Hi, it's Lynn, your adulting coach. I've noticed that sometimes when I'm stressed, I might attack. I've noticed this happen in my family as well, with some of us more than others reaching for this strategy to make ourselves feel better.
When our brain is listening is looking around and saying, "Am I safe? Am I safe?"
Asking the two questions that we ask all the time, "Am I good enough? And is my life good enough?"
When I answer no, I don't think so. I can go high, meaning Yes, but at least I'm not as bad as they are.
I can also go low, which means, "Oh god, I really am a mess."
I really want to stay in the middle operating from my strengths. That's where my wise adult lives.
I'm much more defended up here or defended down here. And I'm really not thinking with my wise adult.
That's what Terry Real talks about in his new book "US." He's been a psychologist and therapist for nearly 40 years. And he argues that psychologists have done well dealing with shame, but not so well with the other side of low self esteem, which is grandiosity. It's when we go out and put others down to make ourselves feel better.
Here's what that looks like when we're in our three questions. Grandiosity, answers the questions this way.
- "What?" it's the other person that's the problem, not me.
- "So what?" They aren't good enough. I'm superior. That feeling of superiority, really helps us feel better helps us feel better while we're at least we're not that bad.
- "Now what?" do we do? Well, we go on the attack, we tell other people how bad they are. And that helps us feel better.
Does this sound familiar? It really rang true to me. And now I'm trying to figure out how do I manage it when I see it happening. What's the best response when I see grandiosity in one of my loved ones?
Terry argues that we need to apply limits here. The What? is when they say attack words. What do we do? We say let's set a limit.
This is responsible loving. I am going to set a limit. I'm not going to allow myself to be attacked. It could be as easy as saying hey, those are attack words. Let's take a break on this subject and get back together in 15 minutes. In fact, I need to go the bathroom. So that's where I'm headed right now.
This time out, gives us both time to recalibrate. Take deep breaths. Be centered back in our body and notice what's going on inside there.
When we are feeling defensive, or we're feeling the need to defend ourselves. We come back after 15 minutes and say Okay, let's go out at that again. Or it could be 15 hours. It's whatever the timeframe is that you know, is needed or that you'd like to have before you come back at it again. \
Because that we don't resolve our any of our problems operating from our defensive positions.
Here's Terry's piece of advice. "There is no redeeming value whatsoever in being harsh. Harshness does nothing that loving firmness doesn't do better."
We're firm, we will not be attacked. And we're going to come back and see what we can do to talk this over together when cooler heads prevail and we're both operating much more from our strengths.
This is just one example of the insights you'll get inside The Art of Adulting where we operate from our strengths, we set our life GPS so we know what we want, and we practice the seven habits on our way to getting what we want because things will always come up including being attacked. Bye for now.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai