Go to Your Room
I suspect my Mom wasn’t the only parent who responded to her children’s loud disagreements and fighting by telling us to go to our rooms.
It was good advice. When we get caught up in fight (part of the fight, flight, faint network), the chemicals coursing through our bodies want to defend ourselves from fear of shame, embarrassment, and , occasionally, physical injury.
Often, the most mindful way of navigating our fear, anger, and doubt is to separate ourselves from the circumstances. This is especially true if we can learn to be aware of arousal. Awareness can be our Earkly Warning System! It gives us space to rewrite the story we’re telling ourselves. Usually, that’s the problem: the story that’s taken residence in our mind. They’re taking advantage of us. They don’t value my feelings. They always treat me this way.
Before tabling the discussion, if you can, it may be valuable to clarify each party’s goals: what do you each want. This may be exactly what the doctor ordered! After you’ve clarified what you each want and what you think the other wants, you might discover an end run that allows both goals to be satisfied.
Though there are rare occasions where we can successfully contain the fire of disagreemment, usually we continue diving off the cliff of disagreement under the illusion we’ll be able to explain ourselves so we arrive at an understanding (hopefully recognizing that we were correct after all)
Instead, we might practice Mom’s teachings: Go to your room. We could come up with our own version of this: I don’t think this conversation is helpful to either of us right now. I want to talk about this when both of us feels are angry. I’m going to step away and think about how we can say this better and give myself time. Maybe you can do the same and we can talk about it later. Then, unequivoally follow through.
When you practice going to your rooms, you might discover unexpected benefits. You should pay attention to your awareness of the situation.
- Perspective - Are you missing something? Are they ways to shift the talking points so you can see the other perspectives more clearly?
- Investment - Is this really worth the expenditure of your energy?
- Impact of Winning - Is your point worth being one-up on the matter?
- The Story you’re telling yourself - What is the story you’re telling yourself? Is the story you’re telling yourself the real story underlying this disagreement?
- Reimagination - Sometimes going to our room enables us to see a third option where we improve on both proposed options. I remember some meetings where we tabled the discussion because the views were so different and strongly opposed.
One time when I was the Chair for an important Committee, I was opposed to the views of one of the other members. I knew we all wanted the same thing but we had very different ways of getting there. We tabled the discussion until the next meeting. As I let the idea simmer, I could imagine benefits to the other position I couldn’t see before.
Because we had fundamentally different perspectives due to our places in the organization, it was understandable that we disagreed. We still had similar goals; we just had different ways of getting there.
I used the word simmer intentionally. After all, the name of this website and my podcast is Worldwide Stew. Any good stew likely requires some simmering to allow time for flavors to bloom, meld, and settle. The idea behind my Mom’s command to Go to your rooms had the same outcome: It let things simmer. Simmering is good. If the relationship is between spouses and partners, you might find there are additional benefits to Going to your Room.