Data Collectors,
Welcome to our first skill acquisition. Remember when you see the 🖍️ it’s a skill.
I think one of the biggest reasons people are exhausted is because they’re walking around touching everything without gloves. Every comment, every facial expression, every sigh, every weird text message, every social media post, every opinion, every expectation, every family member’s mood, every piece of energy floating around the room. Then we wonder why we’re tired, drained, and burnt out. Imagine walking around your neighborhood picking up random piles of dog shit with your bare hands. You wouldn’t do it. You’d think I was crazy if I suggested it. Yet many of us are doing the emotional version of that every single day. Somebody sighs and we pick it up. Somebody doesn’t text back and we pick it up. Our mother-in-law says something weird and we pick it up. A stranger leaves a comment online and we pick it up. Our partner comes home in a bad mood and somehow we pick that up too. By the end of the day we’re carrying around a backpack full of things that were never ours to begin with.
This is where today’s crayon comes in. 🖍️ Glove Up.
The gloves are not avoidance. The gloves are not pretending you don’t care. The gloves are not becoming emotionally unavailable. The gloves are skills. The gloves are pause. The gloves are discernment and curiosity. The gloves serve as a regulation strategy. It's learning how to stop assigning meaning before you have enough information. One of the questions I ask myself all the time is, “Hold on... am I touching this without gloves?” Because the truth is most of us are not reacting to what happened. We’re reacting to what we think happened. That’s a very different thing.
Think about how quickly the mind fills in blanks. Your partner sighs and suddenly you’ve decided they’re mad at you. Your friend doesn’t respond and you’ve decided they’re upset. Your mother asks a question and you’ve decided she’s criticizing you. A stranger disagrees with you online and you’ve decided they’re attacking you. If I stopped you right there and asked you for evidence, most people couldn’t give me any. The nervous system is making predictions. Aaron Beck’s work on cognitive distortions highlighted how quickly human beings jump to conclusions, personalize situations, and mind-read other people’s intentions without enough information to support those conclusions (Beck, 1976). In other words, we become convinced that our interpretation is reality. That interpretation then gets projected as the default view for everyone else, so when they don’t agree… There is an internalized feeling of rejection.
This is why resentment spreads so easily. The resentment isn’t just coming from what happened. It’s coming from the meaning we assigned to what happened. Once resentment has enough evidence, it starts running the entire show. Now every sigh means they’re annoyed. Every question means criticism. Every disagreement means rejection. Every mistake means they don’t care. John Gottman calls this Negative Sentiment Override, a relational state where the emotional climate becomes so contaminated that neutral or even positive interactions are filtered through a negative lens (Gottman & Silver, 1999). We stop collecting new data and start proving the old story.
The gloves ask different questions.
What do I actually know?
What am I assuming?
Is there another explanation?
Is this mine to carry?
Am I reacting to this person or what they represent?
Those are glove questions. That’s the work. Not becoming numb. Not becoming detached. Not pretending things don’t bother you. The work is learning how to investigate before you absorb. The work is learning how to sit in uncertainty long enough to gather more information. The work is realizing that not every uncomfortable feeling is a threat and not every activated response deserves your attention.
So this week’s crayon is simple. Pause before you pick it up. Before you grab the story. Before you grab the assumption. Before you grab the offense. Before you grab the resentment. Pause. Put your gloves on. Collect the data first. Just because something activated you doesn’t automatically mean it belongs to you. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. The skill is learning the difference. The reason I love this metaphor so much is because most people think they are wearing gloves when they aren’t.
They think gloves are emotional toughness.
They think gloves are avoidance.
They think gloves are not caring.
That’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about skills.
I’m talking about the ability to remain connected to yourself while interacting with the world around you. For example, gloving up might look like realizing your partner’s bad mood is not automatically your responsibility to fix. Instead of scanning for what you did wrong, overexplaining yourself, or trying to rescue the emotional climate of the room, you simply ask, “Hey, is everything okay?” Then you allow them to own their experience. That’s a glove. It may also look like not trying to parent them into being the version of a mother of father that you want them to be. It looks like allowing them to fumble and experience the natural consequences of that. Gloving up might look like saying no to a request you don’t have the capacity for instead of saying yes and silently building resentment. A fantastic example is hosting thanksgiving dinner. If you really don’t want to but you still say yes. Now you are polluting everyone with your undercurrents. Slamming cabinets, washing dishes aggressively. All because you either can’t ask for help, or don’t have the courage to say no.
It might look like disappointing somebody instead of abandoning yourself. That’s a glove. Gloving up might look like realizing someone else’s urgency does not automatically become your emergency. Just because somebody is panicking does not mean you have to panic. Just because somebody is dysregulated does not mean you have to become dysregulated. That’s a glove. Gloving up might look like receiving criticism without immediately collapsing into shame. Instead of assuming you’re wrong, defective, selfish, irresponsible, or a bad person, you pause long enough to evaluate the information. Is there something useful here? Is there not? What belongs to me? What belongs to them? That’s a glove.
Gloving up might look like refusing to become your own defense attorney every time somebody misunderstands you. One of the hardest lessons I have learned is that misunderstanding is not an emergency. Some people will misunderstand you because they don’t have enough information. Some people will misunderstand you because they are activated. Some people will misunderstand you because it benefits the story they are already telling themselves pr they learned that misunderstanding you activates you—so they allow you to take that bait. None of those situations require you to abandon yourself in order to be understood. That’s a glove.
The people pleasers in the room are going to hate this next one. Gloving up sometimes means allowing another adult to be disappointed. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Sometimes gloving up means allowing another adult to be disappointed. You’re not being cruel or selfish. Disappointment is a normal human emotion, and it is not your job to prevent everyone from experiencing it. Disappointment is the portal to growth sometimes, and there is a few of us who are literally blocking that growth. The more I study resentment, the more I realize resentment grows where self-abandonment lives. Every time we override our own needs, suppress our own truth, ignore our own limits, or carry emotional weight that does not belong to us, we deposit another dollar into the resentment account. Then years later we wonder why we’re exhausted.
This is why I created the Glove Check🧤
Before you pick something up, ask yourself:
Is this mine?
Do I have enough information?
Am I responding to reality, or am I responding to a story?
Am I about to touch this with my truth or with my trauma?
Because the answer to those questions will determine whether you walk away regulated or emotionally contaminated.
Till next time Data collectors
The analogy of the glove is clear and practical skill to have- it's another to apply it. To many questions other than what I would want to say back...thanks for this