Learning to Not Be the Jerk With Knee-Jerk Reactions

Imagine you are standing on a busy street corner. You watch as a holy person (a priest, minister, rabbi, monk—anyone you consider officially holy) walks toward you from across the street. Also on the street corner is a homeless person, lying on the sidewalk, moaning to themselves in apparent pain. You watch as the cleric steps over this person and keeps moving down the sidewalk.

Ask yourself: What do I think of this holy man? How am I feeling about them? Also, what do you think “caused” this spiritual guide to sidestep someone in clear need?

Take a few moments and brainstorm as many possible explanations as you can. What are all the possible contributing factors to why someone like this would act in what looks to be such a callous manner?

Social psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson (1973) asked this very question in their classic experimental test of the “Good Samaritan” parable from the Christian Bible. With carefully designed experimental research, they demonstrated that even seminary students, if led to believe they were running late for a talk they were assigned to give, were quite likely to step over an obviously “suffering” homeless research confederate. When the pressure is on, perhaps many of us generally decent folk might miss our chance to help when it arises.

Don’t Be a Knee-Jerker With Others

The point here is that there might be many reasons beyond our initial impressions and assumptions as to why another person might be exhibiting “difficult," aberrant, or in some way unpleasant behavior. In our personal and professional relationships, there are causal factors “behind” every eye roll, F-bomb, and passive-aggressive action. There might be many influences beyond the scope of the theories and assessments guiding my actions as a clinician — like the gamma rays made the Hulk act irrationally!

You (like all of us) will watch others doing the maladaptive things they do (or not doing the adaptive things) and will make all sorts of judgments, draw conclusions, and assign labels. Some of those may indeed be helpful, but the question is whether we are capturing the full picture, or whether we may be leaving out crucial factors that would really help the moment of communication in our relationship unfold toward connection and positive creation.

From our species’ long history of blame, shame, prejudice, hate, or simply our hesitation to admit we were wrong to snap at a relative or client, we all need to take off our perceptual lenses and give them a good scrubbing. We need to broaden and deepen our perspective on ourselves, our loved ones, and those with whom we work.

Doing Better Than Busy Seminary Students

Momentology is the term I use for this sort of contextual, all-inclusive causal and contextual thinking. Learning to own moments of communication—to notice your thoughts and emotions without fixating and knee-jerk reacting—is central to learning and deepening your potential to flexibly connect, create, untie knots, and lead into the next moment.

Until you make a concerted, consistent effort to step back in your mind while you’re in the heat of moment with people and wonder about all the facets of their experience—all the things, people, events, circumstances, learning, and so on that might be driving things for them—you will lean toward being a Reactosaurus Rex, a dinosaur of communication, instead of the owner of moments leading to innovation and connect.

As a Reactorsaurus, you will use millenia-old survival-brain circuitry to frame others as being “difficult” or yourself as “less than.” You will miss opportunities to move moments higher. In effect, you’ll be more likely to sidestep, like the “holy man,” these moments of possibility with others who might really need what you have to offer.

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How often have you heard a colleague say (or heard yourself say), “Oh, I don’t work with X type of client"? How much are we unnecessarily limiting our ability to work effectively with the widest range of people?

The Beginning of the End of the Blame Game

In my own clinical work, I’ve been tempted by the thought that it is the patients who must be willing to change. That is why they came to me, right? To change. “So-and-so needs to start taking their situation seriously,” I’ve said to myself with more than a sigh of frustration. “They are they are a help-rejecter.” Can you see the blaming, the labeling, here? Can you feel the distance these statements create? I’ve been guilty on many occasions of talking to myself as if I had no responsibility in the matter; as if I were interacting with patients in a vacuum and delivering therapy to clients like a pizza or an order of sesame chicken for them to merely consume.

There is a deeply flawed, erroneous assumption here that my interventions are made to order and consistent regardless of the customer. It can be difficult to remember that my behaviors, and my emotions, are intimately interwoven in what happens for my patients in therapy. I must be willing to do things differently as well, even if it is hard, and perhaps painful, to do so.

The same applies to all my relationships, not just the ones I get paid for. As much as I’m clearly willing to influence my patients, I must ask whether I’m willing to be influenced by them, by my friends, family members, and even the person asking for spare change on the street. I must turn and face the whole of my experience of them. I must then own my experience and act according to what resonates, what fits—not just my agendas, but the entirety of me, them, we, and of the moment at hand.

Assess Your Need for Momentology “Training”

Consider the following questions. Take a moment and circle your response for each.

• It is important for me to avoid knee-jerk reactions to others in important personal and professional relationships. Yes No
• There have been times when I have struggled against strong, negative feelings about my important relationships, myself, or my abilities as a communicator. Yes No
• I have reacted to strong, negative feelings during crucial interactions with loved ones, co-workers, or clients, and I believe my emotions and/or behavior got in the way of things. Yes No
• I would like to create a “space” within myself for proactive responding when faced with difficulties in communication. Yes No
• I would like to model good emotion and self-management skills for loved ones and those I work with and for. Yes No
• I would like to minimize the risk of burnout and self/other-destruction action in my key fiscal or filial relationships. Yes No

The more often you answered “yes” to these questions, the more you are entering a process of self-exploration and possible healthy change of your own emotional contribution to the communication “knot” that has been tied in your relationships.

Obviously, we want to do the best communicating, connecting, and positive impacting possible, and it is not easy to acknowledge when this might not always be the case. While it may not feel good to acknowledge your “unhelpful” (or even nasty) reactions in the past, you should take solace in knowing those answers of yes to these questions are the norm, not the exception. We all struggle with strong feelings about relationship communication on an almost daily basis. We all stumble in managing these experiences. A lack of willingness to attend to these gaps in managing oneself is the greatest cause for serious concern.

Take Action: Are you willing to acknowledge to someone right now that you intend to improve your ownership skills for moments of communication—that your personal and professional relationships could stand to benefit greatly from you learning to own the whole of your experience, not just the parts that suit (and gratify) your ego?