Your Empowered Story: Staying Centered Amidst Another’s Upset

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about mastery, and what it takes to become fully differentiated, fully self-soothed, fully capable of resting in the presence of another’s upset, fully able to stand on one’s own two feet in the midst of any storm.

Time and again, with clients, friends, and in myself, I find our struggles come down to this simple distinction I learned early on in peer counseling: “Me. Not me.” And the subsequent question of how on earth to remember “Me” in the face of “You.”

Yet what often keeps us tangled, and re-entangled, and tangled yet again in our Me/You messiness is not that you are truly stepping on my foot (although true stepping/hurting/abusing certainly *does* happen), but that You remind me of some thought inside of Me.

Thus, as far as I try to push you away, no matter how I disown and cut cords and clear throat and sacral chakras that are pissed in their various colors of light at you, you ultimately said or did something that reminds me of a thought inside of me that I can’t get away from.

It’s this thought inside of me that I can’t escape, not you.

This is where the beauty of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) comes in. NVC invites us to remember that our emotions are the product of our needs and of our thinking, not the other person’s actions.

To illustrate, one of my own frequent mental flyers in this life has been shame, and so for many years, anytime anyone close to me expressed upset, and especially if they had the slightest bit of point in any of their fingers in my direction, there was a little voice inside of me that said, “You deserve to be punished.”

And it was this voice — this little, quiet, deep-down-in-the-cave voice — that held the reigns to my happiness. For when the other person was upset, it had to have been my fault. And when they blamed me, I had to have been responsible for their feelings.

The real challenge was not between me and them, but between my desire for love and my internal belief that I deserved to be punished.

Most of us struggle with these beliefs in various forms and configurations. Our story may be that we are bad, or unworthy, or defective… that we are inherently alone and punishable — and usually arises from an early-life experience from long ago, in which we didn’t have an ally to help us translate what was going on in coherent, life-serving terms.

As adults, when our old beliefs arise, many of us don’t talk about them. We may not even notice them, even as they writhe under the surface.

Instead, we get defensive. We point our finger back at the other person. “You’re making me feel guilty!” or “I wouldn’t have done X if you hand’t done Y!” we say. Because our own beliefs have us feeling so disempowered, we attempt to reclaim our power by blaming the other person in return.

Freedom comes in recognizing these voices in the quiet. The voices in us that collude with others’ upset. That find evidence for our wrongness, stupidity, and worthlessness in all things and all situations.

Freedom comes in saying, “I see you, Little Voice. I hear you, Ancient Thought. Thank you for trying to help me, and I’m going to try something else now.”

That something else is your Empowered Story. It’s the one that counters the decades-old narrative of your defectiveness, and reflects to you your true nature.

Your Empowered Story might sound like, “You are here to be cherished.” Or, “You are deeply loved.” Or, “You are naturally brilliant.” Or, “You can trust your knowing.”

You’ll know when you find your Empowered Story, because it’ll likely bring a sigh to your chest, a flutter to your lips, a natural slowing and settling of your incessant worry-thinking.

Putting this all together, here's a practice for when you’ve gotten "hooked" in the Me/You tangle.

1) Notice you’re triggered

2) Stop and take 3 big ol’ breaths (even if it means dismissing yourself to go to the restroom, going to walk the dog, etc.)

3) Humbly ask: “What ancient story am I believing about myself that this other person’s words/actions remind me of?”

4) Humbly open: “What might my Empowered Story sound like?”

So often, part of what we criticize ourselves for is our lack of openness to the other. We *should* be more compassionate, more loving, more good-hearted, yadda yadda.

The irony – and the greatest intelligence of this universe – of course, is that it’s in opening to ourselves that we open – naturally, without forcing – to the other. And it’s our Empowered Story that can help us do just that.

When you can stand in your renewed and reclaimed truth of your cherishability, when you know this to be true in your bones, in your breath, in your tender eyes looking out at the other, so often, the “enemy” vanishes. The threat disappears. Because the threat, once again, was never really out there to begin with, but inside, just awaiting your gentle mercy.

So peace to you, even amidst the shock and turmoil and roaring chaos of withstanding another’s upset. May you dare to be your own loving ally — in service of your sanity, and theirs.