I was very honored recently to be a guest on the radio program "Tell the Truth, Faster" (). During the program an ex-wife phoned in with a shared complaint about her ex-husband. She did not like how he'd overwhelm their grandchildren each year with mountains of Christmas presents. She shared how this gave her up emotions of inadequacy for her because she would only buy her grand-children a gift a piece. Then she began to talk about how rich her time was with the little ones during her visits each year, and every inch of fun they enjoyed with eachother, putting on make-up, playing ball, and being in each others presence.
I first supported her in looking at the situation from some different perspectives. I promoted the possibility that her PRESENCE is more of a PRESENT to her grandchildren than any present you buy from a store. We then explored together her feelings of inadequacy and where they are coming from. Then we talked about what could be going through her ex-husband's head.
The caller decided to explain how her ex-husband had ditched her for another woman and his parting words were something to the effect that, while he will never be forgiven and it was wrong to do, he was doing it anyway. After I listened to that, it was not too difficult to determine that he is motivated largely out of a sense of guilt and shame around his choices and behaviors. And this also explained why the caller was so overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy she was feeling HIS feelings as much as, if not more so, her own feelings.
The Geiger Counter Phenomenon is a term used for this experience of feeling emotions that may not be yours. A Geiger counter is a machine that rattles very crazy when it is near anything that may be radioactive. We have a device that is close to this, most commonly experienced in our guts, and it radiates strong emotions when it locates those exact emotions in others around us. This is a highly effective tool when we know about it and how to use it.
According to Fred Keyser and Heidi Fox, in their book Making it Safe to Love, Its not just being near someone elses emotions that lights up our Geiger Counter but specifically being near the emotions they themselves are unaware of, that make it buzz! The woman who called felt so much inadequacy was most likely feeling her ex-husband's feelings.
As soon as you understand that you are getting a wealth of info about the person in front of you, there are millions of options available to you in the circumstance as opposed to getting reactive and/or down on yourself.
Action Step: Next time you find yourself feeling strong feelings triggered by somebody's behaviors around you, try the following steps: 1. Breathe in your gut (or wherever the feelings are the strongest) and question yourself about the feelings you feel (fear, anger, doubt, inadequacy,...) 2. Try to recall those feelings and see if they are true for you only look for facts and see if you have any reason to feel scared, angry, inadequate, etc. 3. Explore the possibility that the person around you may have these feelings just below the surface and not even know they are there. 4. See yourself surrounded by a circle of love and compassion. Recognize that in that point you are 100% protected and okay. Envision yourself redirecting those negative feelings to the person around you, while having compassion for them and their lack of awareness about whats going on for them.
If you take responstibity and claim all the feelings that are actually yours and not believing what you get from other people, you get to experience the power of being present for yourself and the other person in the moment, and also you get to be free from what used to set your emotions and make you feel like there was something messed about you.
Long after experiencing a divorce, couples are still very connected and triggered by each other, and this usually has to do with how they have picked up on each others feelings and taking them for years. This process will do many cool things towards being free from hooks that still set you off.
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