When you know this will be your last time.
- Frustration when someone behaves in a way we don’t like.
- Fear and hurt we feel when we’re criticized.
- Self-doubt when we don’t do as well as we’d like at something (procrastination, for example).
This initial feeling of fear, uncertainty or frustration isn’t necessarily a problem … it’s just a feeling. It’s an initial tug at our hearts.
The real difficulty comes not from this initial tug or poke at the heart … it comes from what happens afterward:
- We feel the tug or poke at our heart, and then we go into a defense mechanism of spinning one of our usual narratives.
- The narrative might be about why the other person is wrong, why you are wrong, and how much of a huge deal this is.
- This continues in a growing blaze until we’re in full-on disaster mode — we’ve gone from a tiny spark to full forest fire.
- Then we might have other things we do to cope with this disaster — yelling, throwing a tantrum, shutting down, hiding, comforting ourselves with food or web browsing or drugs or whatever your usual go-to coping mechanism is, or going into a depressive funk.
Even this is not that big of a deal. It’s just a passing storm. We don’t need to beat ourselves up if this is happening — in fact, what is needed is more love.