I want to briefly describe a process that I suc­cess­ful­ly applied to myself on sev­er­al occa­sions when I want­ed to change a dis­turb­ing behav­ior of myself. I devel­oped a three-step process for this purpose.

Prin­ci­ple: You are not your reac­tion. If peo­ple hurt you and you react hurt­ing them, then this is first and fore­most a reac­tion to your own injury. We do not actu­al­ly mean the per­son we are fac­ing, but real­ly only want to defend our­selves. There­fore: You are not your reac­tion. Your reac­tion is learned behav­ior. There are oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties than to com­pen­sate in this way. These only have to be learned.

First step: Observe your behav­ior. In this phase, it will not yet be pos­si­ble to change your behav­ior. Rather, you only notice after the fact that you have gone too far again unnec­es­sar­i­ly. If you real­ize this, say to your­self: “Aha! Now you stepped into the trap once again!” If you like, also tell your part­ner. And even apol­o­gize for it. But don’t promise that it won’t hap­pen again, because it will hap­pen again. Just apol­o­gize for it. That will make him feel bet­ter. At the same time, you can point out to him what has caused your behav­ior. To what extent you feel hurt or mis­un­der­stood. This will some­times lead to very good conversations.

Sec­ond step: Observe your behav­ior. But in time, your inner alarm will start to go off just as you hurt your part­ner. Once you notice it not after­wards, but while it hap­pens, you know that you have entered into the sec­ond phase. Now you have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to apol­o­gize imme­di­ate­ly or to break the spikes right away. This phase will also last longer, weeks to years.

Third step: Observe your behav­ior. Since you have become more and more sen­si­tive about your­self, you are now in a posi­tion to notice before, when you get into a “stingy mood”, and now you can con­scious­ly decide to live it out, or instead, put the true motives on the table. In this phase you are so far that you can put your own injuries and the lack of under­stand­ing on the table before they cause dam­age. The rec­om­mend­ed course of action is to say such things right away. “My dear, I don’t feel under­stood by you in the mat­ter xxx. But it is impor­tant to me. May I please talk to you again about it and explain to you exact­ly what I mean?” Or “I feel hurt by xxx. Why did you do/said that? Is there a spe­cial rea­son for this?” And already you have fruit­ful con­ver­sa­tions that either bring you clos­er to each oth­er or make it clear that you may not belong togeth­er. This would prob­a­bly be the case if he does not respond at any of your con­ver­sa­tion offers.