Reactivity is a Re-Action

Reactivity is predictable.

When you are having a reaction to something it is a re-action, a repetition of an action you took before when the circumstances you are experiencing were similar or the same. 

If you don’t know this already, take it to heart, because it’s what’s keeping you in the same cycles of experience in your life. 

When you’re a child (anywhere from 0-4yrs) you make a blueprint of ‘how it is here’ based on your circumstances when developing and what you had to do to stay safe and receive love (which at that age is attention and validation). You build cause and effect definitions - anything that threatens your survival (love being taken away) you build responses to manage, to keep yourself safe. Those experiences and how you define ‘it is here’ creates your unconscious beliefs that help you navigate life on earth as a brand new being. I mean, there’s a lot to take in and learn in those first 4 years of life, so this process of categorizing what’s happening is immensely useful for our learning and survival. As a child, these definitions of yourself, others and the world are very helpful and useful. They are accurate to your vulnerable state as a dependent being. But as an adult this blueprint is a lens of limitation you cast over the infinite possibilities of actuality. 

So how does reactivity keep you limited?  

Well, the funny thing about unconscious beliefs is that our investment in them is about our safety, our viability. So as a default, we have to maintain their validity to make sure we understand our world and how to navigate it safely (what we aren’t aware of is that this blueprint isn’t giving us a realistic view of the actual moment we’re in).  So our reactions are in favor of proving our beliefs true…which often causes great suffering in our lives. So here is where a reaction comes into play. When our belief is threatened it communicates to us through thoughts and feelings - these feelings are emotions, and emotions drive behavior.  Resolving the feeling in your body in favor of what it’s telling you to do, will reinforce the belief that created that feeling.  So everytime you go through your reactive cycle you are recreating a reality that is a projection of your past onto the moment you’re in.  

Being able to recognize the emotions underlying your behaviors, and neutralizing them (releasing them without the reinforcing action), gives you the opportunity to create something new in your life: a new relationship to challenging circumstances, invigorating your relationship to your passions in life, and simply feeling more agency in your outlook and decisions. Embodiment is crucial for being able to navigate your inner world to create a different reflection of your outerworld.  If we all could manage our reactions, we could create a world free of limiting perspective and actually live the possibilities that live in our hearts.  So the next time you feel like you aren’t in control of what you’re doing or how you’re behaving, tune into your experience, feel your body and what the emotion is telling you to do and see if you can discover how you’re projecting onto the moment and what other choices might be available to you.