My husband and I had a little argument this morning about mixed berries.

Yes, berries.

We don’t argue much these days. Thankfully, the post-perimenopause era of our marriage is considerably more harmonious. But this morning, there we were in the kitchen having what felt like a disproportionately passionate discussion about a bag of frozen fruit.

I was telling him, for what felt like the hundredth time, not to buy the non-organic frozen berries.

Then came my familiar speech about berries being one of the more heavily sprayed fruits, pesticide residues, organic options and why I would really prefer we didn’t buy them.

Riveting stuff.

His response was essentially:

I can eat those. You can have your organic ones. Why can’t you just let me do what I want?

And then, inexplicably, he began defending the berries. Which, naturally, made me want to defend my position even more.It was exactly as boring as it sounds.

But later I thought: this wasn’t really an argument about berries.

Most recurring arguments aren’t about the thing we think they’re about.

Underneath the berries were two people with slightly different values, different beliefs about what mattered, different protective responses and probably slightly less capacity than usual to let the other person simply have their own point of view.

And this is something I see all the time.

• The way the dishwasher is stacked.
• The tone of a text.
• Someone being five minutes late.
• The towels on the floor.
• How much the kids are on their phones.
• Whether you really needed to buy that.

The surface issue might be tiny, but what it touches underneath can be much bigger.

So the next time you notice yourself becoming disproportionately irritated, defensive or stuck in a familiar argument, there are three things worth checking.

1. Capacity

The first question is simply:

How much capacity do I actually have today?

When our capacity is stretched, our window of tolerance becomes smaller.

Things we might normally shrug off suddenly feel intensely irritating. We become quicker to defend ourselves, control the situation, withdraw, snap or insist that the other person understands our point of view.

Capacity is influenced by so many things: sleep, workload, health, stress, hormones, emotional load, relationships and the state of our nervous system.

When we are already carrying a lot, there is simply less room for anything else.

The berries haven’t become more important.

Our ability to hold the discomfort around them has become smaller.

A useful check-in is:

Where are my capacity levels today?

And perhaps more importantly:

What does my body and mind need from me right now?

This might be to take some rest, to get some fresh air or to have a cuppa with an old friend.

2. Values

The second thing to ask is:

What am I actually standing up for here?

Often when we become particularly attached to an outcome, something we deeply value is sitting underneath it.

For me, health and wellbeing are high values.I research things. I care about what we eat. I make choices based on what I believe supports our health.

My family would probably tell you I also like to share these findings with them, even when they don’t want to hear about it.

The difficulty comes when we unconsciously assume that because something matters deeply to us, it should matter to someone else in exactly the same way.

It doesn’t.

Two people can love each other and have different values.Or share the same value but place very different levels of importance on it.

The work is not always getting the other person to agree with us.

Sometimes it is noticing:

What value am I protecting?

Can I honour that value without needing someone else to live by it? (my husband James would be doing a high five to this one right now).

And:

Has one of my values become so rigid that it is starting to control me or everyone around me?

3. Core beliefs

We are always meeting life through the lens of the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world. 

Sometimes the argument or reaction is touching something much deeper than the thing in front of us. We are not just reacting to what is happening now, but what we making it mean.

• You’re not listening to me
• No one cares 
• I have to keep everyone happy 
• I am powerless 
• I have to take responsibility for everyone else 
• I’m abandoned 
• I’m not safe

These beliefs often have a much longer history than the argument itself. They can come from earlier experiences, old relationship dynamics or protective parts of us that learned certain ways of staying safe, in control, connected or accepted.

A useful question is: 

What am I making this mean?

And then: What am I afraid would happen if I let this belief go?

Once we understand what belief is being activated and how we are protecting it, we have more choice about how we respond. We can turn our attention towards greater self-awareness and bring more compassion to the moment.

What is this really about?

How much capacity do I have?

What value am I protecting?

And what belief or protective part of me has just entered the conversation?

You might discover that it was never really about the berries 🙂

Simone X