Does someone have the power to push your button?
May 9th, 2008 by spaceagesage
How hot under the collar do you get when someone at work belittles your efforts, or always corrects you in
front of others, or never seems to really listen to you? If one or more of these actions pushes your button enough to cause a very strong emotional reaction – the kind of reaction where thinking about revenge seems delicious and appropriate – then I have news for you: If you let someone push your buttons, they are in control of you.
Why do we let others do this to us?
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Good news: You can free yourself from your buttons.
Bad News: You have to face the unresolved fears or pain that created the button.
Ouch!
According to James Tamm and Ronald Luyet authors of Radical Collaboration,
The difference between a small annoyance and a button is like the difference between Teflon and Velcro. It is slips off you like Teflon, it is not a button getting pushed. If, however, the incident sticks in your throat, heart or gut like Velcro, then you’ve probably got some unresolved fears or pain that is a button waiting to be triggered.
I used to get defensive when someone would belittle an idea of mine. I finally realized it came from having three older brothers who did a lot of belittling of their “baby sister.” I still fight getting defensive when my husband won’t accept my help with something, but now I know the root cause of that anger comes from those same three brothers pushing me aside and telling me I was too young to be a part of their lives.
In their book, Tamm and Luyet have a list of 50 Signs of Defensiveness. Here are a few:
- Loss of humor
- Playing “poor me”
- Suddenly tired or sleepy
- Intellectualizing
- Becoming sarcastic
- Jumping to conclusions
- Obsessive thinking
- Holding a grudge
- Terminal uniqueness (I’m so special; rules don’t apply to me)
- Making fun of others
- All-or-nothing thinking
- Emotional rigidity (if I feel it, it must be true)
The two odd things about defensiveness are 1) when we are fully defensive, we don’t recognize that we are, and 2) our IQ drops suddenly. How many times have you heard this from a defensive person, “I am not being defensive!” (Denial is fun, yes?) How many times have you watched a defensive person act like an idiot because of their high octane emotion of the moment?
Well guess what, that same is true of you and me when we become defensive.
In the next post, I will write about what to do with these buttons so others don’t push them anymore. Until then, I leave you with:
He who angers you conquers you.
~ Elizabeth Kenny ~
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