Quiet

I know it’s hard to find quiet time. I didn’t think much about it until I got serious in trying to figure myself out in my 40s.

Quiet is when I can figure out my self. When I feel upset or something triggers a reaction, I used to react. I’d get defensive or hurt (my go-to emotion then) and try to immediately resolve the feeling. Those days that usually looked like getting sometime else to make me feel better.

I learned that if I step back and process, I can identify what the root issue is. For example, if C says something off the cuff that made me upset, I learned to recognize the uneasy feeling in my stomach and when I thought in it, I could see that when he said XYZ, I immediately felt that I wasn’t valued by him. I know I am valued by him and that something just triggered me feeling that I’m never good enough (from my own childhood).

Because I learned to take the time to understand my emotions, I can now bring it to him and say when you said XYZ I felt like I wasn’t as important to you as…. It reminds me of how I felt not important when I was a child and hurt my feelings. It is productive not reactive, there is no fight and he has clarity (mixed with some vulnerability) to help him understand me better too. I’m also not mad at him knowing that the feeling comes from something separate from him.

Practice it! I’m not perfect at it but every time I do it, it works 🙂