Have you ever reacted impulsively to something someone said and gotten defensive? Although there are plenty examples in my own life for this, I will instead remark on an event I observed a while ago.
In a nursing facility where I consult, I went searching for my next client. If I don't find my clients in their rooms, getting their hair done, or playing Bingo, perhaps they are in physical therapy. Indeed, I find Betty in the treatment room tending to her broken ankle. Over a year before, she had had another fall in which she severely injured her head, resulting in possible traumatic brain injury which in turn may hasten cognitive decline.
Nevertheless, Betty is an intelligent and witty woman who loves books and movies more than she can cotton to Bingo. She is not enamored with physical therapy either, but that may not be all her doing. Because on this day, one of the physical therapists announced that Betty told her to stop chewing gum while she was working with another patient.
The therapist said, “I just told her not to look.”
Phew, I thought to myself, that is quite a reaction on the part of the therapist. So I answered, “Perhaps it would have been better to say, ‘okay’” — reminding the therapist that the patient is after all the (paying) boss.
A little later in the conversation the physical therapist blurts out that her mother used to correct her for chewing gum. The plot thickens, I think, and so I respond, “Ah, so Betty got the projection of your mother onto her!”
In other words, the physical therapist was unable to maintain her professional composure when her own personal complex of issues regarding her mother got triggered. The therapist reacts defensively to Betty not because Betty corrected her about chewing gum, but because the therapist in a flash “saw” her mother correcting her. It was her emotional hot button, unrecognizable to her until I remarked on it.
On the other hand, I have witnessed nursing assistants who maintain their professional composure and don't become overwhelmed in emotional reactivity in some pretty trying circumstances. An example: an African American nursing assistant keeps her cool attending to the bathroom needs (not easy in the best scenarios) of a racist resident who may occasionally hurl racist epithets.
When I asked this assistant how she keeps her equilibrium, she replies, “I consider the source and the years when that old person grew up.” That is a courageous example of being able to not become reactive to another’s reactivity.
We are all works in progress. And we all have our emotional hot buttons. However, it is never too late to learn what those hot buttons are or how to calm them when they arise.
We can all take time to reflect: “What have I said and why have I said it? What emotions are or were rising in me? Might there be some connection to my family history—about my mother, father, brother, sister?”
When we learn that the Bettys of the world are not our mothers, we then have the reins on reactivity — reactivity no longer reigns over us.
PS: Our reactivity can be so off the mark. A week after the interaction between Betty and the physical therapist, Betty remarked wistfully how her husband, now deceased, always had gum in his pockets and how she wished that she could have some. For Betty, gum had an entirely different meaning than what the therapist ascribed.
* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments atMindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted towww.drgajdos.com.
About Kayta Gajdos
Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.
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Oh my gosh- Thank You Dr G!
This is totally awesome! What wonderfully helpful insights.
Please come sit with me in my office when I have the (rare) difficult client who is argumentative and is treating me like an un-educated piece of low-level dirt or one that really can’t believe that a woman Exec. Assist. has been given the authority to speak for the company owner/president, and I feel like I am backed into a corner.
I’ll will thoughtfully read this over (and over) to see how it applies to me.
It would be better than going home,having a Gin at Tonic and wrapping myself in my quilt with my stomach in knots.
~Your Friend in the Little House in the Big Woods.
🙂