​In a recent blog post, we talked at some length about conflict, and more specifically, we focused on the tendency of some people to avoid conflict at all costs. If you didn’t catch it last week, check it out! I mentioned that later we would focus on another group – those individuals with a “tendency to approach conflict too readily,” I believe I phrased it – and this is the group we’ll spend time touching base with today.

This post could easily trail in a number of directions, and keeping in mind my tendency to engage passionately with extraneous detail, today we’ll hone in on a few key points essential to understanding and redirecting emotional reactivity. First, we’ll talk about the reactive stance, and later, we’ll talk about some concrete ways to redirect the impulse to engage in unproductive patterns of conflict.

At its core, conflict proneness is rooted in something called emotional reactivity. This means that conflict comes from a tendency to react emotionally (rather than respond rationally) to life experiences. It may be important to note that we speak of “tendencies” in most of the posts you’ll read here because humans aren’t unilaterally one thing or another. Our behavior isn’t always this way or always that way. We show tendencies to act in patterned ways because patterns are easy, even when the nature of our patterns makes our lives markedly more difficult.

A person with a tendency to conflict proneness, then… What does this look like?

For the sake of clarity, indulge me for a moment. I’d like for you to bring to mind someone you know or can imagine – maybe someone from a TV show or a movie – a person whose life is seemingly in a constant state of disarray or chaos. Maybe they’re involved in an unending saga of relationship drama with romantic partners. Maybe they chew out the wait staff for forgetting to put their dressing on the side. Maybe they’re impossible to please, constantly on edge, or even a little intimidating. They might frame their intensity as being “direct” or “giving it to you straight,” but often this “directness” comes off as harsh, disproportionate to the situation, or attacking. This is the face of emotional reactivity as it appears in conflict.

How, then, do we go about redirecting this reactivity? Isn’t that more of a personality trait?

Well… yes and no. If you think of personality as a collection of patterns of behavior, then sure, emotional reactivity could reasonably be considered a personality trait. On the other hand, if you visualize personality as this concrete, unchanging force, then no, that doesn’t really capture the heart of emotional reactivity. Regulating emotions is a skill, and like all skills, some of us learn it in our families of origin, and others don’t. Not being taught early doesn’t render us unteachable, and while it may feel more difficult to change our patterns as adults, humans are positively remarkable in their capacity for change and growth. It's never too late to learn to be a well-adjusted human. (An aside, schools are beginning to teach emotional regulation, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about the prospect of being out of a job in a few decades). 

Now let’s talk specifics, because if you’re anything like me, you don’t appreciate being offered vague, psychobabbly ways of dealing with your problems.

When it comes to working on emotional reactivity, and perhaps especially as it relates to anger and conflict, I use a few basic methods in teaching clients to regulate their emotional responses.
First, and perhaps most importantly, you’ve got to begin to practice awareness. There are a number of terms for this out there now, and the first that comes to mind is “mindfulness.” A quick Google search will give you scores of information on the topic, but if you’re a cliff notes sort of person, if boils down to this:

When we are actively engaging with the present moment, our minds aren’t cluttered with past experiences, old mental scripts about a person or situation, or forecasts for future behavior. We are present. We notice what’s happening around us, and we notice our internal experience of that. We watch our thoughts and emotions as an observer. We don’t have to react. We can just notice, and when we decide to take an action, we’re far more likely to come across as rational humans beings.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Another tool I like to use relates to this awareness, but is a little more specific – my clients and I practice attending to body language. If you struggle with reacting impulsively, it’s worth examining how many cues from others you may have subconsciously ignored as the situation escalated. Is the person you’re with positioned in a way that feels open or closed? If you’re standing, which direction do their feet point? How does their voice sound? Do they come across as short in speaking with you? What about their jawline – tense or relaxed? What about their eyes? Squinted? Downcast? Wide?

Noticing the other person’s body language does two important things. First, it roots you in the present moment. How can you be simultaneously attending to body language and plotting your next hasty, conflict-escalating retort? Second, it gives you the opportunity to act with empathy. If you see that a person appears angry, hurt, or anxious, you have the ability to comment on that and ask with sincerity what that person may need. If you’re able to do that, you may have just avoided an argument altogether because the person you’re with feels heard.

Finally, I cannot overstate the importance in this emotional regulation process of learning to identify what we’re really feeling in any given moment (yet again, we find ourselves back at that awareness piece!)

When we feel angry, we nearly always feel something else deeper down, and our minds are using anger to cover that up because it’s historically kept us “safe.” Maybe we’re afraid of being alone, of not having enough of something, of being taken advantage of. Maybe we’re jealous, or lonely, or insecure. The common thread here, which you’re probably already noticing, is that each one of these things feels a whole lot more vulnerable than anger. We all experience each of these emotions, to some degree, at one point or another. For some of us, it’s easy to react in anger when what we’re actually feeling is afraid, or insecure, or lonely. When we notice what’s really happening inside, we move from blindly reacting to behaving intentionally. We are giving ourselves a choice. It’s liberating.

If you don't take anything else away from this, please hear me when I say…

You’re not a prisoner to your past behavior or your old patterns.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, learn to do something different. It's not too late.

You’ve already got everything you need inside of you.

Let me say it again.

You’ve already got everything you need inside of you.
​
<3 Morgan