How Emotional Reactivity Causes Conflict
Emotional reactivity, a potent catalyst for conflict, often goes unnoticed until it's too late. Unravel the intricate relationship between our emotions and the discord they can incite, and discover strategies to manage emotional responses for healthier interactions.
Emotional reactivity suggests overreacting negatively to normal or even benign stimuli due to stress, depleted physiological resources, or emotional disorder.
Dynamic emotional reactivity: a negative emotion in one party of an interaction that causes an emotional reaction in the other party, such that the interaction makes them behave uncharacteristically.
Breaking the Reactive Dynamic
Ask yourself: What is this person reacting to? Are they perceiving me to be disrespectful, biased, narcissistic?”
- Am I acting like the kind of person I most want to be?
- To counteract confirmation bias, act according to your deeper values and ask the same of your partner: “Let’s try to be compassionate, fair, and respectful.”
Feelings vs. Accurate Perception
Negative emotions evolved to amplify and magnify possible threats or trouble
- They’re processed more automatically and much faster than rational judgment
- Most thought processes go toward justifying the feeling, rather than testing the reality of its perceptual influence
- As a result, they’re fraught with confirmation bias, which makes us overlook or discount all contradictory evidence
Familial vs. Social Reactivity: Chicken or Egg?
Most clinicians who work with couples or families have noticed increased discord, correlating with the polarization in the country at large
- Family conflict contributes to social conflict and vice versa
- Increase in family conflict preceded social polarization, but this could be a selection issue
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