Unit 5 Video 3 Conflict I

Summary

In this video, Joe Chesebro dives into the complex world of conflict and our natural responses to it. He discusses the four primary ways we respond to conflict—fight, flight, freeze, and fawn—and explains the underlying physiological and emotional systems involved. These stress responses can lead to physiological symptoms and emotional challenges, such as anger flooding, emotional contagion, and rumination. Understanding these responses and the concept of emotional arousal helps us identify and manage how we handle anger and conflict, paving the way for more efficient communication strategies and solutions to be discussed in future videos.

Highlights

• Learn about the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses to conflict ⚔️😳.
• Discover how your body's stress response kicks into gear during conflict situations 🚀.
• Understand the risks of anger flooding and emotional contagion during interactions 💥.
• Explore how rumination can prolong emotional responses and cause distress 🤔.
• Realize why clear communication can be challenging when emotions run high 🗣️.

Key Takeaways

• The four conflict responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, each have their own strengths and weaknesses 🔄.
• Anger flooding occurs when stress hormones like cortisol build up, leading to heightened anger levels 🌊.
• Emotions are contagious; we can 'catch' anger or calmness from others 😬.
• Rumination, or dwelling on negative thoughts, prolongs emotional distress 🔄.
• Emotional arousal narrows our focus, often highlighting negative aspects and impairing clear communication 🧠.

Overview

Ever find yourself in a situation where a simple disagreement spirals into a conflict? You're not alone. Joe Chesebro offers an insightful exploration into the natural responses we have during conflicts. He introduces the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses, highlighting how these reactions are deeply rooted in our physiological and emotional systems. 📊

What happens when these natural responses kick in? Our body's stress response, meant to protect us from threats, often goes into overdrive with social conflicts. This can lead to anger flooding when stress hormone levels stack up, emotional contagion where we can 'catch' emotions from others, and rumination that keeps us hooked on negative thoughts. 😱

Handling communication in such emotionally charged situations becomes tricky. Despite the challenging emotional landscape, Joe assures that understanding these responses is the first step toward better handling conflict. Stay tuned for the next video, where he promises to provide strategies for navigating these stormy emotional seas. 🌊

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Conflict In this chapter, the focus is on understanding conflict, specifically what happens when perception shifts from mere disagreement to conflict. The chapter introduces the concept with the fight or flight response as a starting point for explaining the dynamics of conflict.
• 00:31 - 02:30: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Responses The chapter explores four primary responses to stress or confrontation: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. During a 'fight' response, individuals engage aggressively, willing to confront the conflict. The 'flight' response involves the desire to escape or avoid the situation entirely. The 'freeze' response describes a state where an individual tenses up, unable to take action.
• 02:31 - 04:00: Emotional System and Physiological Responses This chapter delves into how the human emotional system can trigger a range of physiological responses during stressful situations. It examines the 'freeze' response, where individuals feel stuck and unable to find words, and the 'fawn' response, which involves excessive attempts to appease others to avoid conflict. These responses reflect different ways humans cope under stress.
• 04:01 - 10:30: Anger Flooding and Emotional Contagion The chapter focuses on understanding and managing emotions during conflict, emphasizing the importance of responding effectively to emotional cues. The goal is to help individuals navigate through the initial strong emotions ('weather the storm') and reach a point where they feel more in control and equipped with options to handle the discussion constructively. It highlights that while different approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, being able to manage these emotions is crucial in resolving conflicts.
• 10:31 - 16:00: Rumination and Its Effects In the chapter titled 'Rumination and Its Effects,' the focus is on understanding the physiological underpinnings of emotional responses such as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The author discusses how these various responses, although seemingly different, are all triggered by the same emotional system in the body. The goal is to delve deeper into the core mechanisms behind these responses, going beyond just recognizing the type of response. The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding what happens within us, regardless of the specific response being exhibited.
• 16:01 - 21:00: Impact of Anger on Communication The chapter discusses how emotions, particularly anger, can negatively impact communication. It emphasizes that when the emotional system is activated, it can lead to various negative outcomes in situations of conflict. The chapter suggests that many of these adverse effects are rooted in the same stress response that gets triggered during perceived conflicts. A promise is made to address solutions for managing this emotional response in a subsequent chapter.
• 21:01 - 23:30: Conclusion and Reflection This chapter explores the role of emotional arousal during conflicts and disagreements. It describes how heightened emotions activate our body's defense mechanisms, similar to how we are mobilized against threats in different situations. The focus on understanding the emotional system's role highlights the importance of recognizing and managing emotions in resolving conflicts.

Unit 5 Video 3 Conflict I Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 okay welcome to this first video on conflict this video is going to focus on all of the things that go wrong once our perception starts veering over away from disagreement and more into conflict and just all the things that happen so let's get into it first you may have heard of fight ORF flight response you know a fight response is
• 00:30 - 01:00 one where okay we're going to we're going to get aggressive and we're going to stick around and we're going to mix it up with the other person might raise our voice you know we're going to engage we're not backing down it might not always be a bad thing but we're sticking with it flight kind of the opposite like get me out of here I don't want any part of this whatsoever um freeze you know that's when we just kind of tense up like we we
• 01:00 - 01:30 clam up we we literally freeze we don't know what to say we're just kind of stuck and then Fawn is like fawning over the person like trying so hard to avoid disagreement or that feeling of conflict that we're working too hard to agree or make others happy um so those are different ways we might end end up
• 01:30 - 02:00 responding when we feel conflict coming on and you know they have their strengths and weaknesses my goal is to kind of teach you how to navigate this and you know not necessarily do any of these in the same way but kind of weather this initial storm of feelings and get to a point where you can kind of navigate that discussion like you feel like you have options and you know how to handle
• 02:00 - 02:30 people when they're getting angry so that's going to be the goal now I've offered four different types of responses fight flight freeze or Fawn so what I want to do is kind of go underneath all of these in other words I don't want you to worry about which one of these responses is happening I want to talk about physiologically what's underlying these four responses whichever the response is it's the same emotional system that gets engaged we
• 02:30 - 03:00 just take it in one of these four directions so what I want to do is talk a lot more about that emotional system being engaged all the bad things that happen and why it sets us up for failure in these situations and then in the next video we'll talk about what to do about it so it's the same stress response underlying each of these situations and I'm going to give you a long list of things that are going wrong once once we start perceiving conflict
• 03:00 - 03:30 once once it's not just about that difference of opinion but it's about the other person and our frustration our negative emotion so first it's heightened we have heightened emotional arousal or excitation like our emotional system kicks into gear and honestly it kicks into gear to mobilize us against a threat you know it's the same system that protects Us in other situations so um our system is mobilizing because
• 03:30 - 04:00 there's a threat it just happens to be a social threat not a life usually not a life and death threat okay so there's that and right along with that we start to feel it we have physiological symptoms like increased heart rate is one probably sweat more um shallow breathing if y'all want to know if I'm ever stressed if I if you see me yawning a lot like or if I come in class look like I've been crying like probably was
• 04:00 - 04:30 just nervous I my I tense up I don't breathe as well and so my body takes over and makes me yawn a lot and my eyes water and yeah it's probably too much information but anyway at least you know what's going on with me if my eyes are all watery um so uh physiological symptoms you might have your own that you're aware of you know we tense up that kind of thing okay so far not so good but don't worry it gets get worse okay like I said we
• 04:30 - 05:00 tense up okay here's the deal if this is all about mobilizing our system to help us in in fight off a threat a social threat then remember to broaden and build broaden build we're in a good mood so we broaden our way and we consider everything we take in more but when we're angry anxious whatever we narrow our field division and we train it on anything that is threatening
• 05:00 - 05:30 this is why if we're starting to get irritated with someone they might say five really positive things but we walk away only remembering the negative one or we see a little bit of an eye roll you know we notice like any if they flash us any attitude like anything like that and by the way they all they notice that in us too if they're getting upset if they're getting angry so we are predisposed to notice all the bad stuff which is kind
• 05:30 - 06:00 of a bummer um no we're at risk of anger flooding I need to explain anger flooding a little bit men were a little bit more at risk for this to be honest um but here's what it is when our system gets engaged you know chemicals like and I'm not I am not a medical person or a chemist but chemicals like cortisol get released into our system
• 06:00 - 06:30 and okay and those are what mobilizes towards a threat okay but here's the deal it takes a while for the cortisol levels to return to normal so okay fine and good if we if we get that time you know and the cortisol levels return to normal no big deal but sometimes whether it's within the same interaction or across the course of a day before the cortisol levels can return to normal we get triggered again like something else makes the same
• 06:30 - 07:00 or the person the person says something else that makes our system release more cortisol like something very threatening you know or something angering so what happens is if this happens repeatedly enough then every time cortisol gets released it's on top of a higher level in other words we wake up in the morning let's talk about your let's talk about one those days where everything goes bad because that'll explain this well you
• 07:00 - 07:30 wake up in the morning and like you can't find something and you start getting angry about it so cortisol levels go up and then 15 minutes later you spill your drink or your food okay now but the cortisol levels haven't gone down from the first one so now the same amount of cortisol comes out but now it's on top of the other so in other words like think of this like a bucket you know like the bucket started it empty and we dumped you know cortisol in and now before the bucket could empty from cortisol we've dumped more cortisol
• 07:30 - 08:00 in and then on your way to work you're driving and people cut you off like repeatedly each time there's more cortisol being put in in other words the bucket fills up before the levels can return to normal So eventually what happens the bucket's going to overflow and when that happens then we are just Next Level angry like it is really
• 08:00 - 08:30 intense and if you've ever had these days you know like man maybe it kept your cool the first four things that ticked you off but then you know someone just looked at you the wrong way and then they're the ones who got they're the ones who got it you unloaded on them you know they didn't deserve it and others have done that to you I'm sure that's anger flooding and that can happen within an interaction if people keep tripping us off and making us angry then we are at risk for just blowing up
• 08:30 - 09:00 at them and so that's another really rough thing that happens here we're also at risk for emotional contagion so here's something interesting about emotions they are contagious we can catch them from others and that's literally what I mean here you know this I bet there are times where man you're doing something and and then you maybe a
• 09:00 - 09:30 parent gets really irritated and then you start feeling edgy and irritated or people are arguing and one person raises their voice the next person raises their voice one person slams the door the next person slams the door the emotions have caught on Um this can go in the other direction too people can catch our calmness but and we'll talk about that later but yeah uh so emotional contagion is another thing that we are at risk for happening even if we try to stay cool we are at
• 09:30 - 10:00 risk for catching that other person's agitation and then if you're sitting here like Joe how can we just take all of this and make it so much worse well there's a concept called rumination also known in everyday language is dwelling on things that makes it all worse you might remember that I said emotions have a physiological symptom and a label well the rumination keeps that label going on and on and this is really unhealthy
• 10:00 - 10:30 and I could be wrong but I think women are a little bit more at risk for this um so yeah if you've ever just had this thing where like probably the best example I can give you is like if you've ever been really angry at someone and you played your future you know future conversations in your head over and over and over and over of course it never goes that way but that constant dwelling on it it keeps our emotional system
• 10:30 - 11:00 engaged longer than is healthy think about it all this intensity that I put on the screen here it's supposed to be a temporary response to keep us safe it is not supposed to be an all day everyday kind of response and yet between dwelling on it or the fact that social media might make it harder to get away from it you know you know before people could text at least my gosh I can put
• 11:00 - 11:30 the phone off the hook and just I don't have to deal with them or I don't have to see them in school till tomorrow but now it's easier to stay connected with everybody and and in situations like this that can be a real negative so that's a really depressing list but that's what happens when we perceive conflict um oh there's more so our brain's energy is mobilized against the threat I kind of told you that or this is why it wrecks
• 11:30 - 12:00 communication our all of our brain's energy is focused on the threat most of the our energy or bandwidth is devoted to processing that angry emotion so there's a lot less left over for Clear thinking and thoughtful talking think about it everyone listening to this has probably acted like a complete child well past your your little little childhood years myself included we just
• 12:00 - 12:30 have those moments where we're so angry we can't think clearly and bad stuff comes out of our mouth and we stay focused on the most negative things so what happens when we have no energy to really thoughtfully put our words together and articulate ourselves we reach for what's easiest and what's easiest those are the scripts we've had the longest they take less effort they've been there
• 12:30 - 13:00 the longest so they're the easiest to reach for and grab off the shelf and use so what do I mean by that think about the last time you saw two people one even one person who really angry with another person didn't they kind of look like children stamping their feet crossing their arms pointing their fingers yet raising their voice or saying something just mean and horrible that you know if you really pause and think about it they weren't carefully thinking they just
• 13:00 - 13:30 wanted to grab whatever words were most hurtful most quickly this is why it's so dangerous to try to communicate thoughtfully when one or more people is really angry a lot can go wrong because we are not at our best mentally so we should be careful when we're really anxious or angry in communicating with others or if they're really angry you know when we're communicating with
• 13:30 - 14:00 them or they're communicating with us that's the implication so I want you to think about times you've been really angry you know really think about okay how were the things I covered in this video reflected in that anger and how did that affect your ability to communicate thoughtfully with the other person so give that some thought and then we got to have another video we got to talk about what to do about all this that's coming next