The Response Triangle
When you’re learning to tune into and attend to your internal world, what exactly is it that you’re learning to notice?
The Response Triangle gives you a place to begin learning to recognize what’s happening internally. The Response Triangle goes by various names and has been developed and used by a variety of theorists. We call it the Response Triangle as a reminder that it is a reaction to something in the world within or around us. And when we can pay attention, we can shift our response from automatic and potentially unhelpful, to one of presence and intention. We present it here as simply as we can to help you learn how to tune in and attend to your internal world.
The Response Triangle is a model or a map. It gives you an anchor point from which to work. You can see that you can start in any one of the three corners.
We’ll start at the top, with “Mind.”
What you think about shapes you. You will re-think 80% of the thoughts you had today. If you think negative thoughts about yourself or about the world around you, you will very likely reinforce those negative thoughts tomorrow. Learning to notice and pay attention to the thoughts going through your mind is critical to good mental health. Once you recognize that you’re thinking negative thoughts, unhelpful thoughts, or just plain lies, you can then begin to re-focus your thoughts on something you know is true. Just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. Don’t believe everything you think. Compare it with what you know to be objectively true. Look for ways your thoughts might be distorted or disordered. Then, shift your focus away from what is untrue, toward what is true. Over time, you’ll begin to think more accurately about yourself and the world around you. It will take time, but the shift will happen.
Perhaps you’re not able to pay attention to what you’re thinking because your mind seems to be in a dozen different places. So, perhaps a better place for you to tune in is in “Body.” What do you notice as you slow down, take a deep breath, and become aware of the presence of your body? Start with the following:
What’s the energy level in your body, high or low?
How comfortable or uncomfortable does that seem?
Where in your body do you notice this feeling the most?
This is the best place to begin when you’re first learning to monitor what’s happening in your body. Your body can be a great clue to your emotional and mental state. If your body feels uncomfortably energized, you’re very likely experiencing a strong emotion or anxiety. If your body is uncomfortably de-energized, it’s possible you’re body has moved into a more hypo-activated state or that your experiencing sadness. Either way, it will be hard to respond well if you' remain unaware of how your body is reacting.
Finally, consider “Emotions.” What emotion is present in this moment? If you’re unsure, begin with the five basic emotions and just review them slowly to see which best aligns: sad, happy, angry, excited, disgusted. Once you have a general sense of what emotion might be present, see if you can be more particular. Perhaps sadness is close, but maybe grief is more on target. Maybe disgusted connects with you, but embarrassed is more accurate. Even just naming the emotion with this specificity helps the part of our brain that produces the emotional sensations to calm. The idea here is that if we can name it, we can tame it.
Hopefully, you can see that these three corners are intricately connected and become self-reinforcing.
Here’s an example of how that works:
I walk into my office, and my boss walks past me grumbling. If my mind makes an interpretation that my boss must be mad at me, I’ll likely continue to ruminate on those thoughts. In turn, my body will likely grown tense and constricted with a restless energy. I’ll probably be feeling angry and defensive as I look for reasons why I’m not at fault for some imagined fault, and these feelings will simply reinforce the idea in my mind that my boss is mad at me.
But, what if I were to tune into my responses and attend to what I need? What if I were able to recognize my reactions and regulate them to respond more effectively?
It’s possible my boss is mad at me. It’s also possible she is not. Naming that possibility helps my mind come up with alternative explanations. It helps me relax enough to remember that it’s the end of the quarter and reports are due. I’ve done mine, but I know others have not. It’s possible she’s feeling pressure from her bosses for information she doesn’t yet have. None of this has anything to do with me.
And then I can feel my body relax a bit. I can remember to breathe. I can release some of the tension I’m holding. Now I don’t feel angry. Now I actually feel some compassion toward her. Now, I’m wondering what I might be able to do to help.
By noticing, without judgment, what was taking placing in my mind, it allowed me to attend to all the parts of me. Recognition allowed me to better regulate to move from reaction to response.
Working the Response Triangle takes practice before it becomes automatic. You can do this with past events as well as current events. Think back over the week and identify a stressful or distressing situation (or a positive and affirming one!). Take a moment and sketch out a triangle and label the three corners - mind, body, emotions. Then try to list out what might have been going on in your mind, what do you recall your body experiencing (or what do you notice, right now, in your body simply by recalling the experience), and what emotions may have been present.
Learning the Response Triangle can go a long way to help you gain confidence that you can know and attend to your internal world. It doesn’t need to be a mystery. It just takes some time and some curiosity.
Think back over a situation from the past week and work the Response Triangle. What do you notice now that you weren’t able to notice then? How might you have responded in a way that was more effective?
