Sometimes You're Not At Your Best, and Yes It's Because of Them, But Also It's Because of You

And You Can Do Something About It

In a recent Julie’s Pod Coffee Hangout, we discussed the types of interactions that leave us feeling not like ourselves (the technical term for that is ‘emotionally unregulated.’) This is a summary of that conversation (with identities protected) offered in the hope that what we discussed might be of service to YOU, and with gratitude to those who shared.

Before we dive in, I want you to know that: 1) it’s normal for certain scenarios and even specific people to throw you off kilter, and from my personal journey I can share with you that 2) it’s worth doing some deep introspective thinking about what’s going on so that you can get in front of it next time and maybe avoid the situation in the future, prevent those feelings from happening when you’re in the situation, or resolve those feelings more quickly within you when they do arise.

Folks Said, “I’m Not At My Best When…”

• … I’m with my good friend, who always turns life into a ‘competitive sport,’ meaning she shares what’s great in her life and asks me things about my kids and our family more generally, and we end up getting into a dynamic of trying to one-up each other in discussing our kids’ outcomes and achievements. I start playing into it and my body starts to feel discomfort. It’s like my body knows it’s bad but I’m caught up doing it anyway.

• … I’m with my parents and my brother, because in our culture boys are valued over girls, so when we’re all together my parents put my brother on a pedestal. I feel erased as if I’m not there, forgotten, unworthy, not respected, and ignored. I then don’t feel like myself and get easily agitated when I’m around them.

• … I’m being vulnerable with a friend, and instead of them letting me share and just supporting me, my friend tells me it’s all going to work out or they try to solve what they perceive as my problem. I feel that in opening up and being vulnerable with them I’ve offered them a sacred trust inherent in the vulnerability, but instead I feel exposed.

• … I’m around people who don’t seem to want to learn and grow and instead are stubborn, stuck in their ways, and who seem uninterested in getting out of the tunnel they’re in. I feel really frustrated in these situations because I’m not done learning, and being around them makes me feel stuck.

• … I’m with passive-aggressive people, meaning people who don’t come out and say what they actually think yet try to get at it in a roundabout way. I get annoyed. Because I like aggressive-aggressive conversation, meaning, we’re friends, so just come out with it, and let’s both just be frank around one another.

• … I’m at work and my boss “back leads” me, meaning they give me an assignment and only after I’ve completed it do I find out how they wanted it to be done in the first place. It makes me feel unprepared, and I feel like I look stupid. And then I get angry and I almost want to put up my fists and fight.

• … I’m having my mom over for dinner. My body feels very agitated when she is at our place. She talks constantly and I feel like I’m just waiting for her to say something that is going to upset me. The last time she was here, I turned to my husband and said, “Open the wine NOW” because I just needed some relief and I also felt stress because I didn’t want her to know how stressed I was.

Advice From Me and the Group In Response to What Was Shared:

• Our bodies will tell us we’re uncomfortable before our mind can label what we’re feeling or what caused the discomfort. You can get better at paying attention to these clues, get better at noticing what happened right before your body reacted, and get better at naming these feelings and telling yourself that these feelings are valid. This is how you help feelings move through you rather than staying stuck in you. When we’re willing to notice and interrogate and process, we can have big breakthroughs.

  • For example: in our coffee hangout session, one person shared that she always strives to have a joyful and patient presence. But that she’d just gone for a walk where she simply didn’t feel like herself and couldn’t figure out why. She said she even got stung by bees! It was all bewildering to her. In talking this through aloud with us, in remembering her walk and how she felt, she then realized that her therapist of many years, whom she adores, is going on a lengthy sabbatical, and she won’t be able to talk with him for a very long time. It was such an epiphany. She’d thought being off had something to do with the walk and the bees. But we all got pretty clear that the anticipated loss of her time with her regular therapist is probably at the heart of her discomfort, and it’s valid, and it’s worth processing.

  • Here are some methods for re-regulating yourself offered by my friend Allie:

  

  

• ‘Pressure’ is said to be the gap between what we would do for ourselves and what we perceive to be the expectations others have of us. It’s critical to keep in mind that we don’t have to accept other peoples’ expectations of us.

• In a tough situation with others, don’t feel like you have to always ‘power through.’ It’s okay to take time to say to yourself, “I’m not at my best,” and to take a walk, or just go around the corner and take some good deep breaths to help you re-regulate yourself.

• You can also turn to other humans for help coping in tough moments, by developing a signal with an ally, where, say, you work out in advance that they’ll give you a look or a nod or a hand signal that in essence says, “I see what’s happening and I know it’s hard for you.” It doesn’t change the underlying situation, but it’ll instantly help you stop feeling alone and unseen. I wrote a piece on how to do this, called Don’t Let Aunt Susie Get To You This Christmas, which you can read here.

• Please do not dim your light around others. Your needs matter, as do your feelings, as do your dreams. If some people are too critical, too dismissive, or just don’t seem to really even notice you are there, choose to spend more time with the people who genuinely seem to respect you and enjoy being around you, with whom there is a reciprocity of sharing (as opposed to it being all about them), who are comfortable with you sharing good stuff and bad, and don’t feel the need to compare, fix, or sweep it under the rug, and for whom you can equally care? Center your relationship with them. Make more time for these Pooh and Piglet relationships:

  

• Also look for opportunities to grow in these moments by being able to consider where the ‘difficult’ person may be coming from and whether they deserve some compassion or leeway accordingly. For example:

  • the friend who has to constantly compare and one-up others is likely doing that because they are insecure and feel they have something to prove. The way to disarm them is to lean into their need by praising them in response to what they share, and then if you don’t feel like responding in kind you can smile and change the subject with a simple suggestion: “Oh, let’s not spend all our time talking about the kids, let’s talk about….”

  • the boss who tells you what they wanted after the fact may only have realized after the fact what they wanted. Meaning, maybe they’re not trying to make you feel stupid, maybe it’s a weakness on their part and maybe you can ask more questions in advance to help them get clearer on the outcome they will ultimately want which will feel like a win/win.

  • the parent who comes over for dinner and talks constantly might not be trying to judge you with the questions they ask or the comments they make. Maybe they’re just hungry for conversation. See if you can give them the benefit of the doubt by pretending that this is your best friend talking to you instead of your parent - do the words feel differently to you when you reframe it like this?

• Yes, it’s annoying when people behave in ways that irk us, and sometimes even long-standing relationships take a turn. But one member of the group offered that it’s actually a gift to us when people reveal who they actually are. In that it allows us to ask ourselves the much bigger question of whether we still want this person in our life under these circumstances, and if not, what we’re going to do about it. As an interim step, when someone triggers a feeling in us that is uncomfortable and it seems to happen a lot, we can say to them ‘when you do/say X I feel Y,’ and if they’re not open to changing the way they interact with us, we can let them know we need space and do not want to hang out as usual for awhile. I’m secretly rooting for the person with the brother on the pedestal to step away from this really difficult dynamic, if just for awhile 🤎

• On an ongoing basis you can do a lot to help yourself become more emotionally regulated and stay that way. On a recent trip to the Modern Elder Academy in Baja Mexico, I went to the top of a mountain with a Shaman who shared a lot of wisdom with me about myself. One of the most practical things he taught me was that every morning I should look at myself in the mirror and simply say to myself: “Hi. How are you? I love you. I trust you.” Then he said that when I take a shower, I should wash my body and say aloud things like: “I’m washing away doubt, despair, depression, obsession, anxiety, fear, envy, jealousy, etc.” (Use whatever words you like, you get the point.) I gotta admit y’all, I was a little skeptical. But I’ve been doing the mirror mantra and the shower talk for two weeks now, and I think it really does help me stay more regulated as the day unfolds.

A Book, If You Want to Go Deeper

A few people in the book recommended the book The Untethered Soul, by Michael A. Singer. You can find it here.

And If You Want to Be a Part Of These Introspective and Nourishing Conversations Going Forward

I’ll send the Zoom invitation directly to your inbox. To receive it, you just need to become a paid member of Julie’s Pod. You can sign up here:

xo

📚 I give a lot of life advice in my latest book Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. In theory it’s for young adults. In practice it’s for everybody. Get your copy here.

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