A dedicated member texted me the other day. She’s been reading Mel Robbin’s book The Let Them Theory.
She had a thought provoking question. How would you answer this?
I’m continuing to read “Let Them” and my head is spinning. I just got through reading a part where she talks about how natural it is to not like things ppl do (and to be judgmental) but to still love them. She speaks of things her husband and children do that she doesn’t like and even asked her children to provide adjectives to describe her (not good ones) but they still love one another. What am I missing here?? Why doesn’t that exist for so many of us??
Now, I’m going to include my attempt at an answer below. It’s full of fancy words and heady concepts, and all that’s well and good, but the WHY remains elusive. Mine may be a reason, but is it THE reason?
What do you think?
Good morning.
And WOW. Isn’t that a big question? My stab at it…
So everything a person does is a learned behavior. The behavior is learned from similar experiences we’ve previously had, genetic/epigenetic influences, or both. It’s an oversimplification, but sufficiently accurate.
Well, based on how it went before or the guidance in our gene code, we choose a response action, moment to moment, all day, every day.
In an unknown/new situation we use such experience and/or the genetic “lesson plan” to inform the behavior we’re improvising.
Sometimes the programming pays off, and sometimes we fail and hopefully add that experience to our behavioral tools.
So much goes into how we behave, and though bad/mean/evil/whatever behaviors do exist, they are almost never the sole reason we do what we do.
If my behavior displeases someone, all of the influences above also inform why they feel that way.
Sometimes, a person lacks the mindfulness to step outside of their emotional response and see the other person’s actions beyond a narrow emotional scope. They are upset and distressed, and they may stumble. They know to extend themselves grace when/if they realize after the fact that they’ve responded poorly.
But in the moment the problem is really two sides of the same coin:
They don’t do the work of stopping to recognize the sensitivity their history instilled in them.
They don’t attempt to understand why the other person is doing this frowned-upon thing.
They just see the “bad” sign flashing in their mind.
And of course, the parent-child relationship comes with more/distinct expectations each way. How rigidly one sticks to those expectations affects how they perceive unapproved behaviors.
SO, I’m going to live in a cabin in the woods and eat squirrel meat and isolate from everyone else. Nah, who am I kidding? My ancestors didn’t survive for millennia heating and cooking with fire just to have me blow off central air/heat and my microwave.
