I listened to Krista Tippet talk to Christine Runyan on the On Being podcast this week. They were talking about the nervous system and the neuroloical response we have to trauma. I heard Christine talk about a quote attributed to Viktor Frenkel that stuck with me…“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our power to choose. And in our choice lies our growth and our freedom.”
I have been thinking about that a lot. The self awareness to pause. Especially when we are triggered. The ability to breathe between stimulus and response. And choose to act in a way that helps tp deescalate the amygdala.
Marc Brackett talks of the power in naming the emotion and being able to identify what we feel. His use of the pneumonic RULER is a useful tool and of course his mood meter has provided so much descriptive vocabulary to use with children and adults a like. Susan David talks of toxic positivity and not brushing over big emotions but instead sitting with it so that we can see what lies underneath and ask the question of what is causing us to feel this way?
My focus for the foreseeable future is to think of that space between stimulus and response.
To breathe
To pause
To feel grounded.
I have been working a lot on this skill over the past year. I’m not familiar with the pneumonic ruler, so I will be doing more research. Thank you!
Check out Mark Brackett’s work… its really interesting.
I read your post today and realised that it really spoke to me about my golf game.
Stop in the space between stimulus and response.
To breathe, to pause, to feel grounded ! Yes!
Glad you were able to connect to it.
As I’ve learned, this concept of pausing and recognizing our feelings (especially the negative ones) is very important to emotional growth. I enjoyed reading this and am anxious to check out this podcast. Thanks.
Many thank!
This was great. And really good advice for me. My therapist and my daughters therapist really work on naming emotions. And also measuring the size of the problem. So a big problem has a big response and a little one gets a little one. That could work with your pause idea. Pausing to name the emotion before responding. And pausing before responding to size the problem and reaction.
But pause between trigger and reaction. Great advice.
Size of the problem is such a great lens to look through when things rankle us… thank you!
You’re welcome! While hard to do all the time, it’s been very helpful for our whole family.