Survival instincts and emotional hijack in conflictual scenarios

Our initial, even typical, response to perceived conflict is to feel threatened in some way.  When under threat, our natural instinct is to fight, take flight or play dead.  We attack the source of threat if we feel we can overcome it or frighten it off; we take flight if experience tells us that the encounter might not work out in our favour; or we play dead - stay quiet or still in a submissive or unresponsive position in the hope that the threat will go away. 

These are hardwired responses geared for survival and have served us well over thousands if not a million of years.  LeDoux's work in neuroscience has demonstrated how the Amygdala (part of the brain stem) short-circuits our rational (neo-cortical) or considered response and triggers us into an immediate action response - before we have consciously registered that we are threatened - and especially before realising what specifically is under threat.  These instinctual, action oriented responses to threat work very well when survival is at stake, but often result in over-reaction and under-reaction that is inappropriate to most everyday conflict situations in which we find ourselves.  

While we will often feel a sense of threat in a conflict situation, for the majority of us it is rarely life threatening, and only occasionally physically dangerous.  It is usually our higher needs, interests, values, self-esteem, identity, rights, etc. which are threatened and in need of protection or assertion.  Yet, when the Amygdala triggers our protective system, we go on full alert, immediately ready for action regardless of whether there is a real and present danger - no half measures - such as in road rage-incidents.  We may under-react because a flight or play-dead response has been triggered.  How often have we found ourselves (playing dead) passively agreeing to unfair decisions that gave little consideration of our interests or needs and then later find ourselves seething or dumping our anger or resentment on other people?  On the other hand, our basic instinctual responses may not be triggered and we may under-react because we fail to perceive our interests, needs, etc. to be under threat.  

We need to know about our instinctual responses and the way they shape our reactions and learn how to contain and redirect them if we are to engage in healthy conflict.  We need to do the proverbial counting to ten while distinguishing between real and imagined danger, between threats to survival and threats to higher needs and interests.  We need to get better at recognising when our higher needs, interests, rights, etc. are under threat and find more appropriate ways of protecting and asserting them. Because such instinctual reactions often tend to occur prior to, or below, the level of our consciousness, one of the first challenges we face in dealing with conflict is awareness of our emotional responses.  The challenge is to notice and observe - in particular our experiences of fear, anger and related emotions such as confusion, anxiety, annoyance, irritation, and how they relate to intra-personal, interpersonal or systemic conflict.

If people's instinctual mechanisms are not triggered they may not recognise that they are in a conflict or that their needs or interests need protection or assertion.  They may not notice or observe the signs or may not interpret them as indicators of conflict.  Some fail to notice the early internal signals such as anxiety and stress while others fail to observe the external or social ones such as subtle avoidance or non-communication.  Some personality types are more tuned in to their emotional experiences and appear to have higher needs for harmony than others and so recognise the disturbance associated with conflict at an earlier stage of its evolution.   The reasons for these differences are often complex, but they result in over-sensitivity to or lack of alertness and awareness of the conflict, to the potential threat and to the potential benefits of a considered response.

Alternatively for some, perhaps because the situation triggers significant past experience of being threatened, they may read signs of threat into situations where none or little exist.  This failure to distinguish between past experience and current reality is equally a failure of noticing and observation.  When we really focus our attention on what is actually happening in present time we can be surprised by what we notice and wonder why we had not seen what was staring us in the face.  It may take someone else to help us distinguish between what is present and what is being transferred inappropriately from another experience.

Core to the experience of conflict and threat is our awareness and management of fear and anger as mentioned earlier.   Fear acts like an emotional alarm button triggering our instinctual defensive mechanisms and actions (flight or play dead) before we have time to weigh up the nature or extent of the threat.   While fear can delay action and create some time to assess the situation it also heightens the likelihood and lowers the threshold for a reactive, anger driven response (attack).  Paradoxically, we need to both retain the energy generated by our evolutionary conditioning while containing and re-directing it to deal with conflict in a constructive manner - no easy task! 

Social conditioning, religious influences, education, and psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, for those who can afford it, have all contributed to the development of the emotional competence needed to deal constructively with conflict.  We have some way to go before these new emotional capabilities become commonplace.   Transcending our instinctual responses to conflict and threat require new learning and even unlearning some of our conditioned responses.  For example, reframing our emotional experience of fear as "risk" that needs to be managed helps activate our rational faculties and allows us to weigh up both what is at stake and what is at risk for us in the situation. It helps us affirm our emotional responses without letting them hijack our rational choices and trigger us into destructive behaviour.  Goleman, Heron, Mindell, Rosenberg, Mulligan, Jeffers, and numerous others have suggested a wide range of emotional competencies that are highly beneficial in dealing with conflict.

In summary, recognising conflict or potential conflict at an early stage can give us time to decide whether there is a real or present danger.  Awareness and self-knowledge of the impact of our instinctual responses to threat helps us contain and ameliorate their impact and choose a more appropriate response to the situation at hand.  Consciousness of our needs, interests, rights, etc. as well as our emotions and perceptions helps us recognise when they are under threat and thus avoid under-reaction should action be required to protect or assert them.  Awareness and management of our feelings will enable us to create more time and choices in order to respond constructively to perceived conflict or at least to recognise and manage the risk.

Tips for resolving and Transforming Conflict:

Focus on the present: Emotions can only exist in the present; all the rest is history, recordings which may intrude upon or distort present communication.  Emotions come and go, ebb and flow, move and change from one to another and back again.  If we do not experience this movement and flow of emotion we may be stuck in a mood, identified with an emotion that does not shift.  We could be said to be possessed by it and may loose our ability to dis-identify from it and thus limited in our ability to feel, perceive and choose and act.

Containing and bracket (set aside) your own feelings: Awareness, acknowledgement and acceptance of responsibility for your own feelings are essential first steps to emotional competence.   Several options then become available to us; the most valued in many cultures being control - staying cool.  If we are submerged in emotional turmoil we are often perceived as being distracted and as having little attention available for constructive interaction.  Whether you agree with this or not, being able to acknowledge but dis-identify from, contain or bracket one's feelings, albeit temporarily, can be a valuable skill to aid communication when used appropriately.

Anger is not a basic emotion: Rosenberg suggests that anger be viewed  as composite rather than a basic emotion, i.e. he suggests that anger is usually composed of a mental image of something another "should" or "should not" be engaged in.  These taken-for-granted imperatives are often implied or not communicated or questioned and can be the source of continued conflict.  Viewing anger as a mental picture helps us become aware of, communicate, and question the hidden assumptions or expectations which may be driving and sustaining our angry response.