Member-only story
What Your Communication Style Says About How You Disagree
You gotta be willing to look inward and see that how you talk is more nuanced than you think, especially when you disagree with someone.
As Daniel Goleman coined in 1995 through his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, the amygdala (the portion of the brain used to regulate our fight-and-flight response patterns) can become “hijacked.”
This occurs because we feel threatened. When conflict arises, we unconsciously think we need to fight or avoid the problem altogether (flight). The intense emotions disagreements stir, as Goleman states, “[M]ake us pay attention right now… and gives us an immediate action plan without having to think twice.” Diane Musho Hamilton, an author, mediator, and teacher of Zen, puts it another way: “In the throes of amygdala hijack, we can’t choose how we want to react because the old protective mechanism in the nervous system does it for us — even before we glimpse that there could be a choice” (2016). That’s a person’s psychological defensive system at work.
This unconscious reaction, which people exhibit during conflict, creates a triggered communication pattern based on one of four responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
