Both responses sustain aggressive and violent behaviors
If your loved one often engages in insistent demands and impulsive behaviors, you may find yourself trying your best to manage the situation using either Authority, (an attempt to dominate and control) or Appeasement (an attempt to calm and placate). Let's see how each response works.
Imagine that your loved one demands something from you that you can't immediately provide. Your loved one raises their voice, blames you for their problems, insults you, and even threatens you with dire consequences, pressing all of your sensitive "buttons" if you don't give in. Below are the two common responses:
Authority Response: Seeks to control your loved one.
Emotions: Feelings of anger, contempt, or controlled frustration.
Beliefs: Bad behavior should have consequences. They need to be taught better or punished, and they should learn. If I don't control the situation, they win. If I don't fix it, it will be a disaster.
Actions: Blaming with corrective explanations, punishments, rules, and boundaries that seek to control their behavior.
Consequences: You maintain an "illusion of control" that sustains conflict, angry aggression, and resentment!
Appeasement Response: Seeks to calm and soothe your loved one.
Emotions: Anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, or exhaustion.
Beliefs: Aggression can be deterred by submission. If I help, they will see that I care. If I fix it, they will calm down. I can't stand it when someone is mad at me.
Actions: Soothing, conceding, and giving in to demands.
Consequences: You maintain an "illusion of appeasement" that accommodates, reinforces, and sustains insistent demands and aggressive behavior in the long term!
Both types of responses result in an increase in emotional dysregulation, verbal aggression, and an escalation of problematic behavior. The relationship will progressively degenerate into intense discord and/or extreme avoidance. The appeasement response is particularly insidious.
Parents who mostly appease their emotionally sensitive children may find themselves with an ungrateful young adult who frequently blames their parents for feeling distressed and cannot take responsibility for their own well-being. In a couple, one person may often appease their spouse and after 20-30 years, one spouse may be more entitled, controlling, and angry, while the other is worn out, helpless, and suffering chronic stress.
To avoid being drawn into control or appeasement, it is important to recognize when you are just starting to go down one of these paths, resist the urge, and respond more effectively. How?
Prevent Escalation
with Silence, Curiosity, Validating Inquiry, and Respectful Support
1. Pause and breathe. This is a moment of silence. Do not engage. Take your time. Be present and accept the situation just as it is. Slow down your thoughts and your speech. Ground yourself in patience and self-control. Resist the urge to control or appease. Be anchored in the present moment with yourself, with everything just as it is, and without acting out any urges to respond.
2. Be curious. What are you feeling? Feel your feelings. If you are angry or scared, be open and accepting of those feelings. Acting on those feelings is actually an attempt to make them go away.
Also be curious about what your loved one is feeling, wanting, needing? What is motivating their behavior at this moment?? Check in with curiosity to see if your understanding is correct. You are not trying to placate here, you are honestly trying to understand.
3. Validate and Inquire. Reflect back what your loved one is saying. Hold space for their distress. Find the grain of truth. Validate how hard the situation is. Validate from your heart. This is not appeasing, not trying to fix or solve and not trying to make everything all better. You are preventing escalation -- yours and your loved one by trying to accept and understand their perspective without trying to change it.
4. Communicate Respect and Support. Recognize your loved one's strengths and achievements. Describe how they overcame difficulties in the past with persistence and grit. Cultivate the belief that they can get through the situation without your fixing or resolving their problem. Communicate your belief in them. (How can they believe in themselves if you don't believe in them?)
Repeat 1-4 again and again, as necessary to continue to prevent escalation, to clarify your understanding of their problem or complaint, and to find points of mutual understanding!
Sidebar: Even while you follow the four steps above, your loved one may continue to insist that you change to meet their expectations. They may insult you with vicious and horrible slurs about your character. They may throw verbal darts at your deeply held values and sense of dignity, knowing your weaknesses better than anyone. Your loved one might even tell you to stop validating them and defend yourself--and then get angrier, even though you followed their instructions!
If you are unable to prevent escalation and have been doing your best for about five minutes, end the conversation and distance yourself for a while using any available means. Stop texting, turn off your phone, leave the room, leave the house, and go for a walk. Get in the car and go for a drive. If all else fails and your presence or attention seems to be escalating aggressive responses (yours or another's), then remove yourself from the conversation. If you feel the need, you could let them know you will be back or talk later when you are feeling less stressed. Then, get out of Dodge for 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days.
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