you’re free to feel it brewing in the seconds leading up to a big argument.
Blow-out fightsand even regular-sized bickering sessionscan irrevocably damage relationships of all kinds.
you’re free to only hope the situation doesnt turn violent.
In those few seconds, though, you have a choice.
You cant necessarily control the situation, but can deescalateyourself.
Here are some tips to help you stay calm when things het heated.
Understand why you feel the urge to fight
The urge to fight doesnt come out of nowhere.
Its a product of your temperament, your past experiences, your personal predilections, and the specific situation.
[They] are part of a quartet of survival responses.
The other two in the family are freeze and fawn.
All four are instinctual responses that help us emotionally and physically survive threats to the best of our abilities.
A fight instinct will lead you to take an aggressive position.
A flight instinct will lead you to disengage entirely.
A freeze instinct will leave you unable to respond to the perceived threat at all.
Have you defaulted to people-pleasing or run away?
Your prior experiences play a big role in how you react in the future.
Still, the point of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn framework is that these responses are largely subconscious.
Much of the deescalation work comes long before a possible fight.
Our brains do that so we dont get stuck in analysis paralysis when a bear is chasing us.
Calming down the mind-body activation of being in fight needs to be the first priority.
Identify the way the response feels using whatever adjectives work, then memorize it.
This is fight, she said.
you might beat up a pillowor even scream into itor find another way to express your aggression.
Still, she notes there may be some situations wherein youcanttake off to an isolated spot.
