The One Skill That Reduces Conflict Immediately - Responding vs. Reacting

Have you ever walked away from a conversation wishing you’d said something differently?
Do small moments turn into big reactions before you even realize what’s happening?
Do you feel like conflict hijacks you even when you want to stay calm and grounded?

This video breaks down the real difference between reacting and responding, and why that distinction changes everything. Watch how your relationships, your nervous system, and your sense of alignment improves from this one powerful shift.

If you’re tired of living on emotional autopilot and ready to show up with calm instead of regret, this is a skill you need to learn. Because the way you respond determines whether you repeat old patterns or finally break them.

For FREE Resources, Book Link, Quizzes, Self-Love Merch Shop, 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Transcript

Kristen 0:00

I want to start off this broadcast today really recognizing you and seeing you and commending you because broadcasts like I'm going to give today are very revealing and it takes a really strong spirit. It takes someone who really wants to grow and really wants to experience the best life they possibly can to listen to these broadcasts because they talk about things that are very revealing to us. Things that take humility and ownership and responsibility. And you're here day after day and week after week. I congratulate you. I commend you high five fist bump, belly bump, hip bump, do the hustle. Super proud of you for sticking and staying in these episodes with me because you are a seeker. You are a seeker, and seekers make change, and seekers eventually get what they're looking for. So super kudos to you. Today I'm going to be talking about reacting versus responding. And I venture to say that there is not a person out there who doesn't has not had this experience. Because many of us react before we learn how to respond. And there could be some of you out there still to this day that are that are reacting, maybe not all the time, but it's very common. So sit with that for a moment and just know that what you're about to hear is very, very, very common. It's built into the architecture of being human and being what I kind of see as elementary age humans when we are learning things. And oftentimes our knee-jerk response, our automated response is going to be a reaction. This conversation was motivated by a conversation that I had with someone the other day, and we were talking about the difference between the two. And it made me pause to reflect when have I been reactive? Or have I been reactive? And the answer was, of course I've been reactive. Of course I have been. But through the feedback of individuals in my life that I loved and I cared about their experience of me, I started to recognize it. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, this isn't a super healthy thing to do. So let me choose differently. But it was through that self-awareness. It was through that reflection back from another person who I cared about and who I respect and honor and love. And that I want to have a good experience of me. That's what led me to realizing, you know what, there could be a better way of responding to certain situations. And anything that I share with you guys, please know that it's not always one and done. Please know. This is a peeling away of layers, layers of the onion. It's discovering things, it's trying new things, it's working on things, it's giving yourself space to be a work in progress, understanding that we are evolving beings. Literally, we are evolving beings. I gave a talk a week or so ago about choosing to evolve with purpose, intentional evolution. Because we're going to evolve anyway, based on life and experience and things and information that we take in. We're going to evolve anyway because the more experiences and information that we take in, it's going to change us on some level. So why not be intentional with our evolution? I love being intentional with my evolution. I am a self-growth junkie. I'm a self-love junkie. I'm by far from perfect, but I do work on things all the time. And I pay attention to myself. And here's why. Here's what has really kept me on path with this. It's not a super sexy answer. It's because it feels better. That's it. It feels better inside of me. And I've gotten better responses from the world through my healing. And I've watched relationships transform. And I've watched like my children grow into the people that they are based on my own evolution. It feels good. And I think once you see this within yourself, when you start to say, you know what, I responded better than I did the other day, and then it just felt good. But many times we're skipping from thing to thing to thing to thing, and we're not taking that time to really go within and say, did that feel better to me? Did that feel worse to me? Or wow, look, there was a better outcome to this. This is why taking time in our lives to be with self, which I talk about a lot, alone time is key. Alone time is re-creation because we have the opportunity for self-reflection. And we can decide what's working, what's not working, what we want to do differently next time. But if we're too busy distracting ourselves with outside stimulus, we we're not taking that valuable time to pay attention to how we are reacting or responding to life, to people, and to experiences. So I'm gonna ask you guys six questions, just six self-reflecting questions. And if you are a yes to any one of these questions, send up an emoji. Do I react instead of listening all the way through? I used to do this a lot back in the day. Not so much anymore. Maybe occasionally I do, depending on the situation. Great. Love your awareness, everyone. Number two, do I interrupt, defend, or explain before I actually understand? I definitely used to. I mean, I might occasionally, but it's not from a uh it's not from like a really dense, dark, or reactive place. But for the most part, I really want to understand. I listen to understand. Because I've made a fool out of myself many times by thinking I knew what the person was going to say. I just filled in the blanks and I was wrong. So I started to listen and listen intently and then listen longer and ask questions and to get curious. And 100% of the time, you guys, 100%, what I initially thought changed. Just because I practice patience, just because I practice curiosity, instead of knee-jerk responding with or reacting with some type of thought or defense or whatever. Third question: Do I feel a rush to respond rather than allowing a pause? Oh, this was big for me. I didn't like empty airspace when I was speaking to another individual. It was very uncomfortable to me. So, what did I do? I started to allow the pause. And if it was uncomfortable, I'd fill in the that was like, you know what, let me let me think about that for a second. Yeah, you guys, thank you so much for sending up your emojis. The next one, do I speak to relieve my discomfort or to be intentional? Ah, who relates to that? I just gotta get this out of it. I just gotta, and and you're not really intentional with your words, you're not thinking about what you want to say, and if maybe it's going to hit better if I pause and slow down. You just want to, I call it spew. You just want to spew all of this venom or emotions or frustration out of you instead of being intentional with your delivery. Fifth question: send up claps if you are a yes to this. Afterward, do I feel slightly unsettled or regretful? Doesn't mean you're always like beating yourself up or like in full shame spiral, but you could have that little cringe moment where you're you're like, yeah, I probably could have done that differently. Thank you guys. That's awesome. Yes. For those who are listening on another platform after the fact, there's a lot of emojis coming up. They look like balloons. Someone set off a bunch of balloons. Here's one more. Am I responding from my truth or reacting from the fear of being misunderstood, rejected, or disliked? Yeah, I remember doing that. I remember coming from a people-pleasing space, from a let me fill in this blank, or let me manipulate this in some way, or massage this in some way so that I'm understood and I can be accepted and liked. Understanding the difference between reacting and responding is largely foundational to both relationship health and our personal growth journey. Because it's the difference between living from old survival patterns and living from grounded empowerment and personal alignment. It is largely foundational for both relationship and personal healing, personal growth. So for relationship health, and I, you know, a lot of these might go without needing explanation, but for those of you who would like to hear it, who are really invested in this, and like, you know what, look, tell me what's happening here. Because I can't assume that we all know everything. I've coached so many people, probably thousands by now, over 10 years. Maybe not that much. I don't know. I'm not going to sit and try to think about it. But many, many, many people, one-on-one. And a lot of people really don't understand certain concepts because they've just not been immersed in it. We don't know what we don't know. Very important for us to understand. Instead of going down some weird path of, I'm stupid, I should know this. Why does everybody else get this? Scratch that out. Control alt-delete, escape, get out of that. All you're doing is judging yourself for something you have not learned yet. Would you judge yourself for not having yet learned Japanese? Let's say you visit Japan and everybody's speaking Japanese around you. You're gonna go beat yourself up because you don't know Japanese? Ridiculous, right? This is all about grace, grace. This entire journey is about grace and understanding that we have not learned something yet is vitally important. So when we react, we are often speaking from unhealed places. I don't even want to say often. I want to say we are speaking from unhealed places. We're speaking from fear, which leads to defensiveness, the need to be right, the need to self-protect. And this creates misunderstanding, escalation, and emotional distance. And you guys, I have to take a pause and I have to go downstairs because somebody is harassing heck! Sorry. I'm gonna take you on an adventure, Molly. Leave her alone. It sounds worse than it is. Bean scream is like she's being unalived, but she just does not get in my room. I gotta put him in my room. Just leave your sister alone for crying out. Oh, yeah, now he's throwing himself on the ground like a big flop. Sorry about that, you guys. No one's home. So it's just me, and I have to go attend to that. Okay. I do have a message that came in. I'm a little breathless from running up and down. Deb just said, everyday occurrence at my house. So you get it. Okay, Patty said, I used to be that way. Just wanted to be accepted, included, and loved. But after my experience, I learned that I needed to love myself. And if someone chose not to accept me, I just move on. Not worth the stress and anxiety. I should not have to feel lesser than myself to be accepted. I have that within myself now. That's beautiful. Yes, that's a that's a large, large part of all of this. Is that we are literally coming from an unhealed place inside of ourself, and we are blowing it onto the people in our life, and we're hurting our relationships because of it. So, conversely to reacting, when we respond, we create safety, safety to be heard, safety to be imperfect, safety to stay connected even during conflict. Relationships don't break down, you guys, because of disagreement. They break down because of our unregulated, unmonitored reactions. But when we respond to a situation, what this allows is real listening. It's leaning in. Reactive people tend to formulate mental rebuttals in their head. They formulate the next sentences they're going to say rather than actually listening to you. Or perhaps you're the one that's doing that. Responding also allows us to set boundaries without hostility. A lot of people have to get angry first before they set a boundary. It's just what they do. That's part of the beginning part of empowerment. People need to get super angry, and now they're like, I'm going to do this and say this and whatever, and that's fine. That's just the beginning stages of it. But it doesn't have to be that way. Every time I ever set a boundary like that, I wasn't regretful of the boundary. The boundary needed to happen. But there were two things that were the problem. One is I couldn't follow through because I set it out of anger. It wasn't coming from true empowerment, it was coming from anger. And now I forgot the second one. Oh, I was I made a fool out of myself. I look like a screaming lunatic. Okay. This is not to say I am a lunatic, nor have I ever been, but you guys get what I'm saying. It's like, you know. Responding also allows for honesty, for us to be honest with somebody else without harm. And it also allows us to repair instead of rupture. So tying that all up, responding keeps connection intact, even when the person, the um conversation is hard. It's really truly about slowing down, leaning in, listening, and allowing, because sometimes, y'all, sometimes someone's going to be saying something, and we're thinking in our head, that's wrong, that's ridiculous. How could you even think that? You're crazy, you're stupid. You know, we could be thinking all kinds of things. And what I have done with that, because I have been accused of some things that are just so wack-a-doodle, where I'm just like, that's really I that's really how you see it. I do know that it's coming through their unhealed lens, their own inner wounding. But it's sometimes it was challenging for me not to respond from that. Because I'm flabbergasted and I'm an emotional person, I'm an expressive person, as you guys can see. So, you know, internally I'm like, what in the blazing? But when I have been able to sit and just listen and get curious, and number one, not take it personally. Understanding where it's coming from. Remember, we are the walking wounded until we're not. And those wounds inside create a filter through which we see other people's words and behaviors and the world in general, our worldview, our belief systems. That doesn't clean up, that doesn't change until we start our inner healing. And sometimes it works hand in hand. Like we might start to clean that up, which contributes to our healing. Sometimes our healing cleans that up for us. It's just kind of like a circle, a circle that, you know, goes around in two directions, or however you want to word that. I wanted to be a person who people were not afraid to come to, which they really never have been, but still, you know, I'm sure there was raising kids was really where that came for me. I really wanted my kids to be able to talk to me. I wanted to be a space where people felt understood, but I also still wanted to maintain my truth and what I wanted to say. None of that could happen if I was reacting. Because, especially if somebody is that I'm speaking to is still pretty wounded in a certain area, and then I'm trying to bring some light to the situation, you know, that could turn them sideways. But if I remain my maintain my calm and I really lean in for listening, here's something cool about listening. When you really, really listen to somebody and you ask questions and you get curious, most of the time you can say, okay, I've really listened to you and I think I've got an understanding of what you're feeling, and you can state it back to them. And now they feel heard and they feel validated. And you say you understand in all of these things. They're often so much more receptive to the light, if you will, or the truth or a new perception when we create that foundation first. Because I've had situations where I've witnessed and been in myself where someone comes at me with something, I already can see clear through it, you know, that they're taking it personally or they're being defensive, or you know, they're telling me another story of something else that happened in their life. And I can see this happening. But what I've understood is jumping straight to was creating distance, and it would, they were already feeling odd. They were already feeling discomfort, they're already feeling some type of emotion emotions, and now I'm just jumping that it didn't work. So, what I began to do is really sit with, validate, understand, and then hopefully have the time and space to do so because sometimes, you know, I don't have that long for whatever reason. Like they want to talk to me now, I have 10 minutes. You know what I'm saying? But then I listen and validate, and then maybe come back later. But even just a reaction doesn't always have to be defense, it always doesn't always have to be, you know, the need to protect yourself. It could be just, I want to fix this quickly for this person. All right, we're gonna bring up our first guest. We have our beloved Truth coming up on stage. Thank you so much, Truth, for joining me. Joining us. I always say me because you're talking to me, but yes, us.

Truth 20:09

Hey, I may have to jump off in a second. I actually have a work call that's coming up. I was about to write it in a message. Love this topic, can relate to a ton of it. Um, just one thing I wanted to introduce for anyone else that it might be helpful for. Um, I'd use this specifically when I've reacted instead of responded, which is something that, like, you know, doing a lot of work on, but it happens. It happens a lot because the reaction is the default. But when I start getting down on myself about it, um, hot mess was a term that used to be kind of like a default. I used to like disparagingly call myself a hot mess when I'd be in like sad downturn after the explosion. And my partner helped me reframe it as a hot whip WIP work in progress. So now so sweet. Yeah, it really is. And like as soon as the hot mess word comes into my mind, which is that program default that I've been calling myself for like 30 years. So like it's gonna come up, but because like the first word is the same, I've found that it's so much easier to shift it. It's like that in itself. Like when I get to the like, oh my God, you're such a hot mess, then immediately I'm like, wait, I'm not a hot mess, I'm a hot whip, I'm a work in progress. And then it's like everything starts to shift because now I've associated my default with something positive that like starts to help me pull, starts to help pull me out of it.

Kristen 21:41

Oh my gosh, that's that's brilliant. That's my favorite thing today. That is awesome. You guys, there's a tool right there. It's like instead of judging yourself and it changing it in some way that's actually more true. Because that's actually more true than hot mess.

Truth 21:57

Yes, and that is more true. Like in the moment of my collapse, maybe I was a mess, maybe I'm feeling like a mess, but either way, I'm recognizing it, I'm aware of it, I'm working on making changes, I'm not just sitting in it and being content with the chaos. Like that is a mess if I were just gonna sit content in it. But because I'm trying to make changes, I'm a work in progress. And like it doesn't, for me at least, it doesn't hurt as much. Um, it starts to like relieve the pain and the comfort, and then it helps me remember all my other tools, and then I can start speaking more gently to myself and comforting my inner child, and then it might remind me to like drink some water, get up and move some. And it's like now I've put this thing in place with association where it's like there's just these automatic things that get to come with it, um, which are pretty cool.

Kristen 22:46

So I love that you said it helps you to remember other tour tools, and I want everybody to really understand what that means. When she went from judgment to self-acceptance or self-love, her nervous system calmed down and her brain was able to think more clearly. And this is my experience too, but I'm just you're the example right now, truth. Yeah. And so then, you know, in that space, she's like, okay, now I know that I can go take a walk, I can take a drink of water, I can move my body, I can brush, I can do whatever I need to do to further move me out of that space.

Truth 23:17

Yes, absolutely. Um, but I have to jump onto the Zoom call with everybody else. But thanks so much for this topic. And I look forward to listening to the rest of it later.

Kristen 23:26

Thanks, Truth. Bye, have a great day, and thanks for bringing that brilliance. Love that, you guys. Um, yes, Truth has been very, very honest, vulnerable, and open about her healing journey. And I love it. She's just, it's so great to have Truth come up to the stage. And she brought that up. She said, from instead of judging herself from hot mess, she moved into hot whip, hot work in progress. Oh, so that is so amazing. And in that moment, this is why self-love is key, because that really is a that's an act of self-love right there. She moved from self self-judgment to self-acceptance. Because if she sat and thought in the terms of hot mess, hot mess, hot mess, hot mess, it's just judgment, judgment, judgment. What comes with that? Shame, pain. So we're perpetuating a feeling inside of us that's not going to serve us, which what will that do? Add to more reactions. So instead, just making that slight little shift, what happened? It opened the doorways for her to, like she said, remember other tools. And in that remembrance of her other tools, what she started to apply more things and she brought herself down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And what's even more cool is that now that she has the awareness of hot whip, and these are things that I've experienced. Hot work in progress for anybody who's just joined the conversation. What I've noticed is the more that I am aware of something like that in the moment, in the real-time moment, that'll pop into my head. That'll pop in, and then I think, oh, all of a sudden things have slowed down, and now I have a choice. Because remember, we are just autopilot responding based on the traumas, the dramas, and the experiences of our past. That's it. We're just a set of programs mixed with a brain that's trying to constantly protect us to keep us alive, and all those things contribute to these behaviors that we often judge. We think there's something wrong with me. And for the love of God, people call themselves broken. No one is broken. You're still walking around, aren't you? You're still doing things. You're not broken. I don't get on board with the broken thing. If you guys say it in conversation, I don't jump on it and freak out about it. But I don't like the words broken. And I've heard that a lot. No, you're wounded. You're wounded. And wounds heal, don't they? But they don't heal unless we tend to them. So that's what we want to do. All right, and moving forwards, we're gonna talk about why responding is better for our self-healing and how it can actually contribute to our self-healing. So, reacting, like I've mentioned many times here, is a voice of the past. It's coming through the old wounds, it learns behaviors, the nervous system conditioning. But responding, you get this, you guys? This is my favorite thing of this whole talk is evidence of healing in motion. Because it means you are no longer allowing your past experiences to autopilot, to run the present moment. So each time that you pause, just pause. This is why pausing is one of the most powerful things we can do when we are works in progress, when we are on the self-growth, self-healing journey, and we adopt the word pause. Just the word pause all day long. I'm going to pause today. Set yourself up in that theta brainwave state we talked about a week or so ago. In that first waking up state, you say, I will practice pausing today. I am a pauser. I will pause today. I will take my time today. And you set your brain up for that. Guess what? That'll start showing up in your day. And when you pause and choose a response, this is what happens. You're going to interrupt your people pleasing and your codependent patterns. You're going to be rewiring your brain differently than it is previously wired, programmed, conditioned, because you are not following the old neuropathway. You're not just going zooming down that Audubon. You're making a different choice. The pause allows us to make that choice. We also build emotional regulation. We build emotional literacy. We can stop and we can say, boy, what am I feeling right now? I am feeling attacked. Many people that are very defensive or take things personally, they always feel attacked. Okay? All it is is we're touching something inside of them, or they're touching something inside of us, and all of a sudden we feel attacked. I remember telling this story that I had this girlfriend, and this girlfriend decided to get on a dating website. And we were really good friends. We talked all the time and all these things. And she decided to start dating. She hadn't dated for a very long time. She was in her 40s, never been married, no kids. This is important for this important piece for the story. So she called me up one day, and we're girlfriends, right? What do girlfriends do? How's the dating going? So I asked her that. I said, So how's the dating going? How's the dating app? Do you know what she said to me? And she screamed it at me. She goes, That feels like an attack. You can imagine. I was flabbergasted. In my head, I'm like, uh, did I say it in a judgmental way? I am digging through my people-pleasing brain at the time, trying to figure out what I did wrong. Because she literally said loud, that feels like an attack. And then I'm like, Can you guys can see I'm trying to act it out to you, just flabbergasted, mouth open, jaw dropped. I didn't know what to say. And I said, I don't understand. You've been talking about dating to me for weeks and weeks and weeks. You're on the dating app, I ask you. And then she went on to say that she gets a lot of judgment because she's 40-something years old and not never been married and no kids. So by me asking, How's the dating going? her wound, her judgment of self, something's wrong with me. I've never been married and have no kids. That's what was touched, her judgment of self, just by me asking how's the dating going? Or how's the dating app going? A couple years later, that was brought up in some conversation, and she said to me, I don't even remember that. Do you see how unconscious she was at that moment? She just bam knee-jerk response attacked me. I'm the one that got attacked. The whole point of sharing this with you is that people who feel um who are who are highly defensive and who take things personally and feel this constant need to protect have wounds. And sometimes we brush up against those unknowingly, as in this case. Now, needless to say, this relationship didn't last because there were other things like this that happened, and I started to feel very unsafe with her because I didn't know what was coming down the pike. I didn't know when she was gonna just freak out at me for no reason. And it was happening, it was happening pretty frequently. And so I just got to the place where I tried to have a conversation about it with her. She said yes and then avoided it like the plague, and then wanted to skip past it and just wish me happy Halloween and all these other things. And I I wasn't about that. I just was like, okay, if you're not, we're not gonna have a conversation, this can't go on because I could not live in the space of her reactions. So please know if you have this experience with someone else and you're feeling burned out by it, or now your nervous system is on fire because or you're around them walking on eggshells, there's a reason for that. Their fear of attack is attacking you. You know, you're just walking around the corner, they hear a noise, and they they whip out a weapon and and get you with it. And then we're sitting here with the wound going, what, I just walked into my own house, you know, or something to that effect. And then they're like, Well, no, you scared me. Like they stand in, they stand in it so long that you start to understand that until they have the awareness of what they're doing, it's going to continue. Then at some point we need to decide. In this particular case, I I just let it fade away. I tried. I tried. I tried to have the conversations, but it didn't happen. And I actually just in real-time thinking right now, I thought more of her than that. She was a coach, she's uh a writer, she's an author. She speaks a good speak. But all it was was, and I don't say that with I don't say that with judgment, I say that with wow. I thought she was further along than she actually was. The next thing it will do, and I see you in the queue, I will bring you up in just a minute. When we respond instead of react, you were teaching our nervous system that we're safe. There has been times where somebody is telling me something in an emotional way, I can feel my body start to react. It's designed to react. Okay, they're getting emotional or they're getting louder, what have you. I can feel my body react. Do you know in my head? I have said to myself, you are safe, you are safe, you are safe. They're just having an emotion, they don't know how to deliver this, they're heightened right now. You're not being attacked. I have had to say that to myself in my head. What that does is calm me down and puts me in a space of distance. I'm distancing myself from this person's emotional knee-jerk response. And this isn't always about me, by the way. This could, I'm just saying that some have you ever had somebody come to you and they're complaining about something else and they're kind of yelling at you, but they're not yelling at you, but you can feel your body start to react or just saying this happened, this happened, and you just can feel yourself, yeah, Mani gets it. You just start kind of feel yourself getting a little heightened. It's not even about you, but it's because this energy is coming at you. So we're gonna feel that way. Again, the pausing, the slowing down, and yes, for those 30, 60 seconds, I'm not listening to what they're saying. I'm checked out, I'm taking care of me. You bet I am. Because that's my job. And so they're doing their thing, and I as soon as I feel this inside of me, because if I start feeling this inside of me, guess what happens? My responses and maybe reactions. I don't want to do that. And I have also said, can you please lower your voice? This is I'm feeling very, you know, reactive to your delivery, and they do, you know, depending on the situation. Again, so many variables with all this. You guys, we're dealing with so many different personalities and different contexts and angles and nuances. But I have been known to say that in certain situations. Like, can you can you lower your voice a little bit? It's sounding a feeling attacking to me, even though this is not about me. And they're like, oh, okay. Remember, self-growth is about returning back to yourself. It's about loving, honoring, respecting, protecting yourself in the best possible way. And if that means 60 seconds, I'm gonna sit and tell myself that I'm safe and rather than listen to somebody, I absolutely will. Okay. Just check out for a second, get clear on what's happening here, and state a boundary if needed. Like, can you lower your voice a little bit? It's it's a little hard to hear you. You also are moving when you're responding instead of reacting, you're moving from self-abandonment to self-honour. Because when we react, we are disconnected from self. Remember, we're pulling all of these little selves back in. We're pulling all the little puzzle pieces of us back to ourselves, creating a whole self. So, what you saw and just heard in that example that I gave, when somebody's mad about something else and they're whatever, and it's starting to get me in a state, that was me self-honoring. Even though it had nothing to do with me, I could feel it. So I, you know, I've been the recipient of those things before and didn't like it. Have you ever been? So I'm sure many of you can relate to this. Were you in a house that parents argued? Or one parent yelled or something, even if it wasn't to you, it felt like it was. I remember my mom and dad having arguments. My mom really wasn't a voice raiser, but my dad was. But I remember the arguments going on and on. Yeah. Let's see, Jeanette understood that one, and Amani, yeah. And you know, we're we're kids, you know, cowering in our bedrooms, and it has nothing to do with us. Or I remember my dad being mean to uh cool beans, my brother Joe. And it was it was as if he did it to me, literally. I had built up the same resentments, and it wasn't directed towards some of the things weren't directed towards me. See what I'm saying? It affects us, and it's our job to return back to ourselves and to do whatever it takes in any moment. This is about personal empowerment, this is about self-growth and our evolution. Steven, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Steven 37:46

Good morning. Your thing with the person with the dating thing is like that was my ex. Like you would say something, it's like, oh my god, and my job, back then, quote unquote, job was to get as spun up as she was in response. And if I didn't get spun up in response, then I obviously didn't understand her feelings and all that.

Kristen 38:15

Right.

Steven 38:17

And so there was a period of time between I believe it was the summer of 08 and then finally the fall of 09 when I was in a job and I hated it, but I had to keep doing it for over a year to get out of there. Because I was interviewing and doing all this stuff, but I still had to go back to that job five days a week and deal with the people around there. And that was a point where thinking, okay, I can stand outside with all the other drivers and grouse about this when we have to wait, or I can sit in my truck and read books and magazines and listen to jazz instead of the talk radio that I was getting spun up on just so I could call in and scream at the other guy's opinion. Oh, he was stupid. This was like eight years before Next left, and I had already figured out in my own mind it's like, um, no, getting spun up to go with you doesn't work for me because I've experienced this in the past, and so I'm going to choose a different route. And it took me till after all this was said and done for me to look back and go, Well, that was really a cool period of time back there, prior, you know, prior to everything going south, that you learned how to do this. Because when it did go south, you had that tool in your toolbox already. Yeah, that was that was always an interesting look back. This has been uh I have used this uh to like okay, so why did they say that? Oh my gosh. I'm thinking that in my head, and I used to go to because we live in a fallen world. And it's like, no, because you're projecting your healing on them, and they're all the walking wounded, and they're not where you're at. Because one, they may not even know that they can heal, or two, they may not be as far along. And so that's my new go-to of when my brain's like, Well, why are they saying that? It's like, because they're wounded. And it usually has nothing to do with me except that I triggered it because they're wounded, they responded this way to what I said. I didn't say anything wrong per se, but I touched a wound on them.

Kristen 40:46

You know, here's the thing is I've I know my heart so well. And so when I like with that particular friend, from my heart, from my excitement, from my love, I'm like, how's it going? So that's been a huge way for me to delineate whether it was me or not, because I know my intention and I know where my heart was. I can tell when I'm not in that space. So I've been able to kind of distance myself from things, separate it out a little bit and get more clear by knowing, okay, this wasn't about me because I was fully in my heart space during this whatever interaction.

Steven 41:30

Yep. And that's that's a great example of what you had told me earlier, how you can bring your, you can bring light and love and kindness and gentleness to somebody, and they will just not accept it. And when she screamed back at you, she did not accept it.

Kristen 41:46

Right. Right. She didn't see it for what it was. She could only see it through the filter.

Steven 41:51

Yep. She's got her lens and you've got your lens. And so, you know, how are you supposed to know it sucks until she answers the question that it sucks?

Kristen 42:01

And it's the difference between the lens of fear and the lens of love.

Steven 42:06

Yeah. And just that whole lens thing is what helps so much.

Kristen 42:13

Yes. Thank you, Steven. I appreciate you coming up. Oh, you guys love it when you come up and share with me. So good. So let's talk about the core truth of all of this. The core truth is when we respond instead of react, we're no longer living in autopilot. We are living in alignment. I do want to emphasize again the power of the pause. Remember that when we pause, we are creating space for new information. We're creating space for the chemicals of the emotions that have have been released to metaboli, to dissipate, to decrease. And we're allowing a space for us to choose. It's so another thing that's been fascinating to me on my journey is again, I used to be more of a reactive speaker, a responder. And I'm not always talking, I'm not talking about defense and that and that. It was just like, again, a lot of people pleasing stuff, like, oh yeah, great. Oh, yeah, you know, just that kind of things. I watch people do it all the time now, and I'm like, I so know that space. I used to be in that space. Like they can't even let people talk because they're just so busy trying to be liked or to say the right thing. And now, because I am so much more reflective and pausy and sit and listen, I've had people say to me, What's wrong? You okay? Yeah. I'm just listening. That's what I say every time. Yeah, I'm just listening. And I've had people say, Well, you, well, you're you're not saying anything. And I know that I have a pleasant look on my face because I'm careful about my affect. I'm careful about my expression when I'm listening. And then I've even had people say, Well, you you have a weird look on your face. I'm like, I'm just sitting here smiling at you. Like, I don't know what to tell you. We can be very easily whipsawed back and forth with this type of behavior from other people when we don't know ourselves well. And that's why I believe it's so important to get to know ourselves so well that when we do have those others that enter our lives, enter a conversation, enter an environment that are bringing a lot of unhealed words, behaviors, attitudes, perceptions to us, we can factor through and filter through the difference. I want to be able to respond to life. Have I been reactive even recently? Yeah, I can be reactive still sometimes. Absolutely. But is it in reactive in a way that is going to harm another person? I would say no. It's just maybe some days my nervous system is a little bit more activated. I'm not as grounded. And so I may, you know, respond quickly or quickly or more quickly, or maybe not listen as intently. It could be something like that. Or I could be busy. I could be doing something and then someone wants to talk to me. And so now I'm in the multitasking. So, you know, but all of that I give myself grace for. I just let it be what it is. Because we're not designed to be perfect. We never were. There's no, if you ever even had that part, that idea, that notion inside of your head that you're supposed to be perfect on some level, you need to erase that right now. Again, control, alt, alt, delete. Get that out of there. When I decided that I did not have to be perfect, that that wasn't even part of the structure of being a human being. It wasn't even close. When I got to the truth about that, I felt like a thousand wool cloaks were released from my shoulders. Oh, I'm allowed to be messy. I'm allowed to be confused. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I'm allowed to not be perfect. And then what's really beautiful is embracing the imperfection. Because what is embracing the imperfection about? It's about authenticity. You become very authentic when you embrace your imperfection. And guess what people like? Authenticity. They like people that are not perfect because it gives them permission to not be perfect as well. It gives them permission to be themselves. You're like, oh, I mean, my gosh, it's have you ever sat around with somebody and yucked it up? We've done it on this stage a couple times, and yucked it up about mistakes you made, or I don't know. I've had people that have told me things in in a coach client situation or even just in a friendship conversation, and I just look at them, they're like, what? I'm like, girl, boy, you want to know what I did? And then we're laughing at, you know, the dumb stuff that we did that you don't do anymore, that you learned from. It's very bonding. That's two people bonding over their imperfection, bonding over their growth journey, bonding over acceptance of this is how it looks right now. Just looks like this right now. And this is being gentle with ourselves the same way we would be to a toddler who's learning to walk or who's learning to spoon feed themselves. Looks messy, doesn't it? They get it in their hair, they get it up their nose, they get it over everywhere but their mouth. They walk and they fall and they and they land and they, you know, all of these things. They land on their booty. I'm having a visual, I'm trying to put it into words, and my kids try and take steps and then poop, just fall on their little padded diaper booty. Okay, we have another guest. We're going to be bringing up Marie.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Yes, um, so your topic is reacting versus responding, self-growth. Yes, yes, and yes.

Kristen 48:42

Oh, yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

I've learned, you know, um, to just be transparent and open with everyone that I now am forming a new relationship with, and those I have had already established relationship with, because sometimes I isolate and then uh we may have served in the army together, but I isolate for my own self-growth. I'm not being ugly or unkind or what have you. So it's because of the things I endured in that second marriage that I just left uh 2024, October 13th, and divorce finalized August 19th, 2025 year, my Lord and Savior. Thank you, Jesus. And he still would yes, thank you, but God, and he would call. I'm just checking on you. No, I'm in God's hand. I have to set boundaries. I tell him this respect my boundaries. I don't call you, I don't have no need to call you because guess what? I have God, I can call on God anytime, I can seek Jesus anytime in the word of God, so I don't need to be reaching out. Oh, you tell me I don't run across your mind. You see, he still was trying me, y'all. He was trying to pull me back in. Uh, and guess what? I became stronger, more humble because that was hard to do in that marriage, and I knew it before I took those vows, but there was hope in me, you know, a little girl glimmer of hope because my first one didn't work out, and I had been with this one on a roller coaster ride for so long, from 2009. We started uh speaking 2008, late 2008, but 2009 he came um and met me and my sons, my three sons, they were very young, nine, four, and three. So we went to a park on Fort Polk, uh, the Captish Cold Park, and uh we met there, and then later that evening uh he called. So so the relationship had been a roller coaster ride of toxicity and all that, and then I learned he was bipolar uh disorder manning come July 2017, the summer, and he was building upon his nonprofit with the game of chess, critical thinking skills, and the the words respect and love, but the respect and love wasn't in our home, y'all.

Kristen 51:12

So he was touting it but not embodying and but embodying it so it is, yes, it is, yes, and we were out in the street, you know, fighting for the uh gun violence, you know, uh to help with the uh gun violence, and uh we'd be out in the community praying, praying in all areas far and wide, um, in Louisiana thus far.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

And uh yeah, he'd speak on respect and love, respecting love, respecting love. And I'm just like enduring with the smile, you know, hugs, love and all, knowing what I know, but nonetheless, that was a chapter and season that is now over, and the steel door is up. Yeah, amen. The last time he called, he said, I just thought about you checking on you. I said, No, you don't have to check on me. I'm in God's hand. Um she's checking to see if the door's cracked open. A little peep, a little yeah, no, a little pull. No, no, no. I said no. I said, I do not call you. I said, Do you respect me? Do you honestly respect me? Because this kind of action shows me you do not respect me. And I bring up his mother and y'all, and he said, Why you gotta bring her up? Why you gotta bring I said, think about it, think about it. One plus one is two, two plus two is four. If someone was to show up at your mom's house or pick up the phone and talk ugly to her or whatever, you know, anything, just calling out the blue, and you have something you don't feel cool with with them being around your mom. Think about it. I have three sons, you know.

Kristen 52:52

I'm trying to show them, you know, what's not appropriate when it comes to yes, Maria timed out, but yes, I am so proud of you for finding the strength, the courage, whatever it was that you needed to summon up belief in in God, source universe, whatever it was for you to remove yourself from that situation, and for loving your babies enough. If I remember correctly, you said three boys, loving them enough to show what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. You know, yeah, good great job to you, Marie. Thank you so much for coming up and sharing that. Excellent job. Okay, so we are gonna close out this broadcast with five grounded questions to shift from reacting to responding. If you would like these questions for a limited time only, for those of you that might be listening to it on the replay on a podcasting platform, I will only be offering these for a little bit of time. You guys can email me at hello at kristenbrown.org and say reacting and responding questions if you're interested in this. Okay, I'll be happy to send those to you today. Question number one. Did I pause before I spoke or acted, or did it just come out of me? Great question, right? These are all self-awareness questions. If you remember, I started out the top of this broadcast by saying how proud I was for you, for those of you who stick and stay, those of you who come to these broadcasts day after day, listen in, because you're the speakers, you're the courageous ones, you're the ones who are willing to look within. And these are the type of questions that reveal to us so much. They reveal to us those places that we're not yet healed yet, or we're not yet whole yet. Question one, did I pause before I spoke or acted, or did it just come out of me? Question two, was this driven by fear, habit, or the need to protect myself or by clarity in choice? Was this driven by fear, habit, or the need to protect myself, or by clarity in choice? Number three, if I replay this moment later, will I feel proud or wish I had handled it differently? Boy, regret's a bugger, isn't it, you guys? Shame's a bugger, embarrassment is a bugger, cringe is a bugger. How about we work towards handling things the best possible way we know how now, so that we don't have to contend with those buggers. I don't want to feel regret. I don't want to feel embarrassed or cringe or ooh, God made an it made an ass out of myself. I don't want that. I don't want that. And if for some reason I do something where I'm like, yeah, not my shiniest moment, I forgive myself quickly and I move on. Okay. But some of us don't do that yet. Next question. Am I trying to control the outcome or am I honoring my values? Am I trying to control the outcome or am I honoring my values? It's a big self-reflective question. I've seen many, many conversations when people so are trying to manipulate the conversation to get what they want to see happen. So they're not grounding and honoring in their values in truth, in morality. They're just trying to manipulate the situation. And this may be you at some point. And the last question, number five, is is this coming from who I am right now or from an old version of me trying to survive? Huge question. Is this coming from who I am right now in this present moment? Or is it coming from an old version of me trying to survive? Great, excellent questions. Again, there's only five. They're grounded questions to shift from reacting to responding. So if you would like these questions, feel free to feel free to send me an email at hello at kristenbrown.org and I will pop these over to you. Like I said, if anybody's listening way later on the replays of this, because these broadcasts stay up forever, and ever and ever, no. Because Lord knows where this paper will be, where this um document will be. But you can have them now if you're listening to this, like within the next week or two. I can access it. So a gentle reminder to close out this broadcast is that awareness is not about getting it right every time. Learning to shift from reactivity to responding is not going to be perfect, and it is not linear. Please let that sink in. There might be ups and downs and back steps and sidesteps. You might advance 40 feet and then go sideways for a week. There's no rule and there's no perfect way this is supposed to look. It's just about continuing to aim forward and to be the best that we possibly can in any any moment. And that's why self-forgiveness is so key, because sometimes we are doing the best we can in that moment, but with all the factors contributing to the moment, it wasn't that great, was it? Or it could have been a little bit better, couldn't it have? But it was really the way it looked. Think about this. I'm a very placid person, I'm a very calm person, but there's been times my nervous system is up for whatever reason, and someone has asked me a question and I give them a shorter, terser response. And then they call me out and they're like, Well, I don't know what you're upset about, but that wasn't very nice, or something like that. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Right? I'm a person who practices this stuff on the daily. I really practice the these things. I self-reflect a lot, spend a lot of time alone. I set intentions for the day, I meditate, I do things, and I mess it up sometimes. But I don't beat myself up. That's the most important thing. I see it as a neutral thing. I don't see it as a plus or a minus. It's just a neutral thing. Okay. That was the best I got at that time. Make amends if needed, and I move on. The gentle reminder awareness is not about getting it right every time. It is about noticing, pausing, and choosing again with kindness towards yourself. Notice, pause, and choose again. So I hope you guys got a lot from this episode today. No matter what it is, maybe it's the questions, maybe it's a uh realization that, well, maybe I am reacting more than I'm responding, or maybe conversely, you're react you're responding more than you're reacting. Maybe you learned a little bit about uh listening better, about leaning in, about getting curious, about out. Asking more questions. Maybe it was the part where I said, someone's coming at you, complaining or bitching about something else. They're loud and it feels attacking to your nervous system, even though they're not attacking you. And you need to self-protect internally. Just check out for 60 seconds and check out and say, this is not about me. This is about them. They're flipping out. I'm safe in this moment. And what's interesting about that is that there's been times, because I'm really good at that one. I've I'll just be like, let it out. Let it out. Scream as little as you want to. Scream into this pillow, hit the bed. I don't care what you do. Let it out. Because I am so disconnected from it because I know it's not me. But that wasn't always the case. That's an example of me putting these tools into place. Is I've gotten to that place where I'm like, yeah, let it rip. You're not hurting my ears. You're not, go ahead. But it wasn't always the case. Be gentle with you on this journey, everyone. There's no goalposts, there's no winning line, there's no awards at the end. But I'll tell you, self-healing feels really good. And responding instead of reacting feels really good. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for coming up. Let me see. Today we had truth, we had Steven, and we had Marie. Thank you so much, you guys. I appreciate you contributing to the depth of this conversation. Because what you say matters. You matter. Never forget that you matter. See you guys tomorrow.