Calming Down Before We Communicate

We could all do better when it comes to expressing ourselves. Even if we study communication techniques, read books on communicating, go to seminars, and consider ourselves empathetic and emotionally intelligent, there is always room for improvement when translating what we are feeling and thinking into words more effectively.

One of those ways is taking the time to make sure we are in a more calm and relaxed state before we start to interact with others.

I am thinking about the last time that I completely lost it while on the phone with a customer service representative. It was in April of this year, and my father had just recently passed away and I was in the process of cleaning out his home. The city where my dad lived offered a pretty awesome junk removal program – the city would pick up a certain number of bulk junk items (like couches, bikes, old lawn furniture, etc.) for free, as long as you made an appointment and the items were placed outside the property, on the street, in an easy-to-access location. They did mention something about not putting the items on the grass or lawn, but I didn’t really pay that part much attention – putting them outside near the street was probably good enough, right?

Wrong. I ended up getting a neighbor to help me lug out heavy furniture, placing it mere inches from the curb but on my dad’s lawn, and the city did not pick up the furniture because I didn’t follow their instructions to place the items on the street itself.

I had been out running errands and assumed that I’d come back to the house and feel the relief of seeing all those old, heavy items removed. But instead, I saw them sitting there, clearly untouched. I felt a surge of anger and called the city program immediately, sitting in my parked car outside of the house, not even unbuckling my seatbelt. As the customer service representative explained to me that it was a liability for them to come onto the property and that I hadn’t followed their instructions, I felt the overwhelm setting in. I would need to make a new appointment, and the next available date was in two weeks.

Two weeks! I was livid and distraught. I tearfully complained to the representative that my father had just died, and that I was cleaning out his home, and that I had bothered a neighbor to help me move this stuff out to the curb, and that I couldn’t just leave it there for two weeks, and that I needed her to make an exception for me and to come back so that they could pick up the items today. I pushed and pushed and tried to persuade her to see how ridiculous their rule was, and how the items were basically on the street, and how wrong of them it was to just leave without picking them up.

Needless to say, the representative didn’t concede to my tearful and flustered requests, and I ended up paying for another company to come out and haul it away that same day.

Do I regret how I spoke to the representative on the phone that day? Absolutely. Even if my crying and begging had resulted in the truck coming back to pick up the items that day, I still would regret the way I communicated what was going on inside of me. It absolutely was not the fault of the customer service representative that I was having the experience I was having. Instead of doing what I did, and saying what I said, I wish I would have done a few things differently. If I could do it again:

1. Even before initiating the call, I would slow down and notice that I was feeling pretty strong emotions when I saw that the furniture was still sitting there after I got back from running errands. I would take the time to calm myself down, feeling into a more relaxed state before making the call. I could do this by slowing down my breathing, getting out of the car and making myself a cup of coffee inside, reminding myself of the bigger picture: that I’m grateful that this city program exists and was excited to use it, but if it doesn’t work out, there are other options for me.
2. Given that I was also in the midst of grieving after losing my father, I could have also reminded myself that I was in a more sensitive state than usual. Problems would feel bigger, setbacks would sting a bit more, and I might not be as energized to figure out other solutions. I’d validate that this situation felt even bigger to me because of my grief, and again I’d try to tap into the resolve that I would help myself find a way for things to work out, no matter what.
3. From a calmer state, I would have made the call. Knowing that the customer service representative was only conveying the necessary information to me and not personally responsible for the frustration I was currently feeling, I would have been more objective. While I probably would have still wanted to let her know that I was disappointed in the outcome, I would left out the parts where I was over-sharing, begging, and inconsolable.

Any time we have situations like this, where we end up feeling some regret for how we interacted in the heat of the moment, it’s important that we don’t beat ourselves up afterwards! Feeling some regret is okay because it helps us hone in on ways we can change and grow. Going back and asking ourselves, “How could I have done that differently?” is a beautiful way to learn from our experience and create new neural pathways that have a better chance of being activated next time we are in a similar situation.