Reality Check: A story of two neighbours.
October 15, 2024
BANG.
Your body tightens with a start. A glance at the clock lighting up your bedside table reminds you that it’s 11:13 PM – past quiet hours and well into the shortening night before work tomorrow.
What in the world is your neighbour doing over there!? Your imagination spins up all sorts of stories: they’re living an alternative lifestyle and don’t respect others who work normal working hours or they’re dropping marbles/kettlebells/bowling balls as an act of psychological warfare or…and on and on.
Take a moment – after reading this, how do you feel in your body? This is a shadow of how we would feel in the actual situation.
Sure, the neighbour’s actions in this example have an effect. But the cascading catastrophizing thoughts make it personal and are not helping with the original goal: rest.
When something encroaches on our beauty sleep, these stories we spin up in our heads to make sense of what’s happening can get eloquent – fast. Maybe they’re right, but often they’re far from it and, more importantly, don’t serve us well.
Spinning up explanatory stories about what’s happening around us is not limited to the wee hours of the night. It’s a human characteristic of making sense of our place amidst our neighbours. Emotions – and exhaustion – evidently factor into the actual sense being brought to our understanding, and oft need to be worked with to find clarity.
No matter what spin the explanatory stories we conjure take, we can’t fully know what’s going on in another person’s life. Even when the walls are removed and someone is directly in front of us, there is an undercurrent of unseen circumstances at play that we might not be aware of.
We all want to be able to trust our thoughts, but it’s important not to be overly simplistic about it. When interpreting situations and grasping for meaning, the negativity bias rears its ugly head here, fuelling a tendency to fill in knowledge gaps with a negative tone.
Moreover, keeping inventory of everyone else’s pet peeves is hard! So when we do something that upsets someone else, it is usually by accident. Most of the time, we are in our own heads and unfortunate upsets are accidental rather than malevolent.
When we get riled up by uncomfortable things like interpersonal conflict, it can be helpful to pause and consider: What internal monologue am I telling myself that’s upsetting me? Does it match the actual facts of the situation?
Starting with this baseline, we then try to get more information. A good first step in any conflict resolution is to open up a conversation with the other side to bring their perspective in. Get curious – and also share your experience with them (never assume they know!).
Ideally, this can serve as a reality check, loosening our grip on whatever story drew us in and helping us settle back down into our proverbial beds. But this is a big ask when we’re exhausted and emotionally stirred up.
In a less-than-ideal situation, a temporary alternative is to understand that you’re trying to make sense of an uncomfortable situation but avoid catastrophizing it into the worst explanation imaginable. Try to replace it with a more compassionate possibility.
For our example above, try imagining this: your neighbour is working two jobs and stuck assembling an IKEA bedframe at night with only one person present instead of the instructions’ recommended two or they’re a plumber getting ready for work the next day and have nowhere to prep except in their home.
How does this scenario feel in your body, now? Is it different than the first version?
Perhaps this exercise in grace can help us soften towards others without getting even more riled up by our rampant imaginations. And hopefully, we can get some sleep.
Of course, sometimes this short-term solution for sleep isn’t enough and confronting your neighbour is necessary, immediately or at a later time. If this is where you’re at, we recommend you review the advice we put forth in an article on different preferred styles of dealing with conflict.
Research in conflict resolution shows that we tend to like being approached in a way that reflects how we approach others. For our words to be received well enough at midnight (that’s right – another wide-eyed hour has already gone by as we’ve been contemplating this), we need to consider: what is the most effective way you can communicate your perspective and needs?
Even still, sometimes we get stuck at an impasse with others and don’t know what to do. This is where organizations like Mediation Services come in, offering training in conflict resolution and/or third-party mediation.
Whatever the case, we all face interpersonal conflict and so the question inevitably becomes: how can we face it more skillfully? Hopefully, we can help you answer that question for yourself.