Autoreactivity

Imagine for a moment, you've traveled up north for a family reunion. As you mingle with distant relatives you haven't seen in years, you're on your best behavior. Interactions are warm and polite. There may be awkwardness, annoyances, or differences in politics, but everyone keeps the conversation cordial. But it's a different story on the 3 hour car ride home with your partner of many years. Each of you can trigger the other into irritation or anger with the slightest thing. Perhaps their tendency to switch the radio station frequently or a habit of singing loudly and off key. In our closest and dearest relationships our patience dwindles, our reactivity heightens, and our worse behaviors come out. When our sibling or best friend pushes the wrong button, whether intentionally or not, we often react without thinking. We become defensive, impatient, or angry, and snarl back with a curt remark or a fuming email. And it can happen so fast it doesn't even feel like there was a millisecond to consider our reaction. Perhaps they'll forgive us, but if we keep this us, we risk damaging the relationship. Through mindfulness, in essence, we're training the brain to be less reactive. We're learning to become aware of our emotional responses and then to regulate them. So when we're triggered and about to react, there is an opportunity to tap into our practice. We can slow our breath, calm our simmering emotions, and find a more peaceful state from which to respond. As Ariana Huppington said, "We have little power to choose what happens, but we have complete power over how we respond." At first we might create only a sliver of a space between our trigger and our reaction, but over time this sliver becomes a crack, and then and inch, and then a space wide enough to stand. And from this space our response is calm, thoughtful, and wise. 

I've been avoiding writing. I've been avoiding thinking and feeling and grieving and growing. I've been avoiding holding myself accountable. I have been a listening ear, a coach, a support, to those around me, and I have been avoiding taking care of myself. It has been a relapse of sorts, but more so a surrender into my current state of depression. I have so many options ahead of me, and breaking free of my codependency means having to make those decisions for myself. It's a little daunting to be back in this space again, but I feel more comfortable this time around. More aware. More accepting. Its time to refocus on responding to my life from a place of calm. Releasing the chaos and negative autoreactivity...