CHAPTER 3

UNHOOKING YOUR BUTTONS

un-hook: to free from a habit or dependency.

Imagine you are in an important meeting. You feel comfortable, well-informed, creative, and collaborative. Suddenly someone across the table from you says something, and for no apparent reason a strong electrical shock surges up through the table and right into your body. It sends such a jolt through your body that you lose your train of thought and you start sweating. Then, as you start to get angry, you realize that nobody else at the table seemed to feel this jolt of electricity.

You don’t say anything about it, but just when you start to regain your composure, someone raises the same subject that caused the earlier jolt, and sure enough you get another jolt of electricity. Now you’re not just shocked, you’re really mad. You may even start yelling at the other people, accusing them of shocking you. Now, of course, the other people at the table, who have no idea about the jolt of electricity, are all looking at you as if you were from another planet. They may not say it out loud, but everyone is probably thinking that you’ve gone a little crazy and that you are overreacting to what was said.

You don’t feel that you are overreacting, however, because through their words, ideas, tone of voice, or maybe body language, someone is shocking your system just as though they had their hand on a button with your name on it. That person has said or done something that pushes a tender and vulnerable spot deep inside you. It’s a spot that can cause you pain or fear or other uncomfortable feelings whenever it is touched or exposed. It typically also triggers a strong reaction from you when you are reminded of that spot. This is what we mean by the phrase getting your button pushed.

One of the tricky things, however, is that you are probably not even conscious that a button is being pushed or that you are having a reaction that may seem unreasonable or out of proportion to others. People are often not aware of their own buttons, so they react unconsciously and sometimes irrationally when their buttons get pushed. Getting their buttons pushed makes people horribly ineffective in relationships or in problem solving.

When their buttons get pushed, people typically get dumber rather than smarter. By our informal calculations there is about a twenty-point drop in IQ. Unfortunately this is often accompanied by an equal but opposite conviction that we have become more perceptive rather than dumber.

People aren’t getting their buttons pushed every time that they have a strong emotional reaction to something. Strong reactions can often be appropriate. What we’re talking about is when a reaction is over the edge from what is appropriate: when it is an overreaction. Occasionally a pushed button is reflected by a significant underreaction (i.e., where the individual froze and did nothing). When looking back on the situation, the person might ask himself, “Where did that reaction come from?”

You can be pretty sure that someone pushed your button if, when describing the incident, you want to end with the sentence “and therefore they must suffer!” It’s a little like the difference between Teflon and Velero. If some annoying action of the other person slips off you like Teflon, you probably don’t have a button that’s getting pushed. If, however, the incident sticks in your throat or heart or gut like Velero, then you’ve probably got some unresolved fears or pain that will create a button just waiting to be triggered.

MANAGING YOUR BUTTONS

There are two main ways to manage your reactive buttons. The first way is to gain a better understanding about what is going on inside you, to become more aware of your buttons. Then you realize that the feelings that accompany them come from a tender spot inside you, a vulnerability that you carry around with you, rather than from what somebody else just did to you. Having this awareness is a way to start unhooking your buttons.

The second way to keep from getting your buttons pushed is to try to get the rest of the world to quit pushing your buttons so that you will never have to feel those vulnerable spots. Maybe you’ll have more luck at this method than we have. Our experience is that most of the people we spend time with are remarkably unwilling to change their behavior simply to avoid pushing our buttons. So our advice is to put energy into gaining self-awareness about your buttons, rather than trying to prevent the rest of the world from pushing those buttons.

Unhooking your buttons refers to unhooking the electrical wires from a button that you push, for example, a doorbell. It may take the shape of simply minimizing the intensity of your response when a button is pushed. It may not be possible to unhook all your buttons. Some deep wounds or strongly formed reactive spots may never completely go away. But we can compassionately and firmly take responsibility for them. This capacity to step back and notice our patterns and automatic tendencies is critical in becoming a nondefensive problem solver.

THREE STEPS TO UNHOOKING YOUR BUTTONS

One of the most effective ways to gain awareness about your buttons is to explore what feelings arise and what stories you tell yourself when your buttons get pushed. Since our buttons are mostly in our unconscious, this takes self-exploration and detective work to get to the root of the button. Here is a three-step process to help you gain self-awareness by exploring your buttons.¹

1. Think of a situation when your button got pushed by something that another person did to you. Remember, this is an instance that triggered an overreaction on your part. Describe the facts as you understood them, including any feelings that came up for you.

   Bob was supposed to drive by my house and pick me up this morning at 8 a.m. He was an hour late. I was furious that he was such an inconsiderate jerk and didn’t show up on time or even bother to call to say he would be late.

2. Explore the story that you are telling yourself about what this other person must be thinking about you in order to treat you this way. This often involves some variation of a belief on your part that the other person must think you are insignificant, incompetent, or unlikable.

   It must not have mattered to Bob that I was waiting for an hour. He must not think I’m very significant. If I were important to him, he wouldn’t have kept me waiting.

3. Now explore any underlying fear or vulnerable places inside you that may get triggered by that story, or the perceived judgments of the other person. Usually it will involve the mirror image of the story you have made up about what the other person thinks of you. It may trigger a strong reaction in you when someone else thinks you may be insignificant or incompetent or unlikable if you fear it is true.

   Why would it bother me so much that Bob treats me like I’m not very significant? Maybe it’s because some part of me feels insignificant. I don’t like being reminded of that feeling, so I get angry at Bob for making me feel that way.

This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t take action to correct Bob’s behavior. A discussion with Bob about his being late is certainly appropriate. However, it can be helpful to realize that the pain or upset feelings you are experiencing come from the vulnerable part of you that may not feel significant, rather than from what Bob actually did to you. If you didn’t have a vulnerable part inside you that feared being insignificant, it probably wouldn’t bother you so much that Bob may think you are insignificant. If you didn’t have that little part of you that doubts your own significance, you might still have to deal with the problem of Bob picking you up late, but you wouldn’t have such an emotional charge. It would just be another problem to solve. This awareness can reduce some of the emotional charge you may feel toward the other person and allow you to move more quickly out of blaming and into problem solving.

Another example might be helpful. During one of our workshops for new consultants, the participants took turns making presentations to the class. One participant, Chris, had particularly poor listening skills. Just about everyone in the workshop agreed that Chris had lousy listening skills. Chris’s poor listening really incensed Jane, another participant in the course. When Jane made a presentation and Chris wouldn’t pay attention, Jane’s anger was obvious to everyone in the room. While Chris’s poor listening was a slight distraction for other participants, it really pushed Jane’s button.

Jane’s willingness to explore her button getting pushed is summarized below:

1. The facts and feelings:

   I went to a lot of trouble to prepare a good presentation and Chris didn’t seem to pay any attention. I don’t think he heard a word I said. It made me so angry for him to disrespect me like that. He’s such an idiot; I wouldn’t ever want to work with him.

2. Exploring the story and/or judgments:

   The story I tell myself is that Chris must be thinking that I’m not worth listening to. He must not believe I have anything important to say. If he respected me as a trainer, he wouldn’t be ignoring me the way he does. He would be paying closer attention to what I have to say if he thought I was a competent trainer.

3. Exploring the pain or fear:

   I guess not being listened to or taken seriously has bothered me for quite a while. I probably have a part of me that worries that I’m really not worth being listened to. I know I’m a new consultant and I have some doubts about my competency. I hate feeling incompetent, so when Chris reminds me of those feelings, I hate him too.

Knowing that the real charge or pain was coming from inside her helped Jane let go of her anger toward Chris. Jane realized that Chris wasn’t “causing” the pain within her. Rather the pain was coming from that vulnerable place inside Jane that questioned her own competency. Gaining this understanding about herself didn’t make Chris a better listener, but at least Jane could be in the room with Chris and not take his poor listening skills personally. Jane still wouldn’t choose to ever hire Chris or partner with him, but she didn’t have to have him publicly humiliated just to feel better either.

This self-discovery can often be the end of the process. Just gaining a better understanding of your underlying feelings can help you unhook your buttons and defuse the anger. For example:

Just knowing that it isn’t Dave that is the issue can help you let go of the anger toward Dave.

Although it’s not always necessary, if you do want to take it a step further and talk about the issue with the person who triggers you, you will be able to do so using a very different tone. We’ll be talking more about that in chapter 4, when we review some tools for telling more of your truth. In chapter 9 (Breaking Free of the Past One Thought at a Time) we offer additional tools for dealing with these vulnerable feelings.

Remember, the fear or pain underlying your button is usually unconscious. That’s why it’s so hard to discover. It takes a lot of persistent detective work that is also compassionate toward that vulnerable spot deep within you. This unconscious material is having a profound impact on your behavior and your relationships, even if it is out of your awareness. The issues are buried only from your consciousness, not from your life. It’s like driving a car on the freeway. You can do it better with your eyes open than with your eyes closed. In the long run you are better off bringing the unconscious material to the surface and dealing with it, even though it may be uncomfortable. An effective way of exploring unconscious material is one button at a time.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

When we get our buttons pushed, it feels as if someone were doing something to us. In fact, they are just putting us in touch with a vulnerable place we already have deep within us. Most of us spend a lot of energy trying to get other people to stop pushing our buttons, but the best way to deal with our buttons is to unhook from them. We do that by exploring the painful place within us that feels so vulnerable. Using the Unhooking Your Buttons Worksheet can help you understand both the story you may be inventing about those feelings and the underlying fear and pain that is the source of the button. By gaining self-awareness about the source of the buttons, you can eventually unhook from those buttons.