Choose Your Experience (and put on your Teflon)

“You gotta put on your teflon,” Matthew, my coach would say to me, sometimes.

What he meant was that when someone in front of me was angry and taking their shit out on me, the most loving thing to do was to:

a.) stay present, and

b.) not attack back, and

c.) lovingly protect myself by mentally putting on my “teflon” (more formally known as Polytetrafluoroethylene, of course–say that ten times fast!) and letting their words slide right off of me.

That is to say–no allowing their stuff to “stick.”

It reminded me of when I was a child and my younger sister and I would get into arguments. We’d go to our mother, wanting her to settle it and say who was right. She told us to be like ducks, letting the water roll right off our backs.

“But she–!” one of us would protest, only to be met with our mother chanting,

“Be a duck, be a duck, be a duck!”

It was infuriating at the time, of course, but this is now one of my fondest and funniest childhood memories–my mother chanting at us, refusing to play referee. I fully intend to pull that out of my bag o’ parenting tricks, someday.

And then that reminds me of the year I spent going to Al-Anon meetings.

Al-Anon is the (immensely powerful!) 12-step group for friends and family members of alcoholics. Many people start attending Al-Anon thinking they’ll learn something about how to stop someone else from using or abusing alcohol. After a few meetings, though, the message is clear–it’s not about controlling someone else’s behavior.

It’s about coping with their behavior–about not letting their behavior “stick.” It’s an opportunity to choose your own experience of life, rather than reacting to what’s going on.

Putting on the teflon

In graduate school, I was taking a Theory of Child Development class. One day, I sat in a different seat than I usually did. I didn’t think anything of it; I had arrived earlier than usual for whatever reason it struck my fancy that morning that I’d like to sit somewhere different. The people who usually sat in those seats arrived right around the time the professor did, and she immediately started class.

It turns out, the people who usually sat in certain seats were very, very upset with me for having sat in their usual seats, because they had wanted to sit next to one another. I’d had no idea. They let me know how upset they were by saying things to one another across the aisles of the class like, “I would have sat next to you today, Clara, but SOMEONE just HAD to sit in MY seat.”

When I heard this I looked over and the woman literally rolled her eyes at me.

These were women in their mid-twenties who I saw once a week for this class, and we’d only ever talked to one another during breakout sessions during class if the professor asked us to share reflections on an assignment. I have no idea if I could have done something in a previous class to offend them—no clue.

The fact that they were behaving this way in a class on the Theory of Child Development was not lost on me. Also, it was a bit disturbing that they were behaving this way in a graduate school program designed to train MFTs and school counselors—people who one would think could just say, “Hey, can we change seats? I wanted to sit next to my friend Clara.”

But I digress—

Because God/spirit/The Universe has been granted an open invitation to hang out in my life, of course–of course!–the very day I had this conflicted encounter, I had shared on social media,

“I’ll commit to seeing that if you show up unkindly, it’s not who you really are.”

Of course I had done that–of course.

I’d love to say that I handled the situation all compassionate and chill and in alignment with the very thing that I had shared on social media. But actually, I was pissed (and, I was hurt).

Eventually, though, I remembered what I’d shared. And I began thinking about so many shares I’d heard in Al-Anon about not letting an alcoholic’s behavior affect them.

Shares sounded something like this: “He had been drinking, and he started his same routine, telling me what a fuck up I was. But then I realized–it wasn’t him talking, it was the alcohol talking. I could differentiate between who he really was, and how he acted when he drank.”

In shares like these, the person was describing putting up their psychological teflon. They were witnessing, not attacking back, and simply letting it roll away–like water rolling off of a duck’s back.

No stick.

They were also—and this is really powerful—choosing their own experience.

Everyone’s Under The Influence

The thing is, everyone’s under the influence of something. The lessons of not allowing an alcoholic’s behavior to “stick” or get to you—to choose your experience amid that—can apply everywhere.

People are under the influence of…Bad parenting. A health problem. A fight with their best friend. No sleep. Pregnancy scares. A drug habit. Workaholism. Jealousy and envy. TV coma. An essential lack of connection to oneself, to meaning, to fulfillment. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear.

If everyone’s under the influence of something, then perhaps we would do ourselves a favor by taking the detached view–taking their fear masquerading as bitchiness about as seriously as we would take the words of someone who was falling down drunk. You can hear what someone says when they’re drunk, but you’d be wise not to take it too seriously.

The truth is, we don’t know what anyone else is under the influence of. We couldn’t possibly know. Everyone is fighting a battle that you and I don’t know about.

In these situations, I know I am committed to: the belief that if you show up unkindly, it’s not who you really are.

That’s how you choose your experience.