When things get stressful in relationships, it’s not uncommon for there to be an outburst of anger. One person or another gets angry and exhibits behaviors that can border on violence or manifest in other ways, such as coldness, raising the voice, ignoring and arguing.
It’s so easy to get entangled and take part in the situation. All it takes is one person to express it and then things can easily get out of hand, resulting in a situation that goes on longer than it should and both people feeling miserable.
In order to prevent an unpleasant and stressful situation, it is imperative that we can look beyond our anger at the other person and realize that anger is not a natural state of being. Almost always, where conflict arises, there is an absence of love and an abundance of fear.
You can be right or you can be happy
As adults, we need the ability to step back when we experience an angry outburst from someone and look at the person and the situation. This is very difficult because many of us have a need to “win.” This façade of triumph over another and the need to be “right” can prolong any unpleasant situation. That is why it is imperative to train not to add fuel to the fire with participation and put it out with observation. This is not easy and requires practice.
When there has been an argument with your partner or friend and you are in a heated argument and it seems like there is no end near, this is the perfect time to choose to look at the situation in a new way, something we call a perception change.
As you notice faces turn red, voices get louder, and you feel your stress level rise, you need to shift your perception of yourself as a victim to focus on the other person as scared and full of rearguard.
Once you can look beyond your behavior and focus on the fear that resided just below the surface of the confusion, it may be easier to respond to the other person with kindness rather than anger and disapproval.
Many times, the other person will accuse you of trying to manipulate them as your tone softens and they may question your sincerity. Don’t let this determine your loving behavior. This is the main reason to stick to your plan and focus on extending love and expressing compassion. This process may take some time before the other begins to understand that you have an interest in eradicating the painful experience of the argument for both of you.
kill fear with kindness
Distrustful people will often react negatively to your kindness and become suspicious of your intentions. People have a hard time processing the fact that they can actually choose between happiness and misery.
If this continues to happen, despite your efforts to stop the stress, you may need to assess whether or not this is an appropriate relationship for you. Both people should answer in the same way. Sometimes your efforts will show you the other person’s desire to stay in pain and hold on to their suffering.
By seeing fear, you can let go of your own fears when facing such a difficult situation. Seeing the other person differently allows you to create different feelings, which in turn bring about different forms of behavior towards them, which in turn cumulatively begins to heal the other’s fears of further injury. As your false perceptions heal, the other person also heals.
Perceptions rule the world
If you see others as capable, you will treat them differently and they will behave differently. People with angry outbursts and even violent behavior problems should consider themselves scared and asking for help and love. With this insight, we are all less likely to participate in the battle ahead. Instead of feeling like the other person requires control and judgment, look at them as if they need your love and help.
Someone’s entire world can change as a result of how you perceive it and that is why perception is such a powerful force. How is it that our perceptions of others and situations have such an influence on our experience of them? The projection makes the perception. Simply put, this means that thoughts and beliefs inside us they are projected, coloring our perception of the outside world, its events and our relationships in it. It is not what another person says or does, or events in life that make us happy or unhappy, but what we think about that person’s behavior or those events.
Just imagine: if the same event brought happiness universally, one could have a more successful packaging and marketing industry! However, we know that when many people go through the same experience, the interpretative perception of each one is often quite different.
For example, two children raised in the same family may grow up with very different perceptions of their family life. One takes the mother’s guidance and care as helpful and loving, so one is open to learning from adults and authority figures. The second son takes his mother’s guidance as an intrusion, and he grows to resent and question authority.
physics of perception
New discoveries in 21st century physics also support this notion by showing that there are there is no such thing as an objective reality that is separated and separated of us. The moment we observe something, physicists tell us, we influence it, and there is no place where this interaction with what we see. perceive as outside of us is more true than in our relationships.
As a result, we do not, and cannot, see the other people in our lives with absolute objectivity. They are also not real apart from us, as we are constantly affecting our reality by what we believe, think, feel, say, and do. Every aspect of our inner world colors the lens through which we view the people in our lives.
Let me give you an example: Liz, a graduate student, had a painful encounter with Sherri in her class. After class, Liz began to obsessively ask herself, “What’s wrong with me that Sherri doesn’t like me?” However, a few hours later, after much internal suffering, Liz overheard two classmates talking about how Sherri is coping so well since her young husband had a premature heart attack and nearly died. Sherri is trying to keep up with school and take care of her three children while she deals with her fear.
With this information, Liz felt compassion for Sherri instead of rejection. When she changed her acting perception of Sherri, her reality was now quite different. Nothing in the world had changed, particularly Sherri; it only changed Liz’s acting perception, but it made a completely different personal reality for her.
While Liz was lucky enough to hear some facts about Sherri that changed her perspective, we’ll see that it’s possible for us to do so even if we’re not presented with personal details or inside information.
What we BELIEVE we PERCEIVE!
If it is our perceptions that bring our pain and suffering, then how can we change them to move from a position of powerlessness, where we feel like a victim at the mercy of the people in our lives, to a position of empowerment and happiness, in which we take responsibility for our thoughts and behaviors, and choose to extend love? How do we accomplish this task without having to wait for someone else or the world to change?
A shift in perception is choosing to see someone or a situation differently. It is seeing through the behavior presented to us that seems to attack, reject, or deprive. It’s looking with x-ray vision to see that the undesirable behavior is just a person not having access to their true self.
Since perception always includes interpretation, usually a judgment of some kind, then perception is not just a sensory experience, but also includes thoughts, and therefore can be changed!
An exercise to change your perception
When a person behaves with us in a way that we don’t like, we can simply ask ourselves:
• Is it love coming from this person?”
• If not, there is only one other possible conclusion: this person is afraid and looking for love.
Instead of seeing this person as an ogre, see them as a scared boy or girl hiding behind a paper tiger and desperately yearning for love. In fact, the more ferocious the tiger sounds, the greater the fear and despair for love.
the rule of 2
The simplicity of just two emotions, fear or love, I find especially useful in moments of intense interaction, especially when there is not enough time to remember or learn about a painful story that could lead to the other person’s behavior.
The perception shift we need to make is quite simple, yet very profound:
1. When we see fear instead of attack, we are no longer afraid and can tap into our inherent ability to love or be loving.
2. If we do not perceive attack, we do not have to mount our defenses. We know that displaced anger was just an expression of fear, and there’s no reason to get caught up in it.
3. We will know that when someone behaves so strangely, it just means that they don’t know more effective ways to overcome their fear.
The choice we have moment by moment is between victimization or empowerment; bread or joy; hell or heaven; illusion or truth; the ego or our True Self.
In moments of crisis, it is a world filled with two categories of people:
• Those who are able to extend love
• Those who ask for love out of fear.
All of us vacillate between the two categories. Both, however, provide opportunities to instantly get in touch with empowering love. When we are in a state of love, we are manifesting our essence of the True Self, which is love, our divine nature. When someone is spreading love, we can be in touch with love simply by opening our hearts to receive it.
Perhaps even more important, if the other person is asking for love out of fear, you can also get in touch with love by extending your love to the other person who is crying out for it. The marginal benefit is that it also ensures her happiness. You can never be deprived of love, because it is always there to give simply by deciding to do so, as if you decided to turn on a faucet connected to an eternal spring. For more tips on managing your stress, visit http://www.realstresssolutions.com.
