This Is How You Stop Getting Pulled into Their Reality

What is making you react?

There's so many intricacies to the question.

I'm just asking because,

if you know what's making you reactive,

you can go in and begin to learn how to release it

so that you're not reactive anymore.

It sounds ridiculously simple.

We all know that it's not.

You keep running around, searching for that next deep look at yourself.

You keep looking for it in others as well.

You search books, magazines, online, at work,

at your friend’s house, at your family’s house,

and you don't find it.

You see shreds of it all around you,

but it's not what you're looking for.

All you keep seeing is the parts that you're reactive to.

That's it.

That's easy to find.

Really, it's most easy to find the thing that you were conditioned to believe.

Knowing the root of it helps enormously

but it's not the end all be all.

Because when you know where it all stemmed from,

it doesn't mean it automatically stops.

Instead, you just go in circles with that information replaying in your head all the time.

A new loop created in your brain.

A new loop created in your brain.

So what to do then?

Strangely enough,

it's important to study how other people react to things.

To see how they not just react to things,

but how they operate in the world.

Most people remain unconscious about how they are in the world.

Knowing the tactics that they unconsciously use is a game changer.

Know your emotional hooks.

Why?

Because when you know the hook that they're using,

whether they need to use it or not,

you can make a decision as to how you will react to it.

It's no longer a "get sucked into it" kind of deal.

When someone lays the guilt hook down,

you can choose to pick it up

or you can choose to leave it there,

laying on the ground.

You’ll know the hook by how fast it pulls you off center.

Your choice will determine what you will experience in life.

I know these are the things that you were,

and it is next to impossible to separate yourself from them emotionally.

But knowing them intellectually helps so much.

And maybe that’s the first shift.

Not trying to untangle every thread all at once—

just noticing the moment the hook shows up.

Noticing what it wants from you.

And then, for the first time,

choosing whether you respond… or not.

That moment is monumental.

And it’s all yours.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Dasha Yukhymyuk