How do we avoid getting swept up in the moment and doing things that we will later regret? We'll say things that we don't mean or we'll do things, or we'll get reactionary. Yeah, that’s a really tough one. I'm kind of lucky in the sense that I usually don’t say and do things that I later regret, so I’m just full disclosure, this isn’t something that I personally, with myself, struggle with. I have struggled with it with other people that I’ve been in relationships with, and they will be reactionary. It’s a little tough because somebody essentially gets themselves all whipped up. They get wrapped up in what’s going on and they get moving faster than they’re aware of.

I think the important thing to remember with that is that the person you’re with is probably not against you. They’re probably not attacking you. You know, if you’re finding that you’re acting in ways that you later regret, it’s probably because it was disproportionate to the situation that you were in. Those disproportionate behaviors that we’re having, a lot of times, don’t have anything to do with the person in front of us. A lot of times, those are reactions that we’re having to experiences that we had a long time ago in our lives. It could be recently, it could be last year, but it could go all the way back to childhood. And the strong reactions that we’re having are actually just us playing back out some kind of stressful scenario that we experienced a long time ago. We’re getting triggered in this situation, and we’re reacting much more strongly than we normally would to this person.

That’s really hard to catch when it’s happening. I think the question we might have to ask is, okay, am I playing this out according to what’s really in front of me, or am I playing this out according to some other reaction that’s inside of me? And maybe, maybe maintaining the connection to the person that’s in the room with you or on the phone with you—the person that you’re actually talking to. You know, ask yourself, okay, am I still being present with this person? Am I still here interacting with this person in this particular relationship? Or am I just reacting to what I think the world is throwing at me?

When the world throws something at you, every overreaction in the world makes sense because the world’s coming at us, and we just have to push back with everything that we have. Okay, but that’s not where we are when we’re with a person. When we’re with a person, it’s something much smaller than the world. It’s an individual. They’re probably, hopefully, not coming at you from a violent place. They’re probably not trying to hurt you. So, stay connected to that one person and try to remember this isn’t the whole world attacking you.