We all know that our sympathetic nervous system can be triggered if we face a physical threat or danger. Someone shouts at us, we almost get into an accident, we are attacked physically and we go into fight, flight or freeze. This causes our brain to trigger our sympathetic nervous system, release adrenaline and send blood to the major muscle groups and away from the executive functioning part of the brain. Hence, we can run away from the threat.
Psychological threats can also trigger the fight or flight reaction. Someone says or does something to threaten our sense of self— like challenging our competence, intruding on a psychological boundary or calling us out in a meeting, and we can go into fight or flight. We have almost no control over this because it is an automatic process, hard-wired into our nervous systems over millennia.
The problem with this response is that it “hijacks” our brain, deprives our prefrontal cortex of blood and leaves us with few resources to respond appropriately to what is happening. Since the prefrontal cortex is responsible for higher order brain functions like awareness, concentration and decision-making, we are reduced to a basic level of functioning just when we need our higher order executive functioning the most.
In addition, many of us somehow learned along the way that disagreeing with another person requires us to be disagreeable. We learned shouting and name calling were the way to handle conflict. Perhaps it was seeing our families of origin engage in conflict; perhaps it was what we learned on the job from bosses; perhaps we had coaches who yelled at us to motivate us. There are those who internalized this to see conflict as threatening, so they shy away from it at all costs.Others see shouting and name calling as the only way to handle conflict.
The problem with these approaches is that they don’t work — especially the latter.
If you have power over another person (you are a parent, a coach, a teacher, or a supervisor), shouting and name calling can generate a response in the object of your behavior — but it only generates a short term, fear-based uptick in productivity. Over the long term, this sort of behavior drives productivity down.
The object of the name calling may not be able to react as their biology would predict (by fighting back, for instance). Employment means money, which supports the person and his or her family. Most people won’t react strongly to workplace abuse because they know they will put their employment in jeopardy, particularly if the person behaving badly has more power than the employee. But this doesn’t mean they won’t be angry and resentful. And, studies show us work environments where incivility is allowed to flourish are not productive or creative in the long term. In addition to the direct price of incivility (lower productivity, less creativity, and other negative effects), in a Harvard Business Review study, managers at Fortune 1000 companies reported managing the fallout from uncivil behavior costs both time (about seven weeks a year, on average, to manage) and money (for example, when workplace relationships need to be negotiated by attorneys).
Why do we believe interrupting, demeaning, insulting and berating is a great way to get results?
In law school, I had a debate in my first year with a man who was and still is a good friend. However, he was so anxious about winning the debate that he kept interrupting. After two or three interruptions, I interrupted his interruption and pointed out that shutting down an opposing idea didn’t mean his idea was the stronger one and that no debates are won by interrupting. I got a laugh and he grinned and we got back to the substantive issues which was why we were there in the first place.
Sometimes we are so focused on winning, and so anxious that we won’t win, we lose touch with our own behavior. If this is true, then it means that when we engage in interrupting (and other negative interpersonal behaviors) we may actually be in our own fight or flight state because we are fearful we won’t win. We believe winning means the other has to lose, so we shut them down and react angrily if they say or do something with which we disagree. We believe we are living in a world where some win and some lose, and we don’t want to be the loser.
The problem with this outlook is it doesn’t promote good interpersonal relationships based on trust and respect. If we want to improve performance, develop relationships and promote trust, shouting, berating and name calling isn’t an effective strategy. Choosing this strategy achieves the opposite outcomes: paralysis, resentment, lack of productivity and negativity.
We also can’t simply pretend there is no conflict, because then the conflict will go underground and surface passive-aggressively or we will sink into mediocrity and become passive echo chambers for each other.
The only answer is to start retraining our brains about what it means to have conflict. We can disagree strongly in a respectful manner. In fact, the more respectful we are, the more likely we are to get to the real issues and be able to work on them because the other party won’t be defended and shut down in the conversation. All it takes is practice and a willingness to be open to our own responses and reactions.
Five tips to calm your flight or fight response to conflict
- Start by exercising your mindfulness muscles. Studies show us we can retrain our brains thanks to it’s amazing neuroplasticity. If you have the habit of a mindfulness practice, you are literally changing the physical structure of your brain, shrinking the grey matter around your amygdala (the fight or flight center) and thickening the prefrontal cortex. This makes the practice of being mindful more automatic because your brain has the habit — and the physical structure to support this habit — of slowing down and becoming present with reality instead of defaulting to automatic responses.
- Your mindfulness practice will help you notice (because you are aware in the present moment) you are experiencing a fight or flight reaction in conflict.
- When you notice your reaction, pause and recognize what is happening. Know a fight or flight reaction deprives your prefrontal cortex of the blood it needs to make good decisions.
- Pausing allows you a moment to interrupt being hijacked by your sympathetic nervous system. This creates space between the stimulus causing you to go into fight or flight and your own fight or flight reaction.
- Take one mindful breath, recognizing you are not actually in physical danger. Research shows us that even one mindful breath can stimulate our relaxation response, helping pull us out of fight or flight. Be grateful to your amazing nervous system, but remind yourself that it’s your prefrontal cortex you need right now.
Viktor E. Frankl said in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” One mindful breath when you are feeling yourself slide into freeze, fight or flight puts you in that space between stimulus and response with the power to choose your response thoughtfully.
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