R is for: Reactions & Responses
This post is part of a series I’m so excited about: “The ABC’s of What I’ve Learned as a Medium and Intuitive Healer.” This is my full-time career, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned!
*I say Spirit to mean God, the Universe, the Cosmos - I use these phrases interchangeably for all enlightened beings who help us. I use “greater Spirit” or “Spirit” to mean everything out there, taking care of and managing in here: Them as a group and concept. You may choose to substitute the word “Spirit” with Jesus, Archangel Michael, Allah, Lakshmi, Kuan Yin, The Universe, The Cosmos, or about a billion other names, and it doesn’t matter. Spirit is all this and so much more than we can ever understand. They don’t care what you call them so long as you give them the same respect they give you. I work with these beings closely, as they are an integral part of my practice and career. It is a relationship I heavily encourage everyone to build, as it enhances every aspect of our physical lives and spiritual practice.*
Our Reactions & Responses
It’s almost impossible to overstate how important our reactions are to creating the world around us. I've come to view our reactions and our learning to manage them as the most important thing in our lives. Maybe even the reason we take on these lives in human bodies!
Many of us are constantly looking around for something to control. (This is definitely a spectrum, many of us also are looking for any way to give up as much control as possible and let someone else take the reins for us.) Our relationship with control and when to apply pressure and when to release it is one of the biggest lessons each of us will go through during a lifetime, whether we're someone who shows too much assertion or too little. No amount of struggling with our relationship with control actually changes the things we do and don’t have control over. We can and should try to manage our relationships, of course, but we will never control our partners, friends, job, boss, parents, kids, or any external circumstances. No matter how hard we work to control every aspect of our environment, something will come along and show us that some things are bigger than the puppet strings we are each personally capable of pulling. (Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Freak accidents, deaths, etc.)
The one thing each of us does control every single day and in every single situation is our reactions. No matter how someone else behaves, and no matter how much we like or don’t like it, the only thing we control about the situation is how we respond to it. We can’t change the way someone else treats us, we can’t change what they will or won’t say to or about us. We can change how we respond. This is maybe the only thing in the world we have constant control over.
This is exciting because it also gives us an opportunity to be completely unique individuals who come up with personalized solutions! Ask yourself honestly: what do your responses look like? Are they mostly autopilot? Do you respond the way you’ve always responded without giving it much thought, even in situations that really matter to you? Or when you come upon a new or difficult situation, do you try to tackle it with a new and interesting response? Responding to an existing situation in a way we haven’t before is the only thing that can actually change our lives and move our circumstances forward. Responding on autopilot is one reason we tend to do the same things every single day, which leads to doing the same things for years on end.
Our entire life is a series of responding to what we come up against. Recognizing which responses worked for us and which ones didn’t yesterday, so hopefully we’ll use the best ones tomorrow and maybe even find some new ones. It’s coming up with successful outcomes by understanding what one does and doesn’t have an effect on. Deciding to have different reactions tomorrow than we had today is an absolute guarantee that our life will change, and if we do this with some thought, it’s pretty much a guarantee that our life will change for the better.
Spirit says cause and effect is 100% the most important part of being in these human bodies, and it is what we are here to learn about. When we have an understanding of cause and effect, we naturally behave with morality. When we understand that what we put into the world directly affects every single thing we get back, we behave with love and community almost by accident. Behaving out of line with ethics, or behaving in a way we wouldn’t want others to behave - this shows a lack of understanding cause and effect. It also shows someone who doesn’t understand that everything we do to others also affects us personally, and deeply.
Spirit would go so far as to describe enlightenment as a complete understanding of cause and effect on all levels. Our souls are here in these human bodies to learn about the effects we cause with our behavior. There’s truly no better way than by recognizing our reactions, understanding why we respond the way we do to different situations, and learning and growing from that self-inventory. Every single aspect of our lives that we don’t like, we are causing that effect. At minimum, we are allowing something in our life or it couldn’t be there (which is still a cause). Changes to our reactions and responses are the only thing that can bring about new effects. We must cause something new if we want to experience something new. This is what we’re all here learning!
This has an immense trickle-down effect on every area of our lives. Until we understand the way we are creating our own chaos through our reactions to the situations around us, we can’t change anything in our lives that makes us unhappy. Whether the situation is a tornado, divorce, loved one going to prison, a partner dying, or billions of other absolutely terrible situations we each go through, the only thing we can control about it is how we react to it. The only thing one controls is their response. When we see this clearly, we naturally learn how to control our responses, and self-control and self-awareness trickles down to every aspect of our lives. Now life feels purposeful and not like we are going through the motions of an existence we don’t understand and haven’t been given a rule book for.
Even if someone hurts or tries to hurt us, if we understand how to manage our responses, we recognize that no amount of trying to harm them back would help, and it would in fact be self-harm. Wishing them ill puts more ill will into the universe, and it helps no one involved. Hoping they get the help they need is an appropriate reaction, knowing they could not try to hurt us if they were doing well themselves. When someone tries to hurt me, I know it doesn’t matter, because they are not creating my experience, I am. No one can hurt me in a way that matters. They cannot manifest for me, so they cannot affect me without my permission.
My job is one which comes with an interesting side effect: occasionally, an angry client will try themselves or hire someone else to try to curse or psychically attack me. When under psychic attack, my spirit guides put me on high alert. For my job, I am very aware of my energetic baseline and starting point. So I feel it the moment my systems are being tampered with. I use my energy healing practice and my relationship with Spirit to maintain safety, and we undo the harm as it happens, meaning it never sticks to begin with. I never stoop to their level and wish harm in the opposite direction. Firstly, I know someone could not be attempting to take their pain out on me unless they felt unwell. There is not a single happy person trying to harm anyone else - it’s energetically impossible. So when someone tries to hurt me, I know they’re very unhappy, and I feel sorry for them that they think hurting me (or anyone) could make them feel better. I pray for them and hope they get the help they need. I manage my energetic systems and my reactions to intended harm, and all is well. Were I to attempt the same harm in reverse, I would lose spirit guides, gain bad karma, put the same ugliness I hate out into the world, and only make myself less happy in the process because I’d be engaging with someone I don’t even like in a way I do not like. Why do we keep trying responses and reactions which we can see don’t work?
No matter the lengths others go to affect us, when we know how to manage our reactions to their treatment, we are safe.
Even more magical - when we stop engaging with people who hurt us, and start reacting to situations as our highest self, we find that the people who come into our experience are simply better, less agitated people, all because now we are not someone who reacts in an agitated way.
Inappropriate Responses
Let’s define inappropriate responses here as those which simply don’t work. They will never, under any circumstances, lead to a positive outcome.
It becomes almost funny once we know how to gauge and purposely apply our reactions. We learn that some of our former responses were never going to work in the first place, no matter how hard we tried to make them. I have to tell myself often that no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to make everyone else in a situation see it the exact same way I do. This is my personal brand of torture. Each of us really has our own! Some of us want to control others' behavior, some of us want to control others' speech. I really, really want to know that everyone in a situation sees it the way I believe it should be seen, and of course, this is completely impossible! There is nothing I can do, no cause I can employ to receive that effect. And I shouldn’t want that effect! Everyone is a unique individual, completely welcome to and responsible for their own take on a situation. If everyone saw it how I did, they would be me and learning my lessons, and not their own. Their perspective being like mine probably wouldn’t even make me feel better, so why do I want that? It’s my personal method of dealing with control in my life, and probably my trauma popping up its head and showing how I want to have a say in how I’m seen by others. I’ve worked on this a lot, and it still shows up every now and then! I often have to tell clients that no matter how hard they try, they are never going to be able to control every word out of their child’s mouth. They will never be able to control the way their boss thinks of them. No matter how hard they try, self-criticism obviously doesn’t work, or it would have worked by now. Our tried and true methods can’t be considered tried and true if we can see that they simply do not have and have never had effects we like.
So when we say "inappropriate" responses, we don’t mean inappropriate in terms of immoral or “wrong." We’re saying inappropriate reactions are the ones where no matter how many times we try this, it is not going to get the desired effect.
In an old episode of the podcast Radiolab, they cited a study in which scientists administered electric shocks to a number of rats to see how they would respond to pain. (Evil.) Some rats just lay down and cried, some ran around in circles. But a large percentage of the rats ran across the cage and bit another rat. Like, a large percentage. It is a common response in a rat who is in pain to immediately cause pain in another rat. Now, we can’t know what the rat is thinking, but doesn’t just look very human? Some number of people in pain can’t help but lash out and attack another person, presumably thinking that if someone else is in pain, their pain will be lessened, or at least they won’t be alone.
The rats don’t just run and bite the other rats for no reason, it’s a direct response to trauma. Similarly, an aggressive person who constantly lashes out is doing so because they are suffering. Energy work shows us that someone who is not suffering is actually incapable of lashing out at others. This helps us understand that bad behavior is coming from suffering, not malice, and those who behave worst need the most help. (This also super does not excuse the behavior - they don’t get to just do it and not have consequences. But we can shift the thinking from “I hate this asshole” to “I hope this asshole gets the help they need.")
I used to be very petty and mean. I also lied a lot and in general I did not use my words to my benefit. I could not see how I was hurting others or myself, and I didn’t see it as a clear and open sign of how hurt and scared I was. When I look at younger me, I see a very traumatized and wounded young girl, and I can see many clear moments when my trauma and wounds became others’. I know now that when I lashed out, it was because I hated myself, I was suffering, and I needed help. Now, when I see someone being cruel, violent, or aggressive, I can’t help but see the rat who’s biting another rat. Spirit helped me stop, and they can help all of us see that biting another rat hurts so much worse than almost any other alternative.
We can think of lashing out at others as an inappropriate response because it doesn’t work. Lashing out never makes the person lashing out feel better, and it never makes the person receiving the lashing feel better. It makes everyone involved feel worse, it puts holes in everyone’s auric field - it is to everyone’s detriment. But it is a common reaction and response, especially in those unwilling to address their own trauma. We have entered a time in which it’s become acceptable to lash out at others and to be mean for no reason. Some number of people have negative comments to make on videos where people are petting animals, or crocheting, or jet skiing. We should see this as inappropriate because it doesn’t help anybody, but also as self-violence because every time we lash out or are cruel to someone else, we are putting holes in our own auric field and further perpetuating our use of an unsuccessful mechanism.
Alternatively, some of us respond by sinking inward. It’s not the flight in fight or flight, but the lesser-known freeze. Many cannot help but fall in on themselves in an uncomfortable situation, and this lacks self-agency. This also will never achieve a desired outcome, because it doesn’t teach us to propel ourselves forward. One must know how to defend themselves (there is a huge distinction between defending ourselves and lashing out or being aggressive, and the distinction is obvious and overt) and how to move themselves forward out of an uncomfortable conversation or situation. This is why freezing can be seen is an inappropriate response, just as much as too much aggression - it doesn't work.
Depending on our relationship with control, as well as who we are are on a soul level, in bad situations, some of us cannot help but do everything we can to grab onto as many puppet strings as possible. If we see a situation going poorly, we think surely we just need to get our hands on more pieces of it, and we'll be able to make it work. If you want something done right, do it yourself, and all that. We will never be able to run our lives completely by ourselves. We will always need other people, we will always need community and support. A surgeon in an operating room is not performing a surgery by themselves, there are a minimum of 10 other people in that room who are vital to the process. Attempting extreme control has to be seen as an inappropriate response because it doesn’t work and makes all involved feel crazy.
Appropriate Responses
If we are constantly lashing out, screaming and yelling, behaving violently, hitting things, etc., as adults, we are having some significant inner child issues, and our inner child is running a lot of our lives on our behalf at that point. It can help to recognize this. If we are someone who constantly lashes out, we can recognize: "This is not me, but my inner child reacting to this situation." Noticing that truth can really help us begin to have appropriate responses, even if we were not taught to have appropriate responses as children. We can think of an appropriate response as one which will actually work and get us the desired outcome. If we know lashing out doesn’t work, what kind of conversation would? Is there a way we can express our frustrations and even rage without making anyone involved feel unsafe or unheard? Can we recognize that our voice getting louder actually makes people hear us less? Lashing out is a really hard behavior to fight, but it is so important not to be the rat that bites other rats, if simply for no other reason than that it does not work or achieve anything whatsoever for any party.
In a situation in which we would normally freeze and refuse to speak up for ourselves, this is also often an inner child issue, just a very different kind of inner child. Some of us are taught as children that we can’t speak, can’t react, and should be quiet. We must learn in adulthood that this doesn’t work either. There is a healthy balance. We can be assertive without being aggressive. We can ensure we get what they need without ever taking anything from anyone else. One who struggles with sticking up for themselves should work to re-parent their inner child, and teach them that to move forward together, they can come up with some creative responses to the situations in their lives.
It’s similar with control. If we recognize that all we ever control is our responses, it’s really helpful because it gives us a built-in thing to control. It takes the pressure off - we can stop trying to control other people and situations, because that’s never going to get us anywhere anyway. If we only have evidence showing us that these things don’t work, why do we keep trying them? It requires self-inventory and intentionally coming off autopilot. Rather than grabbing tightly to every puppet string in sight, or throwing all controls down and refusing, we have to find the happy medium. We can look for the times in our lives which resulted in success, which times in our lives our behavior led to the outcome we wanted, and then reverse engineer that process. How can we build more success into our lives on purpose? How can we intentionally feel good more often? The answer will never be to control more of the situation or to give up self-control. The answer will be to manage our responses and understand the role we’re playing in the situations we don’t like in our life.
How Our Energetic Resources Play Into This
Energetic resources are an extensive concept and I wrote a whole post about them here, but essentially: we need physical resources like food, sleep, and safety so that we can have emotional resources like thoughts about our own wellness and emotional intelligence. We need to have both of these so that we can have relational resources which are required for anything from minimal conversation to serious relationships. We need to have all three of these in order before we have room for a thriving spiritual practice.
If you think of it very literally: Imagine being given 100 energetic credits per day. If we use 30 on fighting with our partner first thing in the morning, 20 on an aggravating conversation right when we get to work, 15 at lunch to listening to our coworker complain about their partner - you can see how all your energy can get snatched right up pretty quickly, and by the middle of the day, we don’t have a lot of ourselves left to give.
We can think of our reactions as building this way too. Studies have shown that judges are more likely to rule against defendants if they are hungry, and more likely to rule in favor of defendants right after lunch when they have eaten. This show shows that a person without physical resources like food is not in a position to make emotional, relational, or spiritual decisions. If we don’t have enough food, sleep, money, or security, we absolutely won’t have the resources to have our best emotional, relational, or spiritual reactions. If we are in a crisis at home and fearing our physical safety is in danger, we don’t have the resources to have appropriate reactions to conversations with our friend about their situation at work. We have to have our resources build up to be able to have appropriate reactions and responses. If our physical life is in danger, we need to devote as many resources as possible to getting it on track so that we don’t throw other areas of our life into chaos with inappropriate reactions and responses because we simply don’t have enough resources to devote.
Thanks for reading! <3