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Regulating Your Emotional Responses
- Conflict is full of emotions. And because people are uncomfortable with these emotions, they tend to avoid dealing with it. This makes it difficult or impossible to resolve conflicts effectively. By better understanding and regulating your conflict emotions, you can improve your ability to create better solutions. Managing conflict emotions involves three steps. First, understand your emotions. Second, be aware when you're experiencing them. And third, know how to regulate them. In the first step, work to understand your emotions, so you can have better insight into your response to conflict.
For example, many people get frustrated when they encounter someone who breaks a promise. This untrustworthy behavior pushes their hot button, which can cause them to get angry, and react negatively. What kinds of behaviors in others push your buttons? Ask why those behaviors upset you. Being aware of your triggers can prevent you from getting caught off-guard and reacting too quickly. The second step involves being aware when you experience emotions.
Recognizing when your buttons have been pushed can help you manage your emotions more effectively. This can be challenging, because conflict emotions are strong, sometimes even overwhelming. Early warning signals typically show up physically, as your fight or flight responses begin to engage and stress hormones flood your body. Some physical reactions include a quickened heart rate, muscle tension, and feeling flushed or overheated. Take a moment to note down your physical reactions when you become angry or frightened.
These are your early warning signs. The quicker you realize your emotions are rising, the easier it is to deal with them before they get out of hand. Once you're aware of your conflict hot buttons, and realize when they're being pushed, the third step involves knowing how to regulate your emotions so they don't get the best of you. It's natural to have an emotion such as anger or fear. The key is to be able to manage it so that you can gain or regain a sense of emotional balance.
In conflicts, we usually interpret situations and the motives of the other person in a negative way. This, in turn, leads to negative emotions. A couple of strategies for regulating emotions arise from this concept. The first strategy, called "attentional deployment", involves thinking about something different. Rather than dwelling on the thoughts that are prompting your anger, think of something positive instead. For example, if you like the beach, imagine a beautiful beach scene.
Cardiac rehab programs use this technique of going to your happy place to help people calm down. The second strategy, called "reappraisal", has you ask yourself whether there's another way of looking at the situation that doesn't involve negative interpretations. For example, if someone hasn't lived up to a promise, your first thought might be, they were negligent, or worse yet, they were trying to let you down. In reappraising the situation, you would consider other alternatives, such as, something unexplained preventing the person from performing on time.
When you consider such alternatives, your brain function actually changes in a way that calms your emotions. The same change occurs when you use attentional deployment to focus on something positive. Both techniques lessen your tension and help you engage the other person in a calmer manner. Managing emotions is a critical part of improving your conflict competence. Understanding your emotions, being aware when you're experiencing them, and knowing how to regulate them will give you an important edge in addressing conflicts more effectively.
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