The startling flip side to "It's not about me"
A provocative view on monumental emotional outbursts
After I published “I hate it when people go silent on me”, Tom Pendergast responded with this comment:
He’s absolutely right!
And “It’s not about me” is exactly what I tell myself — after the Pavlovian rush of questions about what’s going on.1 Something I wonder about even when I do not assume I did anything to cause someone to turn into a ghost.
But there’s a flip side to the “It’s not about me” reframe.
One that’s easily overlooked.
Maybe because the flip side isn’t as soothing as calming yourself down over a perceived slight.
People will upset you.2
It’s gonna happen. Intentionally or not. And let’s assume it’s unintentional. If only because most people don’t get up in the morning and think: “Oh, let’s make today a good day by upsetting someone.”
Thing is, when someone acts in a way that — as Tom puts it — has the potential to upset you, chances are that they’re reacting to something you (or someone close to you) did or said.
Because you too can and will upset other people.
A sobering thought.
One I was reminded of a couple of months ago.
I was in my car. Nina in the back. Wind in our hair.
We were heading back from a training or a walk and I wanted to pick up a few groceries before… I don’t remember what, but I was running late and in hurry.
On our ring road a car two cars ahead of me was pottering along like tomorrow was two days away. “Sunday drivers” is what we call them.3
Good to annoy me even at the best of times!4 So I hoped they would continue on the ring road, but no, they turned into the neighborhood with the supermarket.
Deng!
And then he (I was right behind them now and could see the driver was male) also headed down the road to the supermarket.
Double Deng!
“Gosh, step on it, man. We don’t all have all the time in the world” I muttered.
For most of my life I was in a rush (to nowhere in particular). And every time someone didn’t move at the pace I wanted, I got frustrated. Yes, road rage. Of sorts. Not rage as in getting angry, but still aggressively tailgating in an ill advised attempt to get them to speed up or out of my way.
Many moons years, ago I stopped doing that. That was when I decided I was done with hurrying and feeling rushed.5 And life’s felt so much better more relaxed since!
I hate to admit it, but this time I wasn’t able to chill out, sit back, and take life as it comes. I regressed. Aggressively tailgated. Realized I was doing it and still couldn’t stop myself.
When we both got out of our cars, he fumed at me from three or four spots down. To the point where his wife (I assume she was his wife) suggested he stay outside with the car. I guess she wanted to avoid a scene in the supermarket.
Suited me fine.
I hadn’t responded to his fuming — he was right, but I wasn’t in a place to admit it yet — and didn’t look forward to encountering him in the tight confines of any aisle.
Anyway, let’s get back to the flip side of “It’s not about me.”
However cliché it sounds, it’s 100% true.6
Here’s why.
Our subconsciousness keeps a tight lid on what our senses perceive.
Just as well.
Our senses are bombarded with 6 to 11 million7 bits of information. Per second! While our consciousness can only handle 40 to 50.8
So thank your subconscious from the bottom of your heart for ruthlessly limiting what it allows through. We’d go crazy if it didn’t.9
Does that mean we’re at the mercy of the filters our subconsciousness applies?
Yes, most of the time.10
But our subconsciousness isn’t a rogue player, it doesn’t work haphazardly. It takes it cues from what you, consciously, have decided is important to you.
Like what you’re interested in, how you think the world works and thus what you expect to see and hear (confirmation bias11, anyone?). In other words your values, fears, desires, and beliefs (convictions) — all stemming from the entirety of your experience of and in life.
All of that also determines how you consciously interpret the raw observations that make it through. Interpreting what we see, hear, smell, feel, and taste, deciding what it means to us is immediate and essential.12 Our very survival depended on it. And our brains do not distinguish between (expected) physical and social (mental) pain.13
Have a look at this video. Be sure to stop it 39s in.
What do you think is going on?
Only then watch the rest of it.
Did you get it right?
The long and short of it:
Someone’s values, fears, desires, beliefs (convictions) and resulting expectations
— the entirety of their experience of and in life —
determine 100% how they interpret what happens to and around them.
Which means that even a very personal attack (like the 20 minute verbal barrage of rage I once experienced at the mouth of a colleague), is never about you. Even when the person doing the attacking very much thinks it is. At least in that moment.
Soothing thought, right? But it has a flip side that’s less so.
When your emotions run high about what someone said or did, it is never about them either!
Not a very comfortable or comforting thought, perhaps?
Yet I think it is.
Because if it’s not about them, it’s about me.
And I can learn something from it. About the one person in this world I have any real control over: me. And that means I can do something about it!
So I’ll be less thrown for a loop next time something similar happens. So I can be less reactive, more equable, and more resilient.14
So next time someone riles you up:
Stop yourself for a second and figure out
what got trampled
for you to bristle like a porcupine.
When did you have the resilience to respond instead of react?
Live long and prosper!
Marjan
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Footnotes
Many of those questions inspired by a lifetime of trying to figure out what’s expected after having been told many times, in no uncertain terms, that what I naturally do and don’t do, isn’t normal. Not all that surprising with an (as yet) undiagnosed neurodiverse brain…
Actually, you upset yourself about what someone says or does.
Drivers who (supposedly) only go out on a Sunday, don’t have anywhere to be, and then (thus?) stay 10-20 kph (or more) below the speed limit.
In Data’s words: I have a predilection for piloting vehicles at unsafe velocities. In other words: I like speed, whether I am in a hurry or not.
Not hurrying to avoid feeling rushed was a major change in my life. At first, stupidly, I tried accomplishing this by drawing on skills that are not exactly my forte. Deciding to leave on time sounds was a brilliant idea, but it didn’t work. Not until I started a practice that mitigated my neurodivergent tendencies around this. More on that in another sidenote.
Most clichés are true (most of the time) or have truth at their core. They're not clichés because they're false, they're clichés because they've been overused and we're tired of hearing them.
Interestingly, that’s part of the explanation for autism according to some. Autistic brains’ filters are “leaky.” They let too much through, leading to overwhelm, and inspiring withdrawal (isolation) to get a bit of inner peace.
Learn more about this through: Helgi Páll Helgason’s question and the answers to it on Research Gate asking for Estimates of quantified human sensory system throughput, Brittanica’s Physiology (in information theory in Applications of information theory), aka communication theory, and NPR’s Short Wave podcast (12 minutes) on Understanding Unconscious Bias.
One study, The Capacity of Cognitive Control Estimated from a Perceptual Decision Making Task, puts cognitive control at a mere 3 to 4. Not sure how cognitive control relates to “bits of information”, though. If you know, please enlighten me in the comments.
Interesting fact: our brains prepare to move before the intention registers in our consciousness. Seminal study: Manipulating the Experienced Onset of Intention after Action Execution, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Brittanica’s Confirmation Bias in psychology.
Anyone working with challenging behavior — in humans and other animals — needs a lot of training to describe behavior without immediately categorizing, i.e. attaching a label (interpretation) to it. I’ve personally experienced how hard it is for people to objectively describe what happens in front of them. May write a story about it. Let me know if you’d be interested in that.
Original research: Does rejection hurt? An FMRI study of social exclusion. The researcher, Naomi I Eisenberger, addressing the criticisms of findings: Social Pain and the Brain: Controversies, Questions, and Where to Go from Here.
More on how to do that in another sidenote sometime.
Great article! And I love the illustrations - both the cats AND the cement lorry. They both made me laugh!