Steps for an Effective Timeout

You know it’s important to take a timeout when you notice reactivity. Yet, when you come back to try again, you often get caught by the same reactivity. In a recent couples' workshop, a participant said, "After so many years together we have learned to take a timeout before we say things we regret, but when we come back together we're still angry. Nothing has changed." Taking an effective timeout requires intention and skill. Let’s look at a few simple steps.

1. Create an agreement for timeouts

First, set up a standing agreement about calling timeouts and a time to check in for readiness to start again. For example, an agreement might sound like this: “Either of us can call a timeout at any time with no explanation. Each of us will immediately drop the topic at hand. An hour later we will come back to finish the dialogue or set up a time to talk another day.” 

2. Set your intention and engage in regulation

Next, set your intention to release your argument and come back to a centered place in yourself. Then engage in regulation strategies. You can find a handout called “Emotional Regulation” on the Wise Heart website here. A regulation strategy is something that helps your body come back to its baseline rhythms and supports a return to mindfulness.

3. Turn toward your experience with compassion and reassurance, then anchor

Once you have a sense of regulation, immediately, relate to your experience with compassion and reassurance. Use the tone of voice and words you would use with a close friend who had just had a painful argument or disconnect with someone they love. It might sound something like this, “This is hard. It’s so uncomfortable to have this disconnect between us. I feel agitated and sad. I can be with this. It’s okay. These are just feelings and sensations. They will pass and I will find my center again. I will be able to reconnect with the other person.” Next, engage your anchor.

4. Empathy for yourself and the other person

Compassion, reassurance, and anchoring will further stabilize you in a grounded place within yourself. Now you are ready for empathy. You can start with empathy for yourself or the other person. Empathy is a warm curiosity about experience in which you guess another’s feelings and needs and identify your own. Empathy will be most effective if you use the feelings and needs list and maintain your attention just on feelings and needs. When your attention jumps into past behaviors and arguments or tries to jump ahead to solutions, you will likely become reactive again.

5. Release attachment to strategies and make space for creativity

When you notice a sense of warmth for yourself and the other person, you are ready to work with strategies or requests regarding needs present for you and the other person. First, release attachment to meeting your needs in a certain way. Remind yourself that there are many ways to meet needs. Allow disappointment about not having it exactly as you wanted. Continue to remind yourself that with connection to needs, a new idea will appear. Ask yourself, “If I let go of all my plans and strategies, what else is possible?” At this point, some creative ideas will arise and you will be eager to enter dialogue again.

The steps in this process will be more effective the more you can maintain mindfulness. This might mean engaging meditation or mindful movement practice between each step.

Practice

Set up a time to create a timeout agreement with the person who you want a greater quality of connection with. Write these steps down on a card that will fit in your wallet or purse. Carry the card with you and pull it out the next time you call a timeout.