Many men struggle with remaining present and active in the face of conflict. If a man has not learned to address his emotions in a healthy way, he will have a proclivity to meet challenging situations with unproductive or even harmful reactions such as:
- Passivity
- Passive-Aggression
- Aggression
Being susceptible to mixed messages about your masculinity, leadership and your feelings, questioning your worth and value, harboring unprocessed pain, and misunderstanding the responsibility in and of your masculine roles (husband, father, etc.) contribute to impulsive reactions.
Passivity: Does nothing.
A prolonged passive response is a shrugging of the shoulders to situations that require and benefit from presence and engagement. A passive response looks like:
- Prolonged silence
- Avoidance
- Resignation
- Retreat
- Shutdown
- Silent blame
- Excuses
- Justification
- Resentment
- Disingenuous surrender
- Confusion
- Withholding
- Inaccurate response
- Lying
- Placation
Men who remain passive may feel as if they are being active by surrendering in the name of peace. But being passive means letting things happen without your leadership and participation. Rather than taking an active role, the passive male remains silent and absent, willingly surrendering his value, insight, wisdom and perspective. The passive male disengages and hopes for the best, allowing critical decisions to be made on his behalf.
Passive-Aggressive: Remains silent and immobilized but emotionally unsettled
Men who meet conflict with passive-aggression cause confusion and create barriers to meaningful solution and connection. The passive-aggressive male is silent while emotionally seething. He internalizes and stifles his emotions. He devalues his own opinions while blaming others for how they devalue him. He is silently contemptuous, deeply resentful and blinded by the lack of integrity in his thoughts, feelings and actions.
Passive-Aggression looks like:
- Yes when you mean no, and vice versa
- Resentment
- Blame
- Pouting and sulking
- Wishing for others to accept and understand you without explanation
- Inauthentically surrendering
- Holding onto past issues
Aggressive: : Attacks with anger out of fear
For some men, a reaction to a trigger may be aggression, emotionally, verbally and physically. Aggression can present as:
- Blame
- Excessive anger (rage)
- Attacking
- Shame
- Yelling
- Threatening
- Name calling/insulting
- Assault
- Weaponizing
- Excessive control, authority
- Dominance and possession
Aggression is the option that is never an option. The aggressive male is often a victim of his own unprocessed trauma and is dangerous to himself and others. The aggressive male needs to take immediate action to learn to substitute healthy responses for his aggressive impulses.
There is support available for men with proclivity to aggression that offers empowered alternatives to expressing feelings, ideas and thoughts. Please contact me directly for resources regarding solutions to aggression.
Retaliating in any of these ways is not only dangerous to others and your relationships with them, but to yourself as well. These reactions prevent you from authentically addressing your emotions with honesty and maturity and can lead to
a lack of confidence and integrity, as well as others’ confidence in you.
Once you identify tendencies to react in unproductive ways, you can explore and create new options for how you choose to respond - in ways that are meaningful and connective and that cultivate understanding, purposeful solution and intimacy in your relationships. To begin the process of learning to respond versus react, try integrating this process:
PAUSE
Following an emotional stimulus (or “trigger”), you are given the opportunity of a brief pause that allows you to choose how to best respond. Taking pause to understand what you are experiencing emotionally and mentally, allows you to reapproach the situation with calmness and clarity. Closing your eyes or taking a few deep breaths can usually give you the space you need to ground your emotions.
IDENTIFY YOUR EMOTIONS
Often emotions can feel inundating and consuming. You can begin to take control of them by allowing yourself to feel what is happening in your body and expressing this awareness to yourself or aloud. “I am feeling anger in my chest. I am feeling overwhelm in my shoulders.” This allows you immediate accountability for what you are experiencing.
REMAIN ACTIVE
Remaining active means embracing and engaging with what is happening. It is fighting the desire to shut down, aggress, attack or defend.
COMMUNICATE
If you need time to calm or still your mind, saying, ”I need a minute to process this,” is usually enough to create the space you need to step away with mature communication. This is an active response. Step away if you need to, but be clear to do it actively to let the person know you are willing to stay engaged, but that you want to do it in a way that best serves the interaction and the relationship.
REAPPROACH
With a clear mind and the calming of reactionary emotions, you are prepared to address what is happening, now better equipped to reach understanding and resolution.
Working through these steps is a clear demonstration of your emotional mastery and willingness to serve through provision of safety and a willingness to work through conflict, problems and issues. This process allows you to build confidence in yourself and allows others to trust that you are a safe person with whom they can interact and connect.
Cultivating the proper emotional response requires maturity, discernment and practice. It entails knowing when and how to step in with truth and grace in the best interest and welfare of others, your relationships and yourself. Learning to address your emotions in a way that acknowledges and honors them allows you mastery over them.
Emotional mastery is a significant component of the Repositioning process.
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