Processed reaction

When somebody is telling us words that upset our inner dragons, our instinct is to defend ourselves, to fire back, and to teach this person a lesson - just as he/she expects.

Unfortunately this rarely works - this person is also facing his/her own inner dragons, and firing back will only fuel this downward spiral of cat-and-mouse game.

A more fruitful (and difficult) way to deal with this situation would be to process our reaction so that we could surprise our critic and catch him/her off guard.

We say "thank you" and get back to (our) work.