The Tragic Cycle of "Overwhelm & Withdraw"

The Tragic Cycle of Overwhelm & Withdraw

adapted from LaShelle Charde

If you often feel overwhelmed and have a tendency to withdraw when stressed, then you may be wearing the "overwhelmed/withdrawn" face and inadvertently contribute to a reactive cycle.  

A gentle, engaging, and welcoming response from others is the best medicine for someone who has the reactive habit of feeling overwhelmed and withdrawing.  Unfortunately, the "overwhelmed/withdrawn" facial expression is one of the least likely ways to get this response.

The "O & E" face may reveal blank and frozen eyes, a lack of facial expression and a stiff body posture.   

When you wear the expression of overwhelmed/withdrawn, others often think one or more of the following:  

• You don't want connection and would rather be left alone.
• It will be a lot of work to connect with you.
• You will be boring.
• You think you are better than everyone else.

Acting on these thoughts others are more likely to forget you, ignore you, or avoid you.  This experience then reinforces the idea that you don't belong in the world, the world isn't a safe place to be you, and it is better to withdraw. Here begins the cyclic faulty thought reactive pattern.

You can intervene with this cycle in at least three ways:

First, practice noticing how you are holding your face and body. Invite yourself to soften, relax, and open your posture and energy.  

Second, anticipate events in which you are most likely to move into the overwhelm/withdraw reaction.  As you enter the event, practice engaging with others despite the impulse to withdraw.  Engagement can be as simple as making eye contact, smiling, walking towards others, saying "hello," and sitting without legs or arms crossed.

Third, out yourself whenever you can.  Let others know that you feel a bit overwhelmed and even though you might look like you aren't wanting to connect, you really welcome connection and are glad to be with the group.  This last bit of expressing what's really going on for you, is the fastest way to create a bridge between you and those around you.

Practice

If overwhelm and withdraw is a common pattern for you choose one of the three interventions listed above to practice with this week.  If this pattern describes someone you know, find one time this week to offer a gentle, engaging, and welcoming phrase or gesture.

Reactive?

Defining Reactivity

Being able to name clearly some key aspects of reactivity as it arises can prevent escalation and keep you grounded.  Reactivity as I am using it in the context of Compassionate Communication refers to any form of disconnect from your own or another's life energy.  The internal experience of reactivity is marked by the following:

• Unconscious contraction or collapse of your body and energy
• An inability to consciously consider and evaluate multiple views of a given situation.
• A loss of awareness and honor of your own needs and/or the needs of others.
• A lack of willingness to seek or accept feedback from others.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but rather some of the basic categories.  What else do you notice in your experience of reactivity?

On the outside, reactive behaviors can be categorized into four types: defend, attack, submit, and withdraw.

• Defend:  in defending you offer all the good reasons you have for doing what you did and try to show that you are not wrong or bad.
• Attack: when attacking you make a case for how the other person is wrong or bad in some way.
• Submit:  when you submit, you believe and take on others' negative judgments of you and apologetically take the blame regardless of your true responsibility.
• Withdraw.  In withdrawing you find yourself moving away or shutting down, physically, emotionally, and/or verbally.

In which of the four reactions, defend, attack, submit, or withdraw, do you most often find yourself?  With what body language, behavior, thoughts, and words, do you express that reaction?  Once you notice you are in reaction what is your de-escalating strategy?

Practice
At least one time this week notice when you find yourself in one of these reactions. See if you can watch the reaction without acting from it. Then start guessing the thoughts, feelings and needs that are alive for you underneath the reaction (self-empathy). After connecting with your feelings and needs decide what action/request you want to make of yourself or someone else to meet your needs.

LaShelle Charde

Hearing without Defending

You arrive fifteen minutes late for an appointment with your partner.  She expresses her disappointment and need for predictability and asks you to call or text next time you are going to be late.

You bristle.  You see her face and how upset she is and start to defend yourself.  At the speed of light jackals flood your consciousness with ideas that she is judging you and making you wrong.  If you are the wrong one here, then she'll break up with you.  Or worse yet, it will mean you are a bad person, an incompetent failure.  You better prove yourself.

Under the influence of defensiveness you quickly minimize her feelings and needs and start to make a case for how you are good person.  It might sound like this, "I arrive late one time and you get all upset.  You should be glad I made it.  I always call when I am late, which is rare, and this one time you have to make an issue of it!"

Now your partner is reacting too and begins to recount all the times you were late and makes a case for how difficult it has been for her dealing with your issues about being on time.
The conversation escalates into more disconnect from here.  How can you keep from getting caught in this painful pattern of attack -defend?

Here are three keys to hearing your partner's feelings, needs and requests in a way that creates connection.

1.  Connect with Yourself First:    Every time you feel the impulse to defend, you can connect with yourself in one or more of the following ways:

• Repeat a reminder phrase to yourself.  Maybe something like, "I'm not a bad person because my partner is upset."  Or  "This is not about me."  Or  "It's okay for my partner to be upset."  Or  "I can hear her without taking the blame."  Or  "I am feeling defensiveness and want to remind myself that I know my intentions are good and I am a good person."

• Do something physical to interrupt your defensive pattern like lean back in your chair, take three deep breaths, or take a bathroom break.

• Put your awareness in your heart.  You can put your hand on your heart and just acknowledge the difficulty and the longing to be seen and accepted.  Breath through your heart of you feel your hand there.

2.  Stay Specific and Now:  Only talk about the current situation.  If you think you are already doing what she is asking, then ask if she can be more specific about her request. For example, "When I think that I already did what you requested, I feel confused and need more clarity.  Can you tell me exactly what it would look like if your need was met?"

3.  Offer Empathy:  Reflecting back to your partner her feelings and needs not only helps her to know she is heard, but also can help you move out of right/wrong thinking.  The important part here is to connect her feeling to her need, e.g., "I hear you feel disappointed because you need predictability.", rather than, "I hear you feel disappointed because I let you down."

So often I hear couples try to give empathy when they are really assigning blame, e.g., "You feel disappointed because I didn't call."  While this is a common way of expressing, it perpetuates a sense of being responsible for each other feelings.  When this happens you miss out on the opportunity to choose from the heart to meet each other's needs.

Practice
This week, notice when you have the impulse to defend by explaining, justifying, minimizing, or building a case.  Choose one or more of the practice steps listed above.  Interrupt your habit of defending and practice with one of the steps above.  You could even ask the other person for a re-do after you have defended and try out one of these practices.

Not taking it personally

When your partner expresses an unmet need and you criticize yourself about it, you take it personally (hear criticism) and feel hurt. When you accept that you are basically a good person with good intentions, doing the best you can, you are much less likely to take things personally.  Accepting yourself in this way requires practice and self-awareness.  Let's look at some of what this entails.


When you take things personally, you likely find yourself reacting. Either you tell yourself how wrong you are or you say how wrong the other person is.
Most people flip back and forth between the two, feeling alternately, depressed – angry, depressed – angry, . . .

When you have any reaction (by reaction I mean a sudden clenching of the body, heart, and mind - disconnect) to what someone is saying, the first thing to do is ask, "What am I telling myself? What am I making this mean?"  Reaction means a judgment show has begun in your mind. If you can get front row seats to this show, your chances of intervening are much higher.

Take the time to stop and watch your show rather than move on to the next distraction, or even worse, start speaking from your reaction.  Whether you are at work or at home, take a timeout. Bathrooms are great places for timeouts.

During this timeout you call on your calm and nurturing inner parent to dialogue with your judgment thoughts. Here's an example of a dialogue I had with a judgment thought of mine that was stimulated by a conversation in which I perceived criticism from someone's feedback.  In NVC we often use the term jackal to symbolize disconnected thinking, believing, and speaking.  The metaphor helps you to disidentify with your thoughts.

Jackal: You're worthless.
My inner parent: I'm guessing you're scared jackal.
Jackal: Yes. (already with this single line of empathy I could feel my body start to relax).
My inner parent: I'm guessing you think it will somehow be helpful if I believe what you say. How do you think it will be helpful?
Jackal: If you believe me, then you will shut down and get depressed and not take any risks and then we will be safe.
My inner parent: Yea, so you want to be safe from hurt.
Jackal: That's right.
My inner parent: Jackal, what we both know is that depression is actually more painful than any hurt I could experience in my relationships. Do you remember all the pain we've experienced in the past with depression? I want you to know I am committed to keeping us safe. I do this by paying attention to our inner experience through mindfulness, meditation, journaling, and talking with others.
And I consistently take the time to do these things, like I am doing right now with you.

This dialogue effectively dissolved this jackal. This was the alpha jackal of a pack that showed up together. So I did several dialogues of this sort before completely relaxing around the situation.

Let's sum up the key elements in learning to respond to yourself with acceptance so that you are less apt to take things personally.

1. Notice when you're reacting.
   1. Know the signs and symptoms of reaction in your body, heart, mind, and behavior.   Anger, collapse, shut down, and turning toward addictions are the most common indicators
2. Choose to take a timeout from the interaction.
3. Get front row seats at your jackal show (Ask: "What am I telling myself?").
4. Access the your calm and nurturing inner parent to give empathy to each jackal and ground yourself in truth.
5. Engage the jackals in a dialogue one by one. This dialogue includes:
   1. Guess the feelings and needs of your jackals
   2. Ground your jackals in what you know is true, (e.g. depression won't make us safe from hurt).
   3. Let your jackals know the concrete strategies you are engaging in to meet the needs they are concerned about.

Practice
Take time now to reflect on the last time your partner tried to express an unmet need and you took it personally.  Go through each of the steps above separately for each of the jackals that came up for you regarding that interaction.

L Charde