I'm a new person

[bustorama]

There is a vulnerable way to express yourself when you feel hurt or betrayed that tends to draw people closer to you, rather than push them away (like anger tends to).

I waited a couple of days before talking to her. I thought this would cool me down. I also wrote out what I was going to say, but I think I need to work smarter at this. Write down and EDIT!

This is so great that you are aware of it and already taking steps to try to address it. Here are a few things that I have found useful:

1) HALT -- If you find yourself wanting to talk about something, and you are:

H-ungry
A-ngry
L-onely or
T-ired

then HALT, take some time to yourself. Step away from the conversation. Excuse yourself if you have to, "I want to step away/talk about something else right now, because this isn't the best time for me to talk about this."

The trick is you need to KEEP doing this over and over and over if you have to until it isn't such a hot topic for you -- eventually the stove will cool down.

2) PAUSING -- Any time you are talking to someone about something "hot," make it a habit to stop yourself the moment you are about to talk/respond. Like literally, if you are about to respond to them, even opening your mouth. Stop yourself. Even if just for a second or two. Just the act of stopping yourself engages the same parts of the brain that help to self-regulate how we feel and what we say. It also cues yourself to be mindful of what you say and how you say it. If you are talking from that frame of mind, you are less likely to respond as instinctually with the emotional/reptilian parts of your brain.

3) THOUGHT STOPPING/CHALLENGING -- if you find yourself REALLY angry about something, try to thought stop real quick and try to challenge the thoughts that may be giving rise to your anger. For example, in the case of your friend putting her agenda on you, a thought that was fueling your anger about what your friend was telling you might have been -- "She doesn't trust that I know what I am doing and is telling me how to live my life." An alternative, challenging thought of the same event (your friend telling you what to do) might have been, "She is really worried about me and doesn't want me to be taken advantage of or hurt further, so she is telling me what she thinks would protect me from further harm. I see things differently, but she is doing this because she cares about me." If you get fast at identifying your feelings and try to work back to the thoughts/cognitive interpretations that may be giving rise to those feelings, then you can challenge your own thoughts with other interpretations of the situation.

The best thing to do is validate him and accept him -- don't try to convince him otherwise in any way. Accept that it's how he feels.

I did do this well. I agreed with him. Told him that I am also scared of R, BUT I still want to try.

Next time don't tell him that you want to try. By telling him you want to try you are implicitly invalidating his stated view that it may be too dangerous to try. You are making it about you and how you feel (instead of how he feels).

You can feel that you want to try. He can feel (right now) that he does not want to. And everything can be ok, both right now, and in the future. You telling him that you want to try will not convince him to try (it will tend to do the opposite, if anything).

The counter-intuitive part to the DB LRT is that the more you LOVINGLY and ACCEPTINGLY adopt the view that you are ok with not trying, that you accept that they don't want to try and, indeed, are done trying with someone who does not want to try with you, the more likely it is that they will want to try with you.