Learning To Change Old Reaction Patterns

Many years ago, a friend of mine walked up behind another friend who had just returned from two tours of duty in Viet Nam with the Marines. The vet didn't hear my friend until she was right behind him. His training kicked in, and he whirled and struck out with a karate chop. Fortunately, he caught himself in time, and my friend apologized profusely for seeming to sneak up on him.

The Marine had spent months in mortal danger, using the survival skills he'd learned, and was still reacting as if he were in the jungle. We are trained much the same way when we're children and teenagers. Over time, we learn a certain way of reacting that reflects our parents' attitudes, our school environment, our friends' attitudes. We may have grown up in a dangerous situation, such as with an abusive parent or being harassed in school, and discovered that being quiet and invisible kept us safer. Or we might have learned to strike out in anger to reduce our risk. When we grow older, we continue those reactions without thinking, just as my marine friend did.

However, now that we're older, and no longer in the hostile environment, we can consciously choose a different way to respond to our current situation. This is the difference between "re-acting" and "responding." When we "re-act," we act in the same way, over and over, automatically. By consciously choosing what kind of result we want, and how we want to feel about ourselves afterwards, we're "responding" to the situation.

There's an old adage that goes something like this, "If you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always gotten." By continuing to react in the same way we always have, we're never going to change and neither will our lives. It's not easy to change old reaction patterns, but it can be done. We can begin by looking at reactions that aren't working in our lives...

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