Exercising Refrain

I came home from work on this particular day, it had been one of those days where I felt as though I hadn’t stopped all day. Bouncing from one meeting to the next barely having time to eat or even open the computer to check emails etc. My adrenals were depleted having been “on” for eight hours finding solutions to other people’s problems that they either didn’t have the skills and experience to deal with or needed another point of view to bounce off. Needless to say, I was very happy to be home and finished for the day.

Upon walking through the front door I called out to say I was home and was met with silence. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself as my wife’s car was in the driveway. Unless she was out for a walk or something she should be here. I could hear the dog making a commotion outside, obviously excited and expectant of company which indicated that I could cross walking the dog off the list of possible scenarios as to my wife’s whereabouts.

I headed upstairs to investigate further and there sitting on the bed with head in hands was the love of my life, looking small and weighed down with the weight of the world. “hey, I’m home” I said, “I called out but thought maybe you weren’t here.” When my wife slowly lifted her head to acknowledge my presence I could see that she had been crying and that she was still visibly upset.

“What’s wrong, are you ok?” I said, sitting down next to her. To which the sobs erupted again, audibly now and the tears continued to flow as she buried her head in my arms. I stroked her back and just sat there for a few minutes, holding her, until her breathing slowed down and the sobs spaced themselves out a little. “do you want to talk?” I prompted.

At this, she opened up expressing the events that had led to her sitting here inconsolable on the end of the bed. I dutifully listened taking in all the details so as to try and understand and make sense of the situation and what had happened to make her feel this way. In my head, I was also starting to come up with solutions. After all, I had been “putting out fires” all day, so this was an easy role for me to slip straight back into.

When she had finished and took a breath to collect her thoughts I saw an opportunity to jump in with “all the answers” and bravely shared options 1, 2 and 3 and the relative pros and cons of each solution. I was quite proud of my ability to come up with these elegant solutions in such a short period of time and knew that she also would be dutifully impressed and appreciative of this uncanny skill I have.

Well, the reality could not be further from the truth, for as I looked into her eyes, full of my own worth and importance, I was met with a steely look that represented a simmering to almost boiling point. This was not the reaction I was expecting and my immediate response, almost unconsciously, was to lift my hands and shoulders in the universal body language symbol for “what?”.

This was all that was needed to take the lid off the pot and my wife exploded with the words “I don’t want you to FIX ME alright, I just want you to LISTEN” and then stormed off out of the room leaving me sitting stunned on the end of the bed.

Unsolicited advice in my experience is generally not taken nor even fully heard as it can activate or trigger us when we haven’t asked for it. However, if we actively seek or invite it in we are more open to hearing it and potentially taking it on or putting it into practice.

Therefore it is important to respect and honour the refusal of your “unique gift” and to trust that if someone doesn’t want to hear your point of view that it is not what they need at that moment. Being unattached to the outcome is crucial to remaining in service and holding space for someone else as the point is you are serving their needs not your own in that moment.

It is important to say that I don’t always get this right and it is always a work in progress. A case in point is the story from earlier. Had I exercised the principle of refrain I may have been able to support my wife better in that moment and meet her needs rather than my own.

To hold space for another means to hold ourselves also and channel the energy and attention to the needs of the other, it is in these moments that we are fully in service. This means we need to have enough self-awareness and discernment as to what is “ours” and what is “theirs” in terms of feelings & emotions that arise.

Being able to separate these and refrain enables others the opportunity to work things through in their own way which to my mind is a much more powerful outcome. The more we are able to trust and honour our own internal wisdom and reduce our reliance on others the more we can take full responsibility for our choices and actions and the impacts they can have.

While not always easy, the practice of refrain is a tool that supercharges your ability to hold space for others and assist them to become better versions of themselves.