January 9, 2023

“You would look so much better if you just lost a little weight.”

“How do you manage to go to work and leave your kids for so many hours with the nanny? I could never do that”

“Why are you still single? Time is ticking! No one is perfect so you shouldn’t be picky.”

If you are a woman over the age of 20, most likely you’ve heard some version of these comments. And, they’re not so easy to ignore especially when you hear them so often.

Why is that?

We know that receiving, internalizing, and reinforcing any negative comments such as these increases stress, anxiety, frustration and worry; yet, we let them take over our thoughts.

These negative comments provide evidence that you are unworthy and not good enough, which can be demotivating and reaffirm your worst fear of not being enough.

It could be about your external appearance, relationship status, your parenting style, or your approach to a particular situation. It doesn’t matter - comments and judgments will always be made and passed. Sometimes, they catch you off guard because you wouldn’t have thought about it till it was said - and now it’s replaying in your head.

And, what does this all lead to?

Overthinking.

“Why is this person putting me down and making me feel less than I am?”
“Will they tell others?”
“Does everyone think this of me?”
“Is there something wrong with me?”

You feel embarrassed, hurt, offended, or insulted and if this is someone that you have to deal with regularly, they begin to live in your head, rent-free.

They hit a nerve in such a powerful way and more often than not, they get away with it leaving you feeling lost on how you should respond or react.

Perhaps you have been taught that speaking up for yourself can come across as impolite and/or disrespectful (especially, if you are a woman), but keeping it all in takes a toll on your mental health, which should be the most important. However, our natural response to people please gets in the way.

Your internal battle starts. “Why is this happening to me?” Making you feel like a victim in your life. And, the worst part is, oblivious to your feelings, the “offender” doesn’t even know the impact their words have made on you.

So let’s talk: What can we do if we feel like someone is taking our power away?

We have been told that life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how we respond. But what does that mean?

This “offender” is what we call a “Circumstance.” And, there are three types of Circumstances in our life. A Circumstance is something we cannot control but tend to spend most of our lives obsessing over.

The past and what happened.
Our environment and what’s happening around us.
Other people and how they behave.

This isn’t often discussed but we find it easier to try to control someone else’s actions rather than our own thoughts because we don’t know the right methods to do so.

So when this “offender” turns into a trigger point in your life after several similar incidents they start having an effect on your brain as you shift into survival mode.

It takes time for the brain to learn that this person is dangerous - to your mental and physical health - which is why you don’t go into survival mode after the first incident. It is built over time and is a learned response.

After you have several encounters with this person, your body starts to respond differently. It remembers. As Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD said, “the body keeps the score.”

You can feel a sense of anxiety or dread - not only causing your heart rate to increase and your body to tense up but also the tendency to disengage or disassociate from people or yourself.

This kind of anxiety or trauma fundamentally reorganizes the way the mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.

So how can we prepare you to respond the “right way?”

Understanding how your body and nervous system get affected by a trigger can help bring awareness to you so you can calm yourself down and not let anyone take away your power. This is a powerful skill to learn.

Additionally, a key step in learning to recognize your triggers, involves paying attention when situations generate a strong emotional response. Not just reacting but understanding why you are reacting this way. Beyond surging emotions, you might also experience some physical symptoms of anxiety, like a pounding heart or an upset stomach.
When your body feels danger (in the form of an “offender” or as mentioned earlier, a “Circumstance”), it will respond in one of four ways: fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.

Fight: According to LifeStance Health, “the fight response is self-preservation and for people using it, it doesn’t matter who they hurt in the process.” It can be either verbal or physical. And, it can be detrimental. For some people, it may feel as though the threat never went away. As a result, they find themselves always feeling as though they are on high alert, ready to fight because their body is prepared to attack. Or, people “fight” themselves - by trying to take control of their emotions. They fight this negative emotion by making another negative emotion stronger - perhaps, by inflicting pain on themselves. This is an example of why some people hurt themselves - to give them control over another kind of pain - one that is under their control. However, when used in a positive way, the fight response can help you be assertive, create and enforce healthy boundaries, find courage, and protect yourself (and loved ones) when necessary.

Flight: You try to run away from the conflict and put your attention elsewhere. Maybe staying out of the house more or finding ways to always stay busy so you don’t have to deal with the problem. This could be a form of avoidance. Overworking, overdrinking, over exercising, overspending etc. are all ways we use flight to avoid “danger” or “problems.”. Having said that in healthy situations, a flight response can also help you disengage from harmful conversations, leave unhealthy relationships, remove yourself from physically dangerous situations, and properly assess danger.

Freeze: You’re physically present, but mentally zoned out. Your body knows you can’t fight or avoid this danger, so it just freezes. You are numb. It leads to a sense of helplessness because there is nothing you can do to change the situation. They are not going to change and this is just your life now. It is important to learn healthy ways to deal with a real or perceived danger, rather than completely shutting down, perhaps changing your perception of this person or understanding their insecurities which lead them to behave this way.

Fawn: This is one that people have learned over time thanks to our need to people please. It is the need to make sure everyone else is okay or happy. When there is a conflict, you find yourself trying to defuse the situation and make everyone else feel calm. This comes from your need to be liked by others. Of course, healthy fawning responses can facilitate compassion for others and teach you how to compromise, but it can also cause a sense of loss of yourself.

Rasmeet’s Advice:

The most important thing is having awareness, in my opinion. By understanding how a person becomes a trigger and why their words have such strong effects on our body and mind is the first step in making yourself stronger. After you understand what’s bothering you internally, you can then start teaching yourself how not to take comments personally.

Just because someone says something doesn’t make it true. People talk. People pass judgment. People make unnecessary comments because everyone is dealing with their own insecurities. In most situations, it really is not personal - even if it feels like it.

It's easier to point out other people’s flaws than it is to do internal work on yourself. When you recognize this, it becomes easier to be at peace with who you are and where you are in life, and it gives you compassion when someone says something hurtful because it highlights their internal struggles more than your flaws.