How to Deal With Being Provoked
A practice for our times
The sun is shining, it’s a Friday, you’ve got exciting weekend plans. You’re about to close your computer when a new, hostile email lands in your box.
Provocation.
After a rough day at work, you’re thrilled to step into the cozy comfort of home. But as you hang up your coat, you hear the news broadcasting the latest outrageous initiative from a rogue leader you have no control over.
Provocation.
You drive crosstown at rush-hour to pick up your kid from an afterschool event. They get into the car and won't talk to you or explain why not.
Provocation.
Whoever we are, wherever we are, we are vulnerable to being provoked. And these days, it seems, there are too many opportunities to experience it.
How do we deal with it effectively? I’ve broken it down into three phases*:
Reaction
Data Gathering**
Action
*I say three-phase, but like most things emotional, it’s not wholly linear. There’s a lot of overlap.
** Phase two is really important. And contains tools you may not have heard of before.
***This is a sophisticated practice boiled down into one, longer-than-usual, hopefully digestible post. Mastery takes nuance, and years.
PHASE ONE: REACTION
When provoked, what we normally and sensibly do is react. If you pay attention to what’s happening in your body, being provoked feels as if you’ve been punched in the stomach or a fish hook is yanking on your solar plexus.
Think about the last time this happened. Did your breath become shallow? Did you explode into rage, panic, grief, or numbness, or, as it unfolded, a lovely combination of them all? It’s all normal.
These days I’ve seen reel after reel of solid advice for dealing with political provocation. Guides invite us to honor our feelings, feel them, and then take positive action (see phase three), including, for example, making boundaries around news intake. But when you’re being provoked by those you love or work with, it’s trickier. You may not even realize you’ve been provoked. The temptation to lash out — and create a bigger mess — is high.
Getting through the reaction phase requires knowing you’ve been provoked, and having a reliable method for feeling and getting the poison out — preferably one that involves moving your body. Doomscrolling does not fall into this category 😉.
Yoga, kickboxing, walking, breathing, hitting pillows, etc., is more like it. Personally, I’m a big fan of Qigong. I may start a series feeling heavy, anxious, and scattered, but I reliably feel lighter, energized, and more focused by the end.
Be patient. It may take a while for the stirred-up feelings to settle.
Completion of the reaction phase means that you’ve processed enough raw emotion so that you can think clearly, which is required for the next phase.
When you haven’t completed the reaction phase, those stirred-up feelings move with you into the world. Your agitation leaks out in a work meeting. Dinner with your spouse is edgy. You pick fights. Sleep is fitful.
PHASE TWO: DATA GATHERING
Luckily, trauma education has spread far and wide. So most of us know that when people and circumstances don’t behave as we expect them to, our past traumas get activated. When provoked, it can be useful to explore what wounds have been “triggered” for you.
But to successfully move on from being provoked, you also need to explore the provocateur and their conscious or unconscious motives (beyond simply calling them an asshole, which they may very well be). This is crucial because some of the negative feelings that you think are yours might have been purposefully handed off to you by the provocateur.
For example, understanding the muzzle velocity (flood the zone) theory of what’s currently happening in the US government has helped many shift out of perpetual grief and despair. “Flooding the zone” refers to a political tactic to overwhelm the opposition by making so many radical changes at once that people don’t know how to respond and feel helpless. Knowing that inciting despair is part of the administration’s larger motive to make people easier to control brings perspective and more choices about how to respond.
Provocation generally falls into two categories:
DECOY: If I can get you to feel [negative emotion], you won’t notice that I [can’t complete X task; don’t know how to do Y; usually something stemming from inadequacy].
PROJECTION: I can’t tolerate feeling [negative emotion], so I’m going to get you to feel it for me.
Get curious about your provocateur’s motive. Here are the questions to ask:
Is there an (often hidden) reason this person would want me to be feeling this way?
What would they gain by having me feel [negative emotion(s)]?
Is this behavior a habit or blind spot quirk for this person?
When I launched this Substack, a leadership colleague called it, “cute.” I felt belittled, and a wave of insecurity made my breath jagged until I realized what was happening. I got quiet and focused on what his response told me about him. I remembered he once shared the desire to write more, but couldn’t be bothered. So that insecure feeling that seized me? Probably belonged to him. Underhanded projection.
The kid in the car giving the silent treatment may be enlisting you to feel all the things they can’t express. That data will be so useful in helping you soften and strategize on how to be an effective parent (rather than a confused, reactive hostage).
Successful data collection gives you the info you need to untangle from the provocateur. It creates more space from your negative feelings so you can move on to the next phase, which is to take action. Not completing this phase will result in feeling weighed down and impotent.
PHASE THREE: ACTION
That nasty email from a co-worker may have deadlines that require an immediate response. But you don’t have to respond to the tone until you’ve established why and if it is important to do so. Maybe in your data gathering phase, you realized that the coworker was unfairly pressured by a higher-up and took it out on you. Maybe they were a victim of the fires. In this case, instead of biting back, you might check in on them to see how they’re doing.
A client did get a late Friday email from a new employee, telling her they decided to leave before completing the one big deliverable, because they were tired. My client wrote but didn’t send three outraged emails firing the employee, and then reached me for some data gathering. We realized the employee might be testing her authority to see what she’d do. Her reaction needed to be calm and clear. She wrote: Taking care of yourself is important, but leaving me to do your work on a Friday night is not. The office is open Saturday and Monday at 7 a.m. Figure it out.
Your spouse doesn’t come home until 3 a.m., your teen leaves the kitchen a mess, your sibling didn’t invite you to a gathering the rest of the family attended ... with every provocation, your action will depend on the relationship, the situation, and the outcomes you’re looking for. Being provoked can be so unsettling, it makes us think we need to do something immediately. Sometimes you need to have it out. Sometimes you need to get an apology. But just as often, the info reveals — as it did with my insecure colleague — that nothing need be done.
Giving yourself the time you need to move through the phases is hard. Most people lash out before they move through the reaction, gather the data, and choose how to act. But if you want to be a leader, learning how to successfully manage provocation is essential.
If you have a provocation you’re trying to manage, I hope these steps help. If not, you can always reach out.
Got something to add? A spiffy way to deal with a provocateur? A story of triumph? Some good advice?
With so many people being provoked daily by current events, the HI Circles (next one: Feb. 26, sign-up in link) allow us to come together, deal with provocation, and lead.
I have also felt belittled when another women's empowerment expert called my appearance on CNN with Anderson Cooper "cute" and hung on to that for years :) Enjoyed reading that detail of your piece here!
Timely and HI-ly thoughtful tools and tips. Thank you!
p.s. The post wasn't nearly as long as I had anticipated, but helpful to have set expectations as these days it could be 140 characters to the length of an Atlantic Monthly!