Some good steps to reduce conflict in a relationship are to (1) notice when your nervous system is getting activated and (2) pause the conversation long enough to calm down. But these skills take you only so far. If they’re all you’ve got, you may be repeatedly sending a “You’re too much for me” message to your partner. Your disagreements might be dragging out longer than they need to. Learning to stay calm in the middle of a difficult conversation is possible — it’s something I work on with people in therapy. This blog post will share some of the ideas and skills we explore and that I ask clients to experiment with in their relationships.
What Happens When Someone Is Upset with You?
Let’s start with a question: When someone is upset about something you have done or not done, what happens for you? What happens inside you?
You might feel immediately defensive. You may feel attacked and launch a counterattack or shut down. You may feel misunderstood and try to explain yourself to prove you are right/okay/a good person/not at fault.
Why Your Nervous System Gets Activated
Often, people have some underlying beliefs that prompt such responses, even if they’re not consciously thinking these things in the moment—beliefs like “Doing something wrong means I’m a bad person, unworthy of love.” “If I mess up, people will leave me.” “If someone disagrees with me, they must think I’m stupid.” These (usually unconscious) beliefs threaten our security, our connection, and our nervous system really cares about connection! In the many generations before us, people who stayed connected to the group were more likely to survive and mate, passing on their pro-connection DNA. Those who did not stay connected to the group were more likely to die before passing on their lone-wolf DNA. We’re inheritors of the pro-connection DNA, so our nervous systems are apt to get alarmed when a loved one is unhappy with us.
And the less certain we feel about our own worth — our own “loveableness” — the more threatened we feel by someone being upset with us. We address this in therapy both head-on (talking about self-concept and working toward a more flexible sense of self) and sideways (working on it through action—e.g., making small commitments to oneself and keeping them).
Stay Calm by Getting Curious
As clients grow in acceptance of their worth and their humanness—along with acceptance that disagreements are a normal part of relationships and do not equal disrespect or lack of love—they grow in their ability to stay calm when someone is upset with them.
We also practice making space for uncomfortable feelings and learn skills for maintaining steadiness even when we’re feeling a lot.
One concept that I ask clients to experiment with is leaning into curiosity. When you feel stressed because someone has brought something difficult to your attention, I encourage you to ask, “Can curiosity help me here? Can I devote myself in this moment to understanding my loved one and their experience? Can I notice old stories coming up and notice that this is here and now, not there and then? Can I trust the relationship enough to set my desire to be understood aside in this moment, to be addressed at a different time, if it still feels important? Can I accept that I’m human and can make mistakes or see something differently and still be okay?
What You Gain by Shifting Your Agenda
This stance of acceptance, trust, and curiosity helps shift your agenda from self-defense to understanding, which is far more helpful to both of you. It does not mean you agree with your loved one’s interpretation of events or conclusions about what needs to change. It does not mean your perspective isn’t important. It means you are taking advantage of an opportunity to grow in your understanding of your loved one and of the impact (not intention) of your words and/or actions. It means you have an opportunity to nurture their trust in you: “Yes, you can talk to me and trust that I will listen!”
When you take this stance, your loved one is so much more likely to feel heard, seen, understood, and cared for. When you reflect back to them what you have understood, and they confirm you have understood, you can take some time to think about what you’ve heard and how you want to respond (“what kind of person do I want to be in response to this?”). You can ask your loved one if they’re open to hearing your experience/intention/interpretation/proposal/apology now or later.
Ideally, BOTH parties have agreed to experiment with leaning into curiosity. But that may not be the case. What if it’s your loved one who has no capacity for uncomfortable feelings and gets defensive when you express a concern? I’ll address that in my next post.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to experiment with leaning into curiosity!