"Pause" Is Not Actionable Advice

Here's what IS....

I run hot. Not just because I’m in perimenopause – I mean, I’ve always run hot. I’m prone to bouts of temper, fits of pique, going from zero to furious in less than 30 seconds, and raising my voice to make myself heard. I’ve been called up-tight, angry, and rigid.

For years, I’ve known that “the pause” is the secret to not detonating all over the people I love most when I’m stressed and/or triggered—a partner and my child most of all, because they tend to be present at the times of day when I have had it.

I badly wanted to be able pause before the stress of 100 unanswered emails, burned oven fries, censorship in school libraries, and bad news about one of my books built to the unmanageable point that I yelled at my daughter at bedtime for her messy room, which only started a shouting match that sent both of our nervous systems into even hotter states, which also pushed badly-needed sleep into the more distant future.

And even if I managed to cool off enough to apologize before we actually turned out the lights, I still went to my own bed burning with shame and regret.

I’d done it again.

This was not how I wanted to be in the world.

And I was getting really fed up with books and essays and Instagram posts and people in general telling me to pause in these moments. Yeah, I know!!! But HOW????

I went in search of answers.

Kerri’s note: Very much NOT me. Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

I was already in therapy, so I talked about my struggle there. I went to my usual sobriety support meetings at The Luckiest Club where members talk all the time about emotional sobriety (which is for everyone, btw, not just those of us sober from alcohol), and I particularly tuned in to how people talked about managing their distress in specific moments. I took an anger management class with Sober Powered which taught me how to monitor my own internal state and to keep an eye-opening journal that made me aware of some of my patterns and also revealed a very useful skill: writing down WHY I was angry helped diffuse my anger very quickly.

Then I read Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance, which gave me the key that unlocked it all: PRACTICE THE PAUSE. In order to access the pause in moments of distress, we need to practice it when we’re not in distress, she explained. And she empathized so beautifully with those of us who find the pause so elusive. I felt seen.

She suggested making it a practice to pause at a specific time of the day, like when brushing one’s teeth, but I knew myself well enough to know that wouldn’t work for me. Instead, in my phone I set two alarms a day to chime at me in a spa-like way with the words “Pause, Listen, Maybe” on the screen (I’ll be writing about Listen and Maybe in future essays here).

And I promised myself that every single time these alarms went off, I would close my eyes, breathe, and count to at least 5. If I happened to be driving, I would keep my eyes open but turn off whatever I was listening to and put my attention on my breathing.

I’m a believer in practice. Without my writing practice, I never would have (finally) become a published writer. Without my morning pages practice (which I learned from The Artist’s Way), I wouldn’t have made certain breakthroughs in my creative work. Without my walking practice, I wouldn’t be as healthy as I am.

Practice makes progress.

So I practiced the pause, and I trusted the process.

Incredibly, little by little, I started to access the pause occasionally in moments of distress. Then sometimes. And now it’s often. Not always! No one is perfect, which was another truth I had to reckon with (another future essay!). And this progress from never pausing to frequently pausing took me more than two years. But hey, two years to carve new neural pathways into a then-48 year old brain is pretty good, I think.

I’ll be honest – while I absolutely credit Brach and her suggestion to practice the pause as the most important single piece of advice I found, there were many other helpers along the way. I’ve already mentioned therapy, etc, but for me, my quest for the pause also involved an antidepressant and hormones. And getting enough sleep, and simplifying my life.

My point is – we all get to the pause in our own ways. Perhaps the way I got there resonates with you, but if there is one thing I hope you take away from this essay, it’s this: If you’re reading these words in your own quest for the pause, you’re already “doing the work” to get there. Keep going. If your intuition tells you to try something, TRY IT. Trust yourself and trust the process.

I believe in you.

—Kerri

As zen as I get……