Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pause Button
By Phoenix Rising
A 26-year-old mother of two
Let’s be honest here – we’ve all been that person. You know the one I’m talking about. The person who hears something immediately goes from zero to nuclear meltdown faster than you can say “Wait, what did you actually mean by that?” Yeah, that’s the reactor. And if you’re reading this thinking, “I don’t know anyone like that,” congratulations – you ARE that person. Welcome to the club. We have stress-eating and regret as our main refreshments.
The Instinct Trap: When Your Brain Goes Rogue
Here’s the thing about human nature – we’re basically sophisticated toddlers with mortgages and responsibilities. Our first instinct is when something doesn’t go our way. REACT. And boy, do we react with the subtlety of a freight train crashing through a library during quiet time.
Reaction is everybody’s go-to for everything because it’s just an instinct for them. It’s like our emotional emergency response system, except instead of helping us survive saber-tooth tigers, it’s making us send passive-aggressive texts to our coworkers at 2 AM or having full-blown arguments about who left the cap off the toothpaste (it was me, it’s always me, but that’s not the point).
Most of the time, people who act on instinct are the ones who feel ENTITLED to everything. You know these people – they’re the ones who think the world owes them a perfect day, every day, and when reality dares to show up with its messy, imperfect agenda, their first response is to throw an emotional tantrum that would make a two-year-old proud.
When something bad happens to them, the first thing they do is REACT. Not think, not pause, not take a breath – nope, straight to DefCon 1 emotional warfare. It’s as if their brain has a direct hotline to their mouth, completely bypassing any quality control department.
The Emotional Culprits: Anger and Sadness Take the Wheel
When someone is acting on emotions, the primary emotions that cause them to act in that manner, at least in my opinion and based on my own experience, are anger and sadness. And let me tell you, I’ve got enough experience in this department to write a PhD dissertation on “How to Make Mountains Out of Molehills: A Comprehensive Guide.”
These two emotions are like the dynamic duo of poor decision-making. Anger storms in like it owns the place, kicking down doors and demanding immediate satisfaction. Sadness follows behind, making everything feel like the end of the world and convincing you that this one moment defines your entire existence. Together, they’re basically the worst life coaches you could ever hire.
My Personal Masterclass in Overreaction
As you guys know, I have a backstory that relates to this topic – A LOT ACTUALLY – but we’ll go over two examples because honestly, I could write a whole series on my greatest hits of emotional overreaction, and nobody has that kind of time.
Example #1: The Great Domestic Overreaction Saga
I’m usually the one to react when I am upset because I never take the time to process anything. I go straight to the extreme, like I’m competing for an Olympic gold medal in emotional escalation. My husband and I constantly share our thoughts on various topics and everyday things. You know, standard couple stuff – what to have for dinner, whether that thing he said three weeks ago meant what I think it meant, the usual light conversation topics.
But sometimes when he tells me something, I used to take it to the extreme, thinking that he was saying it to make me mad. Because obviously, everything my husband says is part of some elaborate psychological warfare campaign explicitly designed to ruin my day, right? (Spoiler alert: it’s not, but try telling that to my brain at the time.)
So instead of understanding his point of view, I would GET MAD. Not just a little annoyed, not just confused – no, I would go straight to DEFCON 1, red-alert, all-hands-on-deck MAD. Like he had personally insulted my entire family tree and kicked my hypothetical dog.
Then, after I’ve already launched the emotional nuclear warheads and probably said at least three things I didn’t mean, I would eventually calm down. And then – oh, then comes the fun part – I would reanalyze what was actually said.
You know that moment when you’re rewinding the conversation in your head and you suddenly realize you’ve been arguing with a version of reality that exists only in your imagination? Yeah, that moment. That “Oh no, I’ve become that person” moment.
I would sit back and say, “WOWWWW, I really didn’t need to act like that. It wasn’t even that serious, lol.” (And yes, even in my internal monologue, I was adding “lol” because apparently my brain thinks everything is a text message.)
The Energy Economics of Emotional Reactions
Here’s what I realized – and this was like a lightbulb moment that probably should have happened about twenty years earlier – at that point, I was RESPONDING to what was said after
I had already REACTED. This meant I was using twice the energy when I could have taken my time and responded accordingly from the beginning.
Think about it: I was essentially doing the emotional equivalent of running a marathon, then turning around and rerunning it because I forgot something at the starting line. It’s exhausting, it’s inefficient, and it makes absolutely no sense when you actually think about it.
It’s like being emotionally hungry, eating an entire sleeve of saltine crackers in a panic, only to realize there was a delicious sandwich in the fridge the whole time. You’ve wasted energy, you don’t feel better, and now you have to deal with the regret of eating the crackers, and still make the sandwich.
The Revolutionary Concept: Taking Your Sweet Time
Now I know the secret formula that could probably solve 90% of the world’s relationship problems: TAKE YOUR TIME, ANALYZE THE SCENARIO, THEN RESPOND WHEN YOU’RE READY.
I know, I know – revolutionary stuff right there. Someone should probably nominate me for a Nobel Peace Prize for this groundbreaking discovery. But seriously, this simple concept has been more life-changing than any self-help book, motivational seminar, or inspirational Instagram quote I’ve ever encountered.
The Pause Button: Your New Best Friend
Here’s the thing about pausing – it’s like giving your brain a chance to catch up with your emotions. You know how sometimes your mouth writes checks that your rational mind can’t cash? The pause button is like having an excellent financial advisor who stops you from making emotionally driven, yet poor financial decisions.
When you pause, you give yourself the gift of perspective. Suddenly, that comment that seemed like a personal attack might be someone having a bad day. That text that felt passive-aggressive might be from someone terrible at communication (shocking, I know). That situation that felt like the end of the world might just be… Tuesday.
The Analyze Phase: Detective Work for Adults
Analyzing the scenario is like being a detective in your own life, except instead of solving murders, you’re solving the mystery of “What did they actually mean by that?” and “Is this really worth getting upset about?”
This is where you get to ask yourself the hard-hitting questions:
• What exactly happened here?
• What did they actually say versus what did I hear?
• Is my reaction proportional to the actual situation?
• Am I responding to what’s happening now, or am I responding to something that happened five years ago?
• On a scale of 1 to “the house is literally on fire,” how urgent is this really?
Most of the time – and I cannot stress this enough – most of the time, the answer is somewhere between “not urgent at all” and “this could have been an email.”
The Response: When You’re Actually Ready
Responding when you’re ready is like the difference between cooking a meal and just throwing ingredients at a wall and hoping something edible happens. When you respond, you’re intentional. You’re thoughtful. You’re not just emotional word-vomiting all over someone because you feel like it.
A response comes from a place of choice rather than compulsion. It’s the difference between “I feel like I have to say something RIGHT NOW” and “I want to communicate something meaningful.”
The Entitlement Factor: When the World Doesn’t Revolve Around You (Shocking!)
Let’s discuss entitlement for a moment, as this is where many reactions originate. There’s a peculiar notion that the world should cater to our emotional state at all times. Like we’re all the main characters in everyone else’s story, and how dare they have their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences that don’t perfectly align with ours?
People who react instead of respond often have this underlying belief that they’re entitled to have everything go their way, all the time. And when reality shows up with its own agenda (the audacity!), they react like someone just told them Santa isn’t real and also ate the last piece of pizza.
But here’s the plot twist: most of the time, other people aren’t thinking about us nearly as much as we believe they are. That comment that felt like a targeted attack? They probably forgot they said it five minutes later. That situation that felt personal? It probably had nothing to do with us.
The Ripple Effect: How Reactions Create More Reactions
Here’s something interesting about reactions – they’re contagious. When you react emotionally to someone, you’re essentially throwing emotional grenades into the conversation. And guess what happens when you throw grenades? Other people start throwing grenades back.
Suddenly, you’re in the middle of an emotional war zone over something that started as a simple misunderstanding about whose turn it was to take out the trash. It’s like emotional dominoes,
except instead of being satisfying to watch, it just creates a mess that everyone has to clean up later.
But when you respond instead of react, you break that cycle. You become the person who doesn’t escalate, who doesn’t add fuel to the fire, who actually makes the situation better instead of worse. You become the emotional adult in the room, and trust me, it’s a good look on everyone.
The Practice: Because Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight
Now, I’m not going to lie to you and say that learning to respond instead of react is easy. It’s not. It’s like trying to change any other habit – it takes practice, patience, and probably a few spectacular failures along the way.
You’re going to mess up. You’ll have moments where you react first and think later. You’re going to have days where your emotional pause button seems to be broken, and you’re going to wonder why you ever thought you could change.
But here’s the thing – every time you choose to respond instead of react, you’re building a new neural pathway. You’re training your brain to take the scenic route instead of the emotional expressway. And eventually, it becomes more natural to pause, think, and then speak.
The Freedom of Response
There’s something incredibly freeing about realizing that you don’t have to react to everything. You don’t have to have an opinion about every situation. You don’t have to respond to every perceived slight or misunderstanding. You get to choose your battles, and more importantly, you get to decide how you show up in those battles.
When you respond instead of react, you’re operating from a place of power instead of a place of compulsion. You’re making conscious choices about your relationships, your communication, and your emotional energy. You’re not just along for the ride on the emotional roller coaster – you’re actually driving the thing.
The Conclusion: Growing Up is Optional, But Recommended
Look, we’re all just figuring this out as we go. Nobody handed us a manual on how to be emotionally intelligent adults (and if they did, I definitely lost mine somewhere between high school and my first real job). But the beautiful thing about being human is that we get to keep learning, keep growing, and keep getting better at this whole “being a functional person” thing.
The next time you feel that familiar surge of anger or sadness, the next time your brain starts writing that strongly-worded text message or preparing that devastating comeback, remember: you have a choice. You can react, or you can respond.
You can be the person who escalates situations, or you can be the person who resolves them. You can use twice the energy to create twice the drama, or you can take your time, analyze the situation, and respond when you’re ready.
Trust me, future you will thank present you for choosing the pause button. And your relationships, stress levels, and overall peace of mind will thank you, too.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to practice what I preach and not immediately react to whatever chaos my family has created while I’ve been writing this. Wish me luck – I’ll need it.
Phoenix Rising continues to find profound lessons in unexpected places, proving that wisdom can come from anywhere—even from the simple realization that pausing before reacting can make all the difference. Sometimes the most powerful insights come not from self-help books or motivational speakers, but from honest self-reflection and the hard-won understanding that we all have the power to choose response over reaction, no matter where we find ourselves in life.