How knowing about our touchy points, or 'buttons' can help us move along with more ease and less trouble. Do you know which ones get you started?
One of my best friends has been struggling with her weight for probably most, if not all of her life. She is not unhappy. She’s married to a man who adores her as much as she loves him. They have two beautiful, confident and clever daughters. Her career is going the right way and she’s got a good network of supportive and loving friends. But this weight thing is just always at the back of her mind. The other day we were walking with another lady from school and my friend told us that some child had said to her 4-year-old ‘YOU ARE FAT!’
This not only really upset the little girl but caused a whole big debate about bullying and being mean and ‘how could you say such a thing…’ I was listening to this and noticed that ‘fat’ for me is a fairly neutral word. I’ve got no load attached to it. It’s never nice to be called anything, but her daughter clearly isn’t ‘fat’ and kids say all sorts of things to annoy each other all the time. But this story made me think about ‘buttons’, areas, subjects you touch which cause an unexpected and often out-of-proportion reaction. We all have them and I think there is a lot to learn from finding out about them.
Apparently, her older daughter once came home at the age of 5 or 6 and announced that she now knows about the F-word. When my friend asked her what it was, she said, (can you guess?) ‘FAT’. Innocently, my friend’s struggle with weight has loaded up this little word with a whole mountain of meaning about appearance, acceptance and confidence not only for herself but for her daughters too.
I had a big fall-out with an acquaintance the other week about some feedback he gave me. He said the unforgivable thing that I came across 'a bit insecure'. How very dare he? I was fuming until I realised that this had clearly touched one of my buttons, something that I had made into a thing about me, an unmovable trait that I have tried to fix with (annoyingly) little success. If he had called me fat, or stupid, or you don’t know what you’re talking about, nothing would have had the same weight as ‘you come across a bit insecure.’ This for me was the ultimate F-word that you would never ever say to anyone, until I saw how ridiculous my reaction was. And the poor man was totally overwhelmed with my venom.
But through this I learned something important about buttons. I discovered that they are totally made up. They may have been a tendency to begin with, but to grow that strong we have to cultivate and nurture them by adding proof and more made-up stories.
That doesn’t say I don’t have insecure thinking, maybe even more often than other people. But these thoughts don’t define me, unless I define myself through them. I also realised that some thoughts become so internalised that they turn into a habit. And like any other addiction, they demand to be fed and reestablished. Recognising them as thought, makes feeding them pointless.
The word ‘fat’ does nowhere near define my friend and I realised that my feeling of insecurity is more than anything else some self-conscious thinking that I somewhere along the line made into a thing about me. It doesn’t mean anything unless I allow it to be meaningful. It’s good to see these buttons and recognise them for what they are. Check out yours and see if they do you any favours or whether it was time to send them back to where they belong, into the big open space where all thought comes from.
We are not our thinking, let’s claim that power back.
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