Here’s a good one for you. What happens when you are unexpectedly attacked, either verbally or emotionally? As adults, we aren’t prepared for someone to insult, shame, humiliate or scorn us. At least, I hope it isn’t something common in your personal or professional world.
It seems we immediately go to our own auto response. For some that would be to cower, others attack back, perhaps make a joke (but it’s not really a joke, right?), get defensive or cynical. But are any of these the best version of yourself? The key is discovering your auto response BEFORE something like that happens.
Last week I was sitting aboard an airplane waiting to take off when the flight attendant decided to take my backpack out of the overhead and hand it to me in order to accommodate another man’s large suitcase who was late. She said to put it under my seat. I asked if there wasn’t room somewhere else, she said no. I immediately saw that there was a few rows ahead and got up and put it in that bin. Little did I know the flight attendant was going to take it personally, I suppose as a threat to her authority and demanded that I take it back and put it under my seat. I had already asked the person sitting on the aisle to allow me to get past and really didn’t see the point, but she got stinky with me and then huffed away as I stayed in my seat. I then heard people behind me whispering, that I should have done what she said? I couldn’t tell. All I can tell you is my auto response went into overdrive.
I immediately felt defensive (and then a bit paranoid) and wanted to tell her how small these airplane seats were, how my knees were already hitting the seat in front of me, how I had 24 hours of traveling to go and didn’t want to start it in cramped quarters. How I had arrived in time, had planned ahead, didn’t have a monstrosity of a suitcase to carry on, and so on. Defend, defend.
That’s the nature of Attack. Defend. Attack. Defend. It never ends if you play that game. The thing was, I was doing it on automatic!! But as I sat there (of course, I got no drink or pretzels, thank you, or eye contact the rest of the flight) I realized the woman must be very stressed. Who knows how many legs the crew had already flown, how many difficult customers, how tired she was? Did I remind her of someone she had challenges with? Did my purple backpack remind her of something? Freedom versus a job she didn’t relish? Who knows?
Bottom line, I was not my best self as I sifted through my mental list of defenses. What could I have said or done to defuse the defensiveness I was feeling? I wasn’t sorry for moving my bag. I wasn’t sorry for disobeying her. But I was sorry that she had taken my action so personally. I had not intended that. Clearly it bothered her the entire 2 hours since she avoided me or glared at me. Could I have diffused the attack by putting my hand on her arm to say, I am sorry, I understand. Life has rough days. I mean no disrespect. Without defending my action, could I have been empathetic with her? Seen her ire and not fueled it?
It gave me plenty to do for the next hours worth of flying, to understand the nature of my auto response and plan to write over it with something more compassionate and empathetic.
What about you? Do you have a sense of your auto response and is it time to write a new program there? At home or in the work place, being your best self makes a huge difference~ to those who deal with you, but mostly to your self(respect)!
