Have you had relationships suffer because you’ve overreacted in the heat of the moment? Have you ever hurt relationships because you neglected other people’s emotions to reach a goal? I definitely have! Most people have done either or both at some point in their lives. How should we go about stopping this suffering? One way is using Wise Mind.
Wise Mind is a concept from Dialectical Behavior Therapy(DBT) where we find a balance between Reasonable Mind and Emotion Mind. Wise mind is when you integrate your logic, reasoning and facts with your emotions, values and instincts to create an effective outcome. Wise Mind can be used to find that balance in life with your career and your home life. It can help you make decisions in your life-big and small- that will all ultimately lead to a more satisfying and effective way of living. Wise Mind can help you keep suffering at a minimum.
Let’s look at a situational example of what Wise Mind can look like and how it can help: a family gathering.
Your sister, who you constantly fight with, tries to pick a fight with you during your father’s 60th birthday party. The whole family is here, and she says something that insults and hurts you very deeply.
Your Emotion Mind tells you: Take her down! Hurt her! Yell at her for being so inappropriate, self-centered, and tell her how nasal her voice is!
Reasonable Mind: Do not ruin the party. Say nothing. Do not be a bad daughter, and pretend everything is okay.
Wise Mind: Don’t say anything RIGHT NOW because you don’t want to ruin the party. Discreetly excuse yourself. Go to your car and let out some steam, even if that means letting out a big scream. Go back inside and avoid your sister for the whole party so you aren’t tempted to scream at her. Decide to focus on having a good time with the rest of your family. If someone brings up your sister starting a fight, you don’t have to lie. You can say you would like to focus on celebrating your father. After you get home, call your sister. She doesn’t pick up, so leave a message telling her how you felt about what she said to you. By now, because you have had time to collect yourself, you can tell her how you feel without starting another fight.
It’s not perfect, but you got to say how you feel. You avoided causing a scene and potentially ruining your father’s birthday. You still made great memories with other family members. You’ve satisfied both your emotions and your goals of not ruining the party. You were effective.
Wise Mind is not always about a “perfect answer.” It’s more about an effective answer that serves how you want to effectively live your life. Just so you know, this is only one way that Wise Mind could have went. We all have different values. We have our own individual limits and goals. For example, if your number one goal is to stick up for yourself, maybe you would have continued the fight with your sister, in hopefully the most effective way possible. Maybe causing a scene or not isn’t important to you. That’s your own choice. You just have to be okay with the aftermath of causing a scene just like you would have to be okay with not sticking up for yourself right away in the solution I gave above.
Again, it’s about how you want to live your life and what’s important to you!
Next time, we’ll talk about figuring out what is important to you.
