There’s always a reason why you react the way you do but you don’t have to do anything about that reaction

I was at the Post Office the other day, sending a package to one of my good friends, a late birthday present. Because the only birthdays I remember are people I knew before the end of my teens. If I knew you then, I’ll still remember your birthday now even though we may not have spoken in decades, but even if you’re one of my closest friends for the past 15 years, all I know is its the start of January and I’ll always send my present late. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

Anyway, at the PO with this big package and I put it on the scale as requested. Then the man behind the counter beckons me to hand it through the window, never speaking to me whilst this is occurring, then he says ‘What’s in it?’

There is nothing, I mean NOTHING that gets my back up quicker than someone overstepping their official boundaries.

‘Nothing you need to be concerned about,’ I say nonchalantly. With a winning smile – or so I thought!

‘What’s it in?’

My response, which happens in microseconds is firstly to tell him to eff off, its none of his business, to visualising me walking out burning with anger, package under my arm because he refuses to process it.

I look him in the eye and say, ‘None of the item that are proscribed,’

Boom!

He is of course, taken aback. He’s so used to bullying people in his little job behind the counter where he is God in his own mind that he cannot compute the idea that I just gave the answer that means he has no further way to demand what’s inside my package.

‘You have a list of the proscribed items, you checked it?’

‘Sure, indeed, absolutely!’

And I get my receipt and walk out, calm, unruffled and in control of myself.

I did not lose my power, I did not lose my cool, and I did not give that asshole any information he was not entitled to from me.

And then I did a little dance in the car park before getting into the car and driving away like an outlaw.

Its a little thing but its huge to me. Because I am always triggered by situations when I am made to feel powerless in the face of a man acting like a bully. Childhood trauma, of course, always repeating the pattern of behaviour and getting into trouble for it for years. I’ve gotten fines, speeding tickets, assaulted: men do not like it when we mouth off and my reaction as an adult was always to mouth off.

Because as a child I was totally powerless and had to accept whatever was said to me, whatever punishment was meted out no matter how unfair.

But this week, I processed that need to mouth off in microseconds and then proceeded to say what needed to be said without losing myself in anger and rage, not against the PO asshat but all the other layers and layers of it that had built up over the years. This is why we over react to little things, we are not reacting to that one thing but ALL the things like it we’ve put up with over the years.

And now, I don’t have that need to react because I’ve processed and released so much of those old feelings of righteous indignation, powerlessness, rage and anger.

I react, here and now to what is happening in front of me and not to what happened when I was a child.

And so, I am able to match my wits with the counter bully and dismiss his nonsense.

This is what doing the work is about. Releasing yourself from the old patterns of behaviour that just hurt you even more.

I was talking to a group of teens about trauma the other day and we discussed the need to stop repeating the injuries in our head because we then are the ones hurting ourselves. Every time we repeat something in our head, we fire our nervous system up as though it is happening to us again in that moment.

We must learn strategies to release emotional attachments to painful situations. Stop having that breakup conversation over and over again in your head. Stop reliving that fight with your friends/parents/teachers/whomever.

Soul journey work and meditation, journaling and being in nature, quieting your mind and allowing yourself to see the monkey mind as thoughts happening rather than a representation of who you are.

I always knew my pattern of reaction to bullying. This is the first time I didn’t react like a child being unfairly punished because before, I would have started a row with that guy in the post office rather than tell him what was in my package. I would have taken my parcel back and gone somewhere else, no matter the inconvenience.

Some might say I’m simply growing iup.

I say I’m simply growing. Becoming aware of who I am, what made me and how I want to be now.

That is totally worth the work involved because I have not had to relive arguments and fights in my head in years. And that feels good.

So did calmly putting that PO cashier in his place. I’m not above a little smugness yet.

Spot your patterns of reactivity, see where your buttons get pushed and then decide if you want to let other people control you like that.

I don’t. I want to be in control of myself, not anyone else who doesn’t have my best interests at heart.

Oh and it’s Wednesday. The day before we all meet for Be Your Own Light House.

Join us, this internal work will move you through healing and releasing old stuff faster than anything else I know.

Here’s the details, you’re all welcome.

Love,

Cynthia xx