You Cannot Argue With A Drunk Person

You cannot argue with a drunk person. Have you ever tried that? When I was younger, I quite often was the designated driver. The sober one amongst many drunk people. Hysterical at points. Frustrating at others.

Have you ever tried to convince a drunk person of something?

It's nearly impossible.

The thing is, when someone is upset, they are like that drunk person.

Caught up in thought.
Believing every word.

You cannot convince them of anything so it might be best not to try.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today's exploration starts with a funny statement to say the least and that is that you cannot argue with a drunk person.

And it was said to me this morning by my fiance when we were just chatting earlier today and it really struck me and so I thought I'd speak to you about it.

And let's start with the mildly amusing side of that.

I don't know if you have ever tried to argue with a drunk person.

And I have had quite a bit of experience of this because when I was a senior leader,

Before I was a headteacher,

When I was a senior leader in school,

I used to quite often be the designated driver.

I had a Zephira so I could get lots of people in the back of the car.

So it was often me who was the one who ferried people around when we went out nights out when I was a teacher.

And so sometimes I did,

Sometimes it's being sober when everybody else is drunk is quite amusing but other times it can be a little bit frustrating because you're trying to convince them of a way of being or behaving or it's time to go home or maybe you shouldn't have that extra drink or just in general conversation.

And they're not thinking straight are they?

I mean,

I don't know about you,

But I don't think straight when I'm drunk.

I don't think any of us do really.

But the real like crux of that is,

Is that when you are drunk,

Everything makes perfect sense in the moment,

Doesn't it?

Innocently we believe what we're saying.

We believe that we believe those thoughts that we're having because that's kind of what alcohol does to you.

It makes everything a bit blurry,

Doesn't it?

But the thing is like we are as human beings living in a world of thought all the time.

We're never not living in a world of thought.

And some of the time we really can't see through that at all.

And I had an experience yesterday of sending a message to somebody in my family which was taken not as I intended it.

So I sent a message that I thought was funny.

I even put little laughing emojis like you do and the person who received that message took it that I was being rude about something.

Now as this unraveled it became clearer to me as I calmed down that what had happened was that their state of mind was already upset about something that I didn't know about.

And so I sent a message with an intention of humor and then they didn't receive it that way because they were already upset.

So that's where the kind of drunk analogy comes in is that if we're already upset,

If we're already not in a good thinking state then when we receive some information that layer of how we're feeling,

Our state of mind is how we interpret the world about us.

So what then happened was is I spent far too long caught up in trying to persuade that person that I didn't mean to be rude.

Like we're talking a lot of WhatsApp messages and this person wouldn't answer the phone so I couldn't actually speak to him which probably would have been better but anyway.

So I got caught up in trying to convince this person of my intention that I loved them and I would never intentionally want to be rude to them and couldn't they believe why did they believe that about me and I got really really caught up.

And the realization I had later as I settled down and that took a while because I'm human too but I'm okay with that experience.

I know what went on.

As I settled down I started to see that I was trying to convince somebody who was caught up in thought of my way of thinking and how often do we try to do that.

I mean you only have to spend a very short amount of time on social media at the moment to find people trying to convince other people of their point of view.

But when we're in thought which is where we are all the time that looks like super real to us.

It really really does look real and so it is like convincing a drunk person to do something they don't want to do or convincing them of something that they don't agree with because in that moment we all know don't we when we're drunk.

We really do.

We really do believe what we're doing and thinking and it all looks very sensible till we wake up in the cold light of day the next morning.

So where I started to see this a lot in relationships is that when somebody is caught up it's best off to leave them to settle.

And also because if somebody's already sending you some messages that you're a bit you don't really like then you're already starting to feel your thinking about those messages and so then you've got two people kind of butting up against each other.

And where I've noticed this being really helpful is you know in the receipt of you know I got caught up yesterday you know hands up for being human but generally speaking if I get an upset message from someone where I think oh that that's they they're coming across and I know that's how I'm seeing them as coming across upset.

I then can feel my thinking about that message and I tend to realise a couple of things that I didn't realise yesterday a lot of the time I realised that I didn't yesterday.

But then there's a noticing of their riled up-ness and their caught up in thinking and then there's a noticing of mine too and then there's kind of an awareness really that space might be better than reacting than sending another message back.

And I didn't see this yesterday I just didn't see it and the moment I got upset somebody very close to me I didn't want them to think I'd meant to upset them and I can and when I look back on the messages now I can see how and this isn't about telling you what to do but how understanding how thought works and how thought passes and how feelings pass more easily when we don't interfere.

I was trying to interfere with this person's natural passing of thought and trying to make them move to different thinking and it's a bit like what we do to ourselves isn't it we try to make ourselves think a different way and you know all actually this person in my life needed was space and time and a chance to go through whatever thinking process he needed to go through.

But I probably threw fuel on the fire I mean it was a bit like giving more alcohol to the drunk person because I did create more and I didn't create it but it became more riled up the whole situation because I interfered on something that was naturally going to pass on its own.

The upset this person felt about a situation the upset he felt about my message that had the capacity to pass if I had let it and so there was a big piece of learning and I think I fell into a place of not really remembering that this was all thought and that's because I'm human.

But maybe there's something from this that you can take and bring some awareness to in your life that you can sort of start to see that when we're riled up when another person is riled up well that's like two drunks having a really bad argument isn't it which never ends well but you can't argue with a drunk person and maybe if we all stopped arguing with each other in that realization that when somebody is in that upset state they have an upset state of mind and that has a natural ability to pass without us needing to get involved with it.

So that's just something to contemplate isn't it.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downham,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

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