Difficult Conversations: How To Hold One Without Losing Your Cool
Handling Difficult Conversations
It is often hard to not get emotionally worked up in a tense conversation. It is hard not to get overwhelmed when a disagreement feels like a threat. We are, after all, afraid of giving up something – such as the notion that we are right. And this fear triggers our nervous system, getting us into a fight or a flight mode. While this is a natural response, our bodies aren’t trained at discerning that it is merely these momentary emotions that are triggering us and a few days later it wouldn’t even matter. Once our anger hormones are triggered, our pace of breathing increases, heartbeat goes up, and muscles tighten. And all this make us feel rather uncomfortable, preventing us from rational thinking, something which is critical in helping us wade through a difficult conversation.
Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
George Herbert
In a situation where you are highly triggered and unable to think clearly, your face turns red, your tone and the pace of your speech goes up, and there are clear signs of stress on your face. Not just that. The mirror neurons make the other person catch our emotions, and they start feeling the same way. And before we know it, the sanity of the conversation goes for a toss, and the conflict intensifies. This might even appear natural to you and you may wonder how to avoid getting angry in an argument or such difficult conversations.
Related Read: Emotional Intelligence in Communication
How to handle difficult conversations
Fortunately, it is possible to manage our emotions, interrupt our body from feeling the way it is, and pave the way for a productive discussion. We don’t have to let frustration, anger, and anxiety overtake our sense of rationality, and there are several ways of doing so. We can take measures to calm ourselves when a conversation is on the verge of derailment. So, here are a few tips on how to avoid getting angry in an argument or stay in control while conducting difficult conversations to not just achieve positive outcomes, but also retain our peace of mind.
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Practising the Breathing Technique
As a simple mindfulness technique, breathing can play the saviour in intense situations. So, when we begin to get tensed, notice our fists tightening or our jaws clenching, we must try to focus on breathing and focus on inhalation and exhalation. We must feel the air working its way through our nostrils, slowly moving down the back of our throat. Focusing on breathing takes our attention off the agents that cause panic or prevent rational thinking.
Ignore the noises around you that polarize and try to promote fear and division. You know better. Be better. Breathe.
Gregory S. Williams
Related Read: Mindfulness and Me
Acknowledging the Feeling
Acknowledging our feelings is as important as breathing itself. It is a sort of acceptance that can ease the complex feelings we experience. Also, when feeling emotional, there is often no room to examine our thoughts and feelings as in that phase, negativity is dominating our minds. To acknowledge the feeling, we must distance ourselves from it. We must be able to call a thought a thought, a feeling a feeling, and an emotion an emotion.
It helps us acknowledge our anger, disappointments, etc., into neat categories. Labelling allows us to see our thoughts, feelings and emotions for what they are. When we create that space between our emotions and ourselves, it gets easier to overcome them and take control of the situation without temporarily dismissing them, something that would only add up to wreak havoc later.
Related Read: Perception and Judgement
Training the Mind
When we have intense emotions built up, which are on the verge of imploding or exploding, our attention must turn towards our bodies. Standing up and walking around, rather than just sitting still, activates the thinking part of the brain. To avoid getting swamped with emotions, we must train our minds to distract itself in such tricky situations. Observing physical objects around us for a few seconds can help us in our stressful situations. In terms of mindfulness, it is called anchoring. It could be something as easy as feeling the bottom of the shoes or stretching our arms.
Bad news is that you can control nothing but your thoughts. Good news is that with your thoughts you can control everything else.
Debasish Mridha
Chanting a Mantra (Not Necessarily Religious)
Mentally telling ourselves something as basic as “This Too Shall Pass” can help us neutralize our experience. If chanting similar phrases can help us calm down in difficult situations, so be it. We saw a famous example in Bollywood’s 3 Idiots, with the phrase “All izz well”!
Related Read: Affirmations
Taking a Break
This is by far the most underutilized approach. The more time we allow ourselves to process our feelings and emotions, the less intense they become. So, when the arguments get heated up, we can always excuse ourselves from the situation and take a break – get a glass of water, a cup of coffee, or take a brief stroll around your house or office.
But we must always provide a neutral reason for why we would want to pause the conversation and take a break. It must not seem like we are desperate to escape the conversation.
Related Read: How to Practice the Art of Self Love to Lead a Fulfilling Life
Key Takeaways: How to handle Difficult Conversations
We must keep in mind that we are probably not the only ones who can be angry, disappointed or upset. Our counterparts are as likely to express their anger or frustration or be as traumatized as we are. And we may want to advise them on how to keep their cool too. But, let’s face it, no one wants to be told that they need to take a break or breathe deeply, especially in a heated argument.
We can be in a situation wherein there is no other option than to let the other person vent their pent-up emotions, but of course, that’s easier said than done. It is quite a challenge not to yell back when we are being attacked. But that’s not helpful at all. The best we could do is, just visualize their words going over our shoulders without hitting our hearts. One needs to be careful here and not come across as someone who is unaffected or acting cold.
It is important to reflect that we are in a dialogue and that we are listening attentively. Keeping a calm facial expression along with a cool mind is equally important. If we don’t feed our counterpart’s negative emotions with our own or respond to them in a way that adds more fuel to the fire, their anger is likely to fizzle out.
Hope this helps you manage your emotions and you now know how to avoid getting angry in an argument. Good luck for managing difficult conversations without losing your cool.
About The Author
Ashmita Datta is a content writer by profession and a travel photographer and a painter by passion.
In her free time, she loves to knit, cook and journal her thoughts to de-stress.
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