Managing emotional reactions begins with realizing that it is something inside you that responds to other people’s behavior. When you stop automatically falling into resentment, irritation, or feelings of rejection, you gain the opportunity to consciously choose your reaction.
In the first article of this series, we talked about life in the looking-glass world and how we end up there. In this article, read about how to break free from automatic patterns and reclaim your freedom of choice.
What Happens When You Begin to See the Shadow
What happens when you start to see and acknowledge that it’s not about the person’s behavior, not about what they do, what they said, or how they looked?
At that moment, the person’s behavior doesn’t change at all, but your intense reaction disappears. You don’t get swept away by emotions, and from the position of an adult, with your mind and heart engaged, you can make balanced decisions.
The situations themselves and people’s actions won’t change because of this, but the emotional intensity that provoked thoughtless reactions does shift.
Thoughtless, because you fall into the state of a wounded child.
The Reaction of a Child vs. an Adult
A responsible, reasoning adult understands that every action has a consequence. If something happened, something preceded it, and they can connect it all together.
When you are in a child’s state, it matters where you fall back to—which stage of your life.
Let’s say you are 40 or 50 years old, you feel offended, and you go silent. What is happening in that moment? An adult’s reaction helps find a solution, discuss, negotiate, explain what is wrong, why you shouldn’t be treated that way, or why it doesn’t work for you. This is interaction from an adult’s perspective.
But if in childhood, long ago, you lacked the words to express emotional intensity—or even more so, if your mother behaved this way and you’ve been repeating it ever since—then you fall back to the age of 3 or 4: pouting lips, demonstrative silence.
And it turns out there are adults who are in this state not just constantly, but 4-5 times a day. This is a state of falling into a little child.
Can you talk about anything with such a person? No.
See also: Child, Adult, Parent. From which state are you creating your new world?
How to Regain Control of Emotional Reactions
The “Growing Up” Exercise
I personally really liked Jason Estis’s “Growing Up” exercise. We even included it in the new version of the “Dance with the Shadow” course, in the module on working with the inner child.
As soon as you realize that you are reacting from the state of a wounded inner child—say, 4 years old, while you are 40—take a deep breath.
One breath = 4-5 years.
With the next breath, you add another 4-5 years, and so on, growing yourself up to your current age, to your adult state.
Behind this is a simple mechanism — giving yourself permission to handle sinking into that childlike emotional state. You give yourself time. You slowly take a deep breath in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
If you take 10 deep breaths in and out, even in a state of total turmoil, you will no longer have that same emotional reaction.
Even if you mentally grow yourself up to 20-30 years old, while you’re actually 50-60, your reaction will already be completely different from what it was initially.
When the possibility of choice appears
Start methodically examining different situations and realize that everything you react to in other people — that is a reflection of you. There is always some part of you that is trying to reach you in that moment and say, “Hey, I’m here, look at me.”
The task is simple — to see that it’s not your husband throwing a tantrum, not your child having a meltdown, not your boss being a tyrant, but to see a part of yourself in that moment. And it’s good when you not only see it but also understand where you are the same, where you behave the same way. Or the second option — where you don’t allow yourself to behave that way either.
As soon as this reaches your awareness, that’s when the magic starts to work — what was hidden in the subconscious rises to the surface and now becomes conscious — you see it.
And then next time, in the same situation, you have that very possibility of choice. You can choose whether you want to fall into that childhood state, getting offended and going silent, or not?
It’s a tiny nuance, but it carries huge importance, because you now have a choice — the choice of an adult. And this is the decisive moment.
See also: Why a person in a victim mentality lacks the ability to choose
Freeing yourself from self-imposed prohibitions
Self-sacrifice and the ban on being yourself
Many people have locked away the permission to be themselves, the permission to disregard the opinions of loved ones, which shows up very easily in everyday life.
The simplest example — what do you do when you feel unwell? No matter how many times I say that when things are bad, you need to take care of yourself first, our women still force themselves to perform heroic feats: they keep cleaning because the family will be home from work soon; they try to cook dinner; they make sure the child does their homework, and then they collapse, practically dead on their feet.
This self-sacrifice — for whom and for what?
You’d think we’re all adults — well-read, smart, growing, studying all kinds of specialized literature — and yet we stumble on these everyday, mundane situations because we have no idea how vast the looking-glass world is that we live in.
See also: How to allow yourself to be yourself when loved ones pressure you
Example with changing fashion trends
In the past, fashion had strict rules about what goes with what — gloves had to match the color of your handbag, the color of your shoes, and so on.
I remember those times when I worked at a school, wore suits, and it all just drained me.
And then something happened — I suspect a generation shift — and younger professionals entered all these styles: artists, designers, who brought with them a breath of freedom.
I remember the moment when I suddenly saw stylists showing that, it turns out, you can wear a dress with sneakers. At first, I felt very uncomfortable putting them together.
But I felt such liberation when I did it, when you allow yourself something you never allowed before, because it was written somewhere at the level of rules.
And then it turned out that, apparently, you no longer have to wear blazers with shirts, that you can wear a blazer with a T-shirt. My favorite style of clothing now is a dress, comfortable shoes instead of mandatory heels, and a blazer. Or a blazer with jeans — absolutely amazing.
For about 10 years, I wasn’t at all interested in what was happening with fashion, but over these years, revolutionary changes have simply taken place. People have become freer — it’s normal now to have matching boots in different colors, or to wear mismatched socks.
Before, you would have died of shame from that. Now everything has become freer, more liberated in many areas, because a generation has grown up that wasn’t forbidden or suppressed as much, and most importantly, their needs weren’t suppressed.
How Internal Prohibitions Affect Daily Life
The world has changed, people have changed, but you can keep living in your own looking glass. How many other areas does each person have that we’ve never been interested in and don’t even realize how much everything has shifted there.
When you stumble upon some internal prohibition, even in the form of rules that once worked, and then when you allow yourself to break it, you feel such a huge sense of liberation.
So with every shadow you reclaim, besides letting go of an emotional reaction, you gain a feeling of liberation, permission to do many things for yourself.
It doesn’t mean you have to act that way. Many people fear: “If he’s a jerk, am I going to start being a jerk to everyone?!”
No, the choice of how you want to respond remains yours. The key is that this choice appears — something that wasn’t there before.
Why Difficulties Arise in Recognizing the Gifts of the Shadow
Interpretation as a Source of Emotional Reaction
Everything seems clear and simple. Difficulties arise when you encounter a specific irritation, a specific “it drives me crazy” feeling, and try to apply it to yourself.
Because there’s a key factor — everything is very individual. There are ready-made algorithms for working with the shadow, for recognizing it, but there’s one key called interpretation.
Different people will have different perceptions of the same situation. We interpret things differently, and that’s where the big challenge lies.
That’s why in the new version of the course “Dance with the Shadow,” summarizing 10 years of experience and answering questions, I realized I needed to add practice exercises.
Since the shadow is a blind spot located in the subconscious, if a person tries to apply logic like “he smacks his food, I don’t smack my food” — that’s it, the work would end there.
We have developed step-by-step training tools where questions appear, and you answer them to draw out your own unique interpretation.
See also: How to Recognize What Your Emotional Reactions and Shadow Projections Are Telling You
Example with Tardiness
Who doesn’t dislike latecomers so much that it just drives you crazy when someone is late? What is your reaction to lateness, and what do you feel in that moment?
You agreed on a meeting, waited a long time for it, arrived, and the person was late, so you had to stand around and wait somewhere. And then at the last moment, when you were already there, they wrote that they weren’t coming, without warning you in advance, or they just disappeared without a word.
You waited. A fitting phrase comes to mind: “I stood there like a fool for a whole hour, and they never showed up.”
Different people will have different reactions: regret, irritation, a desire to make a comment. This is the looking-glass world.
And the interpretation is what lies behind the reaction, why you react that way: “I’m not respected,” “I’m not valued,” “I’m not considered a person.” It’s this that triggers the reaction, not the fact itself that the person was late.
There really could be valid reasons too.
At first in Moscow, I was late because you look at the map, the taxi says it’ll take 40 minutes, and you arrive an hour and a half later. Now I understand that you need to check it 3-4 times a day, and preferably during rush hour, to figure out how long it will take. You can get stuck in traffic at any moment.
So at first, I was also late, but not because I’m irresponsible or unreliable—I just trusted what Yandex Taxi was showing. There was no ill intent there at all.
Interpretation is how you decode a person’s behavior and your own reaction for yourself, it’s how you perceived it in relation to the other person, in relation to yourself.
As soon as you reclaim this shadow aspect in relation to another person, you gain the ability to draw conclusions.
Now let’s look at tardiness from the other side.
How will a clear-headed, mature adult behave when someone is late for them?
If the situation repeats several times, we draw conclusions and gather our pearls of wisdom:
- call the person before leaving to confirm they’ll definitely be there, ask if they’ve left home;
- remind them the day before and check if they’ve changed their mind;
- if it’s a colleague or someone else, maybe conclude that you shouldn’t make plans with them at all;
- or bring a book with you or read something on your phone while you wait for them to arrive.
There’s no emotional reaction here because you’ve acknowledged this person’s trait and are initially prepared for the possibility that things might work out so that they arrive on time. If they do, great—well done, emphasize that. Praise them, encourage that kind of behavior.
Or you’ll find something to keep yourself busy. But there won’t be that resentment anymore, especially if it’s a romantic date: “They don’t value me, they don’t love me, I’m last on their list.”
What situations or people most often trigger your strongest emotional reactions?