential trauma that can last for years. As caring parents, we want to set good examples for our children. Being able to recognize our emotional reactivity and not allow it to completely control our actions is one of the best ways to help our kids see there’s a way to listen to our emotions without being controlled by them.
