Your Most Important Job: Managing the 10 Forms of Emotional Reactivity
Recently, I came on too strong with someone. My voice was a bit loud and aggressive. My words were harsh. I was right to be upset, but my reaction only escalated the situation, and the relationship was strained as a result.
In the end, I’m not sure anything productive was accomplished. Perhaps I drove my point home in a memorable way. But if you’d given me a day to consider how best to respond to the situation, I wouldn’t have chosen the path I took.
Here’s the truth about emotionally triggered reactivity: It never brings out the best in us. And it rarely gets the best results.
Let’s consider the top ten ways that you and I regularly become “reactive”:
- Social anxiety. Thanks to your amygdala, your brain and accompanying nervous system constantly scan every social situation to determine whether you’re at risk of rejection or loss of status. Even people who are highly confident socially find themselves marginalized or disapproved of in ways that can make them try too hard to be accepted by others. Trying to be impressive, funny, or likeable is a reactive behavior.
- Authority intimidation. Almost everyone has someone who would cause them to feel inadequate in their presence. It could be your boss, a public figure, or someone highly credentialed. When you feel small, overpowered, and at risk of losing status, it’s common to reactively suck up, get anxious, and be overly deferential.
- Inferiority insecurity. It’s also common to suffer from imposter syndrome, where you’re secretly worried that one day people will find out you’re not as capable as they think you are. This causes you to reactively work more, deliver more, say more, and defend yourself against any criticism for your own perceived survival.
- Catastrophic possibility. Most people have wrestled at some point with “what if…” thinking. What if it’s a brain tumor? What if we run out of money? What if I fail? What if this doesn’t go the way I want it to? These questions represent an extreme exaggeration of likely outcomes and only produce worry and a controlling approach to circumstances and people. Worry and attempts to control people and events around you are other examples of reactive behavior that usually don’t lead to healthy results.
- Upsetting interactions. Dealing with people can be challenging, especially when the other person triggers an emotional reaction based on a breach of your ego or values, or because they are aggravating some unmet need or historical wound. It’s very common in these upsetting moments to reactively make assumptions and tell yourself a story about the other person’s motives and reasons.
- Unmet expectations. As I’ve recently written, you’re more likely to get upset or disappointed when people, events, and circumstances don’t meet your established expectations. In those disappointing moments, people will reactively complain, blame, and criticize. None of those behaviors are likely to generate a spirit of joy, trust, and productivity.
- Over-functioning intervention. It’s so hard to watch other people struggle. That’s why you might have a hard time letting go, delegating, and setting boundaries. Perhaps you reactively do or say things for others that they can or should do for themselves.
- Values confrontation. People value different things and have divergent ideas. When those differences arise (culturally, politically, preferentially, etc.), it can feel like the ground under you is shifting — because values are foundational. In these moments, many people reactively default to a fight or flight response. Either you argue and defend, or you compromise what you truly value and don’t communicate your ideas in order to accommodate or please others.
- Disappointing others. The other common reaction comes when you are afraid you did or might disappoint someone. Most people greatly fear letting others down, so they reactively take on too much, feel guilty and ashamed, or lose their true sense of self because they’re always trying to reflect to others what they think others want or need them to be.
- Reactivity to someone’s reactivity. Perhaps the most common and hard to resist form of reactivity is a reaction to someone else’s stress or anxiety. Chronic anxiety is contagious. When you feel someone you live or work with is anxious, you’re more likely to feel anxious or stressed yourself.
Some people think their job every day is to get things done: ship, sell, build, service, supervise, direct, etc. But let me advocate that, for every one of us, our most important job every day is to simply manage our reactivity.
Manage your reactivity and you’ll contribute to a healthy, safe, productive, collaborative culture. You’ll build trust and connections while making better, more sustainable choices.
Succumb to your reactivity and, well, it’s no fun for you or anyone around you.
I’m now having to go back and rebuild trust where I came on too strong. It’s extra time and stress for everyone involved. If I could go back and coach my three-weeks-ago self, I’d remind myself to make “managing reactivity” my number one priority, rather than getting done what I thought was so important in that situation.
Which of the ten forms of reactivity would be most important for you to manage this week?
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