Jo Ellen Grzyb and Robin Chandler The Nice Factor, the Art of Saying No

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If you try to change your behaviour without acknowledging thatthese powerful feelings exist and affect you, you won t be able to do it.It s like a moth fluttering against a windowpane it can t see.You mightlearn all manner of techniques and skills to use in the face of bullyingor emotional blackmail, but if you use them on top of unacknowledgedfeelings, they are unlikely to work well for you and soon you will slipright back into your old behaviour patterns.Since it s your reactions that are really running the show not yourfeelings, techniques are worthless if you haven t done sufficient workon sorting out the difference between a feeling and a reaction!Start with the feelings as a place to gather information about whatis going on for you.They are a clear signal that something isn t right.Ifyour reactions stay the same as they ve always been, then they ll justperpetuate the same sense of victimisation and powerlessness.Yourreactions come out of your historical responses to similar situations,your expectation of what always happens to you and your fears thatnothing will ever change.Most people believe that their reactions are more real than the feel-ings themselves.Your reactions do not tell you what is happening; yourfeelings do.Start with the feeling, not the reaction.Then you can playwith how you decide you re going to react this time.You can begin to look at this straight away, the next time you are putin an emotionally compromising situation.When you find yourselfbeing too nice yet again and are beginning to react, see if you can stayconscious long enough to notice your body reactions.One of the firstplaces to look is at your breathing.It is impossible to have a strong phys-ical reaction to something without your breathing being affected.Next, notice your heartbeat.Undoubtedly it will be accelerated asyour body reacts to the stress.Then notice any other physical manifes-tations, such as sweating palms or trembling legs.92 | The Nice FactorThe more often you observe and note your physical state, the moreclearly you will be able to identify the feelings that accompany it.Areyou angry, hurt, frustrated, fearful? Take time to identify the exact feel-ings put a name to them.The longer your attention is on what you are feeling, the more timeyou will have before you react to those feelings.In this way you giveyourself more time to choose how you are going to react.This will makemore sense when you get to Part 2 where we look at some of the prac-tical things that you can do to create more choice in your life.Rightnow, you will feel that the way you currently react is the only way avail-able to you.Since your body is doing its very best to prepare you for fight orflight, what if you looked upon all these feelings as good things to haveinstead of thinking of them as betrayers of your self-control? What if allthese powerful feelings were telling you that you were in the right timeand place to try something new?With practice you can even begin to be on the lookout for feelings,rather than trying to hide from them.This means that when the feel-ings arise you know you now have a choice to make the feelings arealerting you to the opportunity to choose differently.You can begin tolook on feelings as allies; they can help you be more in charge of diffi-cult situations instead of being a burden and an embarrassment.4Not Nice/Not Nasty:Entering The Middle GroundNastyWe ve spent the last three chapters looking at the nice you: exactly hownice you are, how you got that way and how your feelings of fear andanxiety keep you from changing.But what about the other side of the spectrum? What about the nasty you? This side of your personality doesn t get much of a look-inmost of the time.This is the part of yourself you may be ashamed ofbecause when it does get let out it seems out of your control.Nasty is what happens to you when you are nice and compliant forfar longer than you really want to be until you are no longer able tohold your resentment in.You lose control nastily and inappropriatelyall over whoever happens to be around.This is the part of you that every once in a while simply goes on anemotional rampage, often for the most trivial of reasons.It is fed everytime you give in to what other people want, and you resent this.Youget bullied at work or by your partners or parents, and you resent it.You say yes when you mean no, and you resent it.You make things allright for everyone but yourself, and when your storehouse of resent-ment and anger has been fed beyond its capacity, the nasty you puts inan unplanned appearance.Sometimes the rage only happens inside your head and remainsunexpressed, while you seethe and boil internally.Other times the mild-mannered you becomes, however briefly, a raving lunatic as youexpress your anger in the most inappropriate places and in the most94 | The Nice Factorinappropriate ways.You go completely out of control.You lose it , gointo a blind rage , see red ; fly off the handle ; blow your top or what-ever apt description you can find to describe what happens to you.Anger is one of the most natural and useful emotions we have.Asdiscussed in Chapter 2, infants express their anger usually throughcrying in order to get their needs and wants seen to.Anger as a toolof communication is preverbal.Like fear, it is a basic, instinctive feelingthat alerts you when a boundary has been crossed or tells you thatsomething isn t right.Anger is a way of letting other people know that you re not happywith something they ve said or something they ve done.If we areoffended, indignant, provoked, infuriated, hurt or frustrated, anger is anatural and necessary response to these emotions.The expression of anger does not mean hitting someone, it does notmean smashing plates against the wall, it does not mean having ascreaming fit at someone: only suppressed anger is usually expressedthat way.Anger, expressed when it occurs, and in a relevant way, cansimply be letting the other person know how hurt, upset, frustrated etcyou really are.Yes, there are times when a good old shout is a great release; andsometimes, as well, we get angry at intangible things like politics or theweather and we need to let off steam about those.We get angry at globalcrises that we seem to have no control over, such as endless battles inBosnia and Iraq, the massacres in Rwanda, cancer, AIDS or the destruc-tion of the rainforest [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Linki