When To Disengage

We all face situations in life that cause stress and perhaps demand a response from us. But deciding which response to take can be one of life's great challenges. There's a fine line between facing problems head-on, and perpetuating them. A similarly fine line resides between letting other people's behavior roll off of your back, and being a doormat. Most of us tend to err on one side or another: we're either doggedly standing up for ourselves and sometimes steamrolling others and creating extra drama when we face those who don't like to be steamrolled, or are accommodating others to the point that others are taking advantage of us and we feel completely trapped. We can either 'let it be' most of the time and occasionally find ourselves twisting into a pretzel trying to work with a maze of sticky situations, or fight every battle that comes and sometimes feel we're always fighting.

Where's a happy medium, and how does one find it?

I think the first step is becoming aware. Taking a look at our habitual responses, and seeing where they're getting us. Most of us try to have a response that fits each unique situation, but we do have fallback stances that we take when we're stressed, and these responses usually skew in one direction. You can also take this communication styles quiz to assess whether you tend to be aggressive, passive or somewhere in between. Still not sure? Ask five people who know you--ideally from different areas of your life, with varying degrees of closeness to you. You should get the idea.

Once you've determined your regular style, start looking at your trigger situations--those situations that require a response from you--as opportunities for growth. The next time you feel yourself wanting to attack or retreat (natural responses to stressors, by the way; that's what your fight-or-flight response is for), see if you can just sit with it for a few minutes before reacting. (A brief meditation/ht/meditation.htm">meditation or prayer can be helpful here!)

Then when you do respond, try to stretch a little and respond in a way that's slightly outside of your comfort zone, in the opposite direction of your 'default response'. Resist the urge to control the situation, if that's your usual style; or take charge of things a little more than you normally would, if that's unusual for you. Taking this mindful approach can be an important turning point in finding greater balance in your responses. Give it a try and see what happens.

When's the last time you needed to disengage? What's your habitual style for relating to people?

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When To Disengage originally appeared on About.com Stress Management on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 06:23:18.

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