What Are Your Reflexes Revealing About You?
You have donned the backless gown. Now you are sitting there with your legs dangling over the side of the examination table, feeling very vulnerable. The doctor pokes, prods, and then takes out the reflex hammer and whacks you a good one on your knee. Seconds later it is over and the doctor has moved on to the next part of the examination.
Ever wonder what in the world the knee whacking is all about? Most likely, you know the doctor is testing your reflexes, but why? I am no MD, but in simple terms the doctor is checking your nerve responses. Your doctor is trying to determine if your nerves are functioning normally and how healthy your connective tissue is. No reflex or “knee-jerk response” indicates nerve damage that needs to be addressed. An over-reaction that is indicated by repeated contractions or “knee-jerks response” indicates cerebellar (the part of the brain that controls coordination and balance) disease. Ideally, a single “knee-jerk response” is what both you and the doctor want to see.
That whack to the knee actually sends an impulse to your nerves that bypasses your brain. The knee-jerk response is unconscious.
You are “whacked” daily by situations and interactions with people that smack your nerves. Sometimes you are numb and there is no observable reaction. Other times the jerking continues for minutes, hours, days, months, and sometimes years after the whack! Both of these responses indicate that something is seriously wrong.
A healthy reaction to the “whacks” of life occur when you are able to identify the feelings (awareness), pause, process, and then make a conscious choice about how you will respond to the whack. While the reflexes in your knee always bypass your brain, your life reflexes don’t have to. Whether you react or respond to life’s whacks comes down to habits, awareness, and intention. How skillful you are in handling life’s whacks makes a difference personally and professionally. It can make a negative situation better or worse. And it can make a positive situation terrible or even better.
Consider this scenario:
You assign a task to Bob carefully spelling out the expectations and he drops the ball. Not only does the task not get done, but the undone task affects the others on the team creating a heap of frustration. Will you sit Bob down and get after him in a way he will never forget? Or will you take notice of your anger and disappointment, breathe, pause, and choose to be curious about what prevented Bob from completing the task?
Reacting in anger and venting on Bob won’t solve the problem, it will make things worse. The task will still not be done, and it will work you up into a frenzy, upset Bob, and damage the relationship.
When you slow down and choose to respond it preserves the relationship, creates space for a solution, and allows both you and Bob to learn and grow.
Often there is more to the story than you realize. Perhaps Bob just lost his mother or is battling a health issue. Maybe your request was outside his strengths or there was some other critical work undertaking that was equally important that distracted him from your task.
Reacting is about operating out of:
- Fear (Yep – Your Fear Monster at work!)
- Insecurities
- Anger
- Hurt
- Sadness
- Judgement
- A need to protect yourself
- Unprocessed emotions
- A lack of self-care
- Overwhelm
- Catastrophic thinking
- Unawareness of your feelings
Responding is about operating out of:
- Values
- Logic
- Choices
- Courage
- Love/compassion
- Curiosity
- Hope
- Confidence
- Awareness
- Possibility thinking
There is a difference of about 10 seconds between reacting and responding in the moment. Improving your reflexes means that you have to:
1. Slow Down
If you are speeding through life, your ability to slow down even 10 seconds and respond is seriously limited.
2. Know Your Limits
Being over-extended is the perfect set up for reacting. When you have margin in your life there is naturally space to respond.
3. Observe
Each day, we encounter many people and situations but rarely take the time observe how we feel about them. Ignoring your feelings is like under-reacting to the reflex hammer. And just because you have a feeling does not make it true. Our feelings fool us all the time. Too many ignored feelings limit your ability to respond in the moment in healthy ways.
The more you practice identifying your feelings and determining whether or not they are true the easier it will be for you to do that in the moment.
4. Pause & Breathe
When encountering something unexpected, count slowly to 10. Breathe deeply. You do not have to respond immediately no matter how hurried or rushed you feel. Remember who God created YOU to BE.
5. Pray
You will need God’s help to respond so take a quick moment to ask Him for help. Learn new ways to respond. He will give you the strength!
I can do all things through Christ, because He gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 (NCV)
6. Be Curious
Just like there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every whack. What is this person or situation triggering in you? What unmet need, fear, or sadness is it tapping into? Do you know what’s motivating the other person’s behavior? Your conclusion, no matter how logical it seems, may not be right. What unmet need, fear, or sadness have you tapped into for the other person?
7. Choose
Finally, make a conscious choice about how you will respond to the whack.
If you have been reacting for a long while, be patient with yourself. It will take time to practice and develop a pattern of responding. Responding takes you out of the victim role and allows you to exercise self-control. Remember, God is eager to help you respond!
A doctor scores your reflexes on a scale of 0-4. A score of 0 means that you have no reflexes at all – under-reaction. A score of 4 means that you have repeated contractions and you are over-reacting. A healthy reflex score: 2.
When it comes to the “whacks” of life, what’s your reflex score? Don’t be shy – I’d love to hear from you!
– One of my most popular posts originally posted 6/16/15 and it’s been updated just for you! Enjoy!
I like your suggestion to “be curious.” At this stage in life (middle-age) most of us have learned that people act the way they do for a reason, and taking an approach of curiosity rather than making a snap judgment is great advice. This very week I reacted quickly and negatively to something someone said in public, and learned by talking to her privately, the context of her painful past from which those words had come. Having that understanding made all the difference in my second, informed, reaction. I wish I’d taken a curious approach in the beginning!
Thank you for sharing a wonderful example of how being curious can make a difference. Judgement assumes you know the motivation behind what someone says or does, curiosity on the other hand makes space to discover the truth. We just don’t always know like we think we do and those “snap judgements” generally end up causing us unnecessary problems.