Your Reactions Are Showing You Something

In this episode of Pearls of Wisdom, I explore reactivity, what it is, where it comes from, and how learning to work with it can transform our lives and relationships.

So much of what we call ‘stress,’ conflict, or emotional pain begins with unconscious reactions. A comment, situation, or interaction triggers an energetic shift within us, and we often believe that something outside of us has ‘made’ us feel a certain way.

But, our reactions are not caused by something external, but are revealing something unresolved from the past

This episode explores:
How childhood conditioning shapes our reactions
Why relationship acts as a mirror
The connection between reactivity and old emotional wounds
The space between stimulus and response
How breath and awareness can help us clear emotional reactions
Why healing reactivity transforms both ourselves and our relationships

Through personal reflection and practical insight, I explore how every reaction can become an opportunity for awareness and healing.

Because when we stop immediately acting out of our reactions and begin to witness them instead, something shifts, we create space.we heal the past, and we begin to respond from consciousness rather than conditioning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you can feel flooded with irritation, anger, upside, distress. But there is space before you need to respond. There is space. Welcome. Really, it can completely change your life to be able to recognize the space between any stimulation, any reactivity, anything that arises in your body. There is a big space between the time that you can respond, and you can completely and completely change your life in that space. And essentially, I've been working with people my whole life for 50 years. I've been talking with people about their lives and about all the things that there are going on, what things they want to change, what things are difficult, relationships, all manner of things, just our lives. I realise that because I spend a lot of time with people fully, fully committed to recognizing that when they can really be completely responsible for their reactivity, that it transforms their life. But it is still something that's difficult, it's still something that people come back and back and back to. So I do think it's important to know that it can completely transform your life. But because it's not that easy, it is important to keep going, to not give up, to not think, Oh, I can't do this, or I'll never get this, or to even start to think that it isn't true that actually just reacting out of whatever comes up is normal because ultimately it can completely transform our life, completely transform your life. It can really, really heal relationships. Obviously, the relationship you have with yourself because the reactivities are narrowed to something to do with you. So it heals the relationship with yourself, it heals the relationships with everybody around you, it creates harmony, it creates harmony and ease and peace and the natural state between us all, because we are all essentially one big, huge, huge family, and it can free us from the past, completely free us from the past. Because in the past, we've all been little, we've all been children, and we were all conditioned. Because in that first seven years of our life, our brain's in theta, anyway, which is the state of the brain where it's really, really receptive, it's a state of hypnosis or just before going to sleep. But children are in that state as a norm, so they're very available to be conditioned. We were very available to be conditioned by our family, the people all around us, the culture we were in, our society, the school we went to, the influences we had. And we all adapted because, of course, we have to survive because we're the little ones, and we wanted to feel loved, we wanted to feel we belonged, we wanted to feel safe, we wanted to feel approved of, and in that process, parts of ourselves often become hidden away, or we reject them or disown them because they don't fit in with everything that is around us that's important for the parents that we had, or the schooling we had, or the society we had. If there are aspects of ourselves that didn't fit in, often that they got hidden away, and of course, we also adapt, so we'll adapt our behaviour when we realise something's disapproved of or not acceptable or isn't invited in the family we're in, and they can be all sorts of things, simple things from giving affection physically, or being very lively, being able to sing and dance, or it might be something bigger like being a drawn to art when the family felt this was not an important part of living, and that you had to follow a more traditional route, a more academic route. So we grow up, and of course, we continue creating relationships, we continue growing our family in effect, and we get we make friendships and we make relationships at school and at work, and we always have people, tend to always have people in authority in some way or another, whether that's teachers or people who are our superiors at work or anywhere in the world. So we have all sorts of dynamics that can play out that remind us of our childhood patterns, and we obviously can fall in love and make romantic relationships, and the places where we've lost ourselves or hidden away parts of ourselves, or disowned, rejected parts of ourselves start to reveal themselves or are adapted behaviours, but they start to reveal themselves, and they reveal themselves through our reactivity, and so once again, relationship is a mirror, so it's a complete mirror of us. So if we if we go from the orientation that the world is us pushed out, it's us reflecting back at us, it's our it's ourselves being reflected back at us, then all the relationships we have are a mirror for us to see ourselves, then reactivity is an opportunity for us to see aspects of ourselves which we've hidden away or lost or are hurt, because by reactivity I mean an energetic shift in the body, and that we will describe it as in irritation or anger or sadness or upset or fear or even over excitement when we get super, super keen on something, and of course, this is usually accompanied by a story or a narrative, and most of the time we can believe that it's something outside of us that made us feel this way. It's so common to sit to get crossed from immediate intimate levels with a partner to societal levels, to something happening in the street to global levels, and people reacting and getting upset, and actually, of course, thinking that this is normal, that of course you'd be upset because you read something in the news, or you somebody behaves badly in the street, or your partner does something, or a friend does something, and and so, therefore, the belief that something outside of us made us feel this way is very very common and keeps us all stuck in a reactive cycle, and with reactivity, reactivity is actually just reenacting the past because if we go from the perspective that nothing can make us feel anything, nothing at all, we are responsible for our feelings, we are responsible for our reactions, we are wholly responsible for everything, and if we go from the perspective that it's all to do with us, I'm just you know suggesting that for the purposes of this podcast, and it could be very useful to you. But if we go from the perspective that nothing can make us feel anything, we're completely responsible, and so therefore, every single reaction is pointing to something that is already within us. So every single reaction is pointing something within us to do with us, and if it's a reaction, it's pointing to something in the past, it's taking us out of the present moment. When we're in the present, there is nothing at all. I've often suggested that we breathe deeply into the tummy, breathe out, and then really witness that space at the bottom of the breath. It's nothing, and if we're feeling distressed, upset, and we take that breath, then in the present moment we're okay, it's nothing except ease. So, therefore, a reaction is pointing to the past, and it's simply been activated by something that's happened, which we're deeming is outside us. Somebody said something, something's happened, we've read something. But what it's actually done is it's activated something within us that is unresolved. Simple ones that are quite obvious because most people don't really like being criticized, and unfortunately, most people have been criticized as a child, and some more than others, it depends on the unique child, of course, because we're all different, and we'll all also bring in our own past karma, so we'll bring in anyway something to work out, so there will be one child who will be more sensitive to criticism than another, one child you can raise an eyebrow at and they'd be traumatized, another child you could shout at, and it wouldn't land in the same way. So it is unique to us. But if we did get criticized as a child and it it landed on us a lot, we might have a big sensitivity to this as an adult, and we might hear something as criticism that actually isn't even criticism because it's a sensitivity within us, and or it could be the other way around that we were praised a lot as a child, and then we've got the inability to receive a challenge as an adult. That's a very simple, a simple description, but obviously there's many more that we could go into. Um, I, for instance, was often, often, often told off as a child because I was always doing the opposite to what people wanted me to do, and it didn't actually stop me doing naughty things as a child, even though I got told off a lot. I repeatedly continued that behaviour and and it carried on in my whole life. But what did happen was I internalized a feeling that I was somehow wrong, and that played out, and I had to really work with that as a person growing, obviously through the years, to the extent that even when I received letters, I didn't really want to open them in case somebody was going to tell me off, and I would feel I didn't want to open emails in case someone was going to tell me off. I tell you, no one was telling me off. Luckily, I knew about this work, so I worked with that slight feeling of dread, and I recognised it as an arrow always to the past, and also for me to be visible, visible, for me to be making this podcast, for me to do the public speaking I've done, for me to make videos on YouTube, for me to show up in public, I had to work a lot because I had to consciously clear the fear that I was going to somehow be told I was wrong. So it can be very limiting, very debilitating because I recognize that I have things to share that can be useful to people. But if I hadn't worked on my fear, then not only do I miss out, but you miss out, miss out on my podcast. Um so we can begin to work backwards, of course. Um, I think it's very useful to do some inner work and to have a look at our childhood and to get curious and reflective about um what went on, what was acceptable, what wasn't acceptable, where we how we reacted to things as a child, how we responded. Um, you know, it can be useful to reflect on, you know, if there was uh something that we didn't like happening, what did we feel and how did we respond? Did we so if we um felt told off, did we feel um you know distressed, upset, and did we react by fighting back or did we go and hide in our room? You know, those can be useful things to investigate, but also we can work backwards from every reaction. So if we react and we're irritated, I mean it's everywhere, it's the little things as well. I mean, do recognise it's not just in our intimate relationships or in things at work or places where we think it's important, it can be we'll be in a shop, and the shop person who's going to serve us isn't looking at us and is talking to their colleague, and we can feel irritated, and that can be an arrow to not being important, and then we can work backwards so we can look work backwards and see what button was touched. Maybe you felt left out as a child, maybe you were one of the many in the family, or your parents were busy, and therefore feeling ignored or feeling left out. You can recognize that you know that might be that button because what does it remind you of when have you felt it before? And therefore, this really starts to turn things away from blame to awareness rather than that person did that thing and they didn't take any notice of me when I came up to buy my thing, they were just chatting. Um, now obviously that doesn't mean we wouldn't observe things, so we might observe, we might think, Oh, we came to buy our thing at the counter and they didn't take any notice of us, and we might observe that and think that that's not particularly professional practice, for instance, but if we're not reacting, then we can always request a behaviour change, we can always set boundaries in our life of what works for us, um, and we can also, of course, leave situations if we're in situations at work or in a relationship. If we work on ourselves and our own reactivity and things aren't changing, we can of course leave the situation, we can ask people to change behaviours, but if we ask it from now, from the present, it's a completely different experience. If we then we're doing it out of reactivity, when we do it out of reactivity, it ends up being an argument, it ends up generally the things I talked about in the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which are the four behaviours in relationship that are very damaging: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. What can happen is if we're reactive, those things start to play out, we'll be so we'll feel we've been criticized, we'll get defensive, we then might stonewall, we then might act with you know disdain for our partner. So the whole thing then spirals downwards. So, really and truly, the transformational practice and the key, absolute key to it all is recognizing that there is a space. So you can feel flooded with irritation, anger, upset, distress, but there is space before you need to respond. There is space, and that space is where we can clear the distress rather than act it out. So we do need to be able to press that pause button. Now, this takes practice, it takes practice, it takes practice. So, as I said at the beginning, that's why people often give up because the whole thing plays out, and once we start to be aware and we recognize that we're responsible for our reactions, what can sometimes happen is you feel like you're more reactive than you ever knew because you're noticing it. So it is important to keep going and know that there is that space that is that space, and with practice, you can use that space and you can make sure you don't act out of the reaction and that there is space to clear, and it can actually be transformed, it can clear from whence it came, and we can do that with breath awareness. So that's why I would encourage everybody to throughout the day come back to a conscious breath. If you've got time, it's ideal to sit and do some breath awareness and breath practice morning and night. I mean, we've all got time, but if you've got inclination, it's a good thing to do because then throughout the day coming back to the breath, excuse me, come back to the breath, come back to the breath, then you keep getting in touch with that space, which means when you're reactive, you can make it your um practice to take a breath and it slows everything down, and you can notice the sensations in your body. I think a lot of it's just starting to get more aware to stay present. Um just stay present, stay present, stay aware, stay aware, and the breath can steady you. So if throughout the day you're taking a conscious breath, I've I've suggested before to people to perhaps put an alarm on um that reminds them every hour to take a conscious breath, and it's very it's an amazing practice. And when people follow through with that, what can happen, of course, is people forget and all sorts, but when people follow through, they start to have it as a practice of coming back to the breath, then it becomes more natural to be where you are, you're more in touch with what's going on in the body, you don't act out of it, and therefore, the first the first thing is to make sure you are absolutely willing to do this work because every time you think reactivity is to do with the others and not you, you lose the lose the um presence or the yeah, you lose the commitment, you lose the commitment to to transforming your life because even if you can't actually clear it in that moment, it is possible to park it. Don't push it down, but park it. Make sure you don't act out of it, because it is really, really important to recognize that there is that ability to use the breath, and that space at the bottom of the breath can become a pace of clearing, but also sometimes just even witnessing that the reactivities in the body is enough because it melts away, it transforms, transmutes, and changes, it just melts away if you don't act out of it. And also, you sometimes I find people find it good to think of it as a colour, so they might feel a reactivity flood through their body, and they might see the colour of red, and they just change it gently, gently into a nice um, you know, calm blue or whatever feels good for them, or golden. And some people really find that helpful. If you haven't been able to clear it, and and sometimes these processes can take days, something can be triggered in us, we'll feel flooded with hurt or resentment or all sorts of things, um, and that might be a one-off conversation, and the person's gone. And the key is not to keep the conversation going in your head, recognize that something's been triggered, and then clear it throughout the days because it will melt away. But sometimes it takes time, just takes time. Sometimes movement helps, so you can dance, you can do there's a kundalini shaking meditation on YouTube with the Osho Kundalini meditation, shaking meditation. You can shout, shout it out either in your car or into a pillow, or if you've got lovely big space, open space, go and shout it out into the into the land. Um, writing and burning is a good one I've suggested before, where you write everything you feel down and you burn it safely, please. Um water nearby. Um, but that can be such a helpful process where you don't read it back, so you can get it out, then you watch it burning away. But the key is not projecting it outward, not projecting it outward, because every single time you clear a reaction, you free yourself. It's an amazing thing, and it's a process where it's subtle because you start to forget over time what all the things that you were hanging on to were. But every every time, every single time you clear, you actually heal the wound that's beneath it, you heal the part of yourself that needs love breathed into it, and you can breathe love into that part. So as you heal, because every time you don't you clear the reaction, you don't push it down, every time you clear it, you heal the wound beneath it. Such an important thing to know, and then of course, you change your life, you completely change your life, but you also change the energy all around you because we're all like tuning forks, all like tuning forks, and when we vibe. Vibrate differently, then everything around us or everybody around us begins to respond differently to us, and that does happen because we are energetic beings, we all vibrate at certain frequencies, and the inner work, this clearing reactivity, allows our vibration to get higher and higher. So the inner work isn't about becoming perfect, it's about just keeping on, keeping on day after day after day, moment by moment, minute by minute, committing to it, being completely forgiving yourself if you do act out of reactivity because you don't want stuff on stuff. You don't want to act out the reactivity and then react to the fact you've reacted. If it happens, you can say sorry. You can say sorry to the person if you've reacted to them, or you can know yourself if you've reacted because you've received a text or a letter, or you've you know, something's happened um technic technologically the internet's been down and you can't do the thing you were meant to do. All those things, they're all for clearing, all for clearing. All the things when people get cross with admin or technical stuff, or it's all the same. It's uh, you know, anything mistakes that happen, all these things. If we work to know it's all to do with us, because yes, of course, um, you know, things can get held up, and of course it can be a a challenge to us when we're trying to do something and we're held up because of a technical hitch, of course, but it's how we meet that challenge, evolves our soul, evolves as people, makes the energy around us more harmonious, makes our own body more harmonious, makes it a much, much, much more fun life. Much more fun life. Because there'll always always be all these things going on. But as I said, it's it's about becoming aware and recognising that every reaction, whether it's something minor to do with you know, the internet or our computer not working, or the bank not getting back to us soon enough on a query or any of those things that happen, or a person not doing what we wanted them to do, or our you know, our in our romantic relationship or our partnerships, people not behaving as we want them to, all those things, they're all us. They're all us. And if we go from that perspective, if we go from that perspective that every single reaction is an opportunity for healing, then we can kind of just say, bring it on, bring it on, because basically, the more that we face these things, the more we opportunity we have to clear them away, and if you feel it, you can heal it. And really, really and truly, between stimulus and response, people freedom lies.