Is there not good communication in your partner? Do you feel like you no longer talk to each other like before?
It is said that there is no greater contempt than non-appreciation And, really, there are few things more painful when we talk about interpersonal conflicts than the withdrawal of the word of someone who had in some way been part of our life. When someone expresses anger directly towards us, they are giving us the opportunity to defend ourselves, justify ourselves and, ultimately, save the relationship. A dead silence, on the other hand, leaves us confused and, above all, helpless.
What can affect your communication?
It has been known for a long time that they exist five primary emotions that human beings share with other mammals. Of these, there are 3 that are considered negative because of the pain we feel when they appear: sadness, anger and fear.
Faced with an emotion of rage or anger, animals launch a behavioral fighting mechanism When the animal feels fear, the natural response is usually avoidance or flight or even paralysis. And, at least it is known that human beings, when sad, react by withdrawing in an attempt at personal reintegration. It would be very contradictory and simplistic then to think that a person has decided to distance themselves from us solely because of anger, right? And, on the other hand, paradoxically it is the first explanation that people usually think of.
At the moment in which human beings find ourselves immersed in our network of social relationships, relationship conflicts give rise to more complex emotions that are the result of the combination of simple emotions plus the social factor itself and we could even add the personal history of relationships that each of the participants in the conflict has. Therefore, it is important that we are aware of this complexity in the face of understanding and resolution of conflict
Reasons why you don’t talk to each other
When a person makes the decision to separate themselves from another in a radical and, in principle, permanent way, it is always because their presence causes them some type of discomfort, that is, it awakens some type of unpleasant emotion. Let’s explore the possibilities, there are four secondary emotions also called self-conscious or socio-moral and which are closely related to self-valuation, which are especially mobilizing: pride, shame, guilt, envy.
1. Pride
In its sense most similar to that of resentment, it is a complex emotion, therefore, it is not only anger as it is tends to think but also includes the other two primary emotions mentioned: the sadness perhaps resulting from having felt betrayed by someone in whom one trusted and the fear of experiencing that pain again in anticipation of other possible future betrayals.
2. Shame
Among all these more social emotions, there is one that is considered especially disturbing: shame. A shameful situation can greatly jeopardize our feeling of belonging to the social group; it harbors an intense fear of the possible loss of prestige and, therefore, the loss of those social roles of which we felt we were beneficiaries until now. It is so tremendously unpleasant that people are going to avoid feeling it by all means, even going so far as to deny it. A primarily useful strategy, but unsophisticated and with adverse side effects, that is sometimes implemented to get rid of shame is to disguise it with anger. It can be activated quite unconsciously a defense mechanism consisting of distorting reality to make it more digestible. This is the result of a well-known effect called cognitive dissonance, which tells us that the tension that a person feels when faced with the incompatibility of two simultaneous beliefs or emotions produces such tension that it will lead them to generate new ideas so that they fit together. and thus reduce tension and incongruity. For example, it may happen that a boss with a big ego is embarrassed when one of his employees has witnessed a tremendous botch on his part and that, every time he passes him in the hallway, this unpleasant emotion is reactivated that, in the end , is associated with that belief of low personal worth that you try so hard to avoid. It can be expected in a case like this that he desperately searches for reasons to justify his own mistake and the negative emotions that his employee awakens in him. Through an association between the negative emotion and the employee, he begins to become maniacal and with the aim of resolving the dissonance, he begins to look almost with a magnifying glass for errors in the latter’s work and even attributes his own botched work to these small oversights. and, clinging to this new belief, he ends up dismissing it or not renewing it. This is a very effective compromise solution for those who do not yet feel ready to embark on personal work, since the dog is dead, the rabies is dead.
3. Guilt
Another complex emotion that also generates pain is blame When an emotionally unseasoned person feels guilt, he can set in motion a mechanism similar to the one mentioned a moment ago. He disguises reality, displaces the situation that has made him feel guilty and justifies his “bad action”, convincing himself that we deserved him to do “that” to us. In this way, your belief in your personal adequacy is restored, “I am a good and just person”, thus hiding the painful emotion behind anger, which is a more bearable, simpler emotion that makes you feel stronger.
4. Envy
Something similar happens with the envy The person who at a given moment feels envy comes into contact with a deep feeling of lack of personal worth that is very difficult to digest. If our presence arouses your envy, you can unconsciously implement a simple but poorly elaborate solution that can be harmful: if you don’t see us, there is no longer a reason for envy.
How to change this situation?
To try to empathize with that person who no longer speaks to us, it is interesting to understand that emotions are part of our hereditary baggage and have been transmitted throughout the evolution of our species because they have had their uses. Socio-moral emotions fulfill, among others, the function of preserving the values ​​of the social context Each society, according to its own values ​​and interests of different kinds, determines a series of value judgments towards something as natural, inevitable and protective as our own emotions. Considering some as more expected and even positive and for that reason they tend to be more encouraged, as is the case with guilt in the case of Western societies. Those that are considered negative can produce strong rejection and contempt and therefore tend to be more denied, such as pride or envy. But, in reality, there are no positive and negative emotions, they all contain a very valuable message that must be heard. Pride, for example, actually protects us from potentially dangerous personal situations and keeps us away from people who can be toxic to our lives. Envy, when well focused, allows us to improve ourselves, through having a personal reference that can serve as a guide. The only thing that can be morally evaluated are the acts that we end up carrying out to harm the people who are awakening these types of emotions in us. Vengeful acts towards those for whom we feel resentment or envy or that even make us feel guilty. Therefore, it is those acts that are under our personal control, controlling, avoiding and denying emotions is very exhausting because we do not really have any ability to control these powerful messengers.
Therefore, faced with a conflict situation like this, it is important that we stop and examine the entire range of possibilities that exist without clinging fanatically to any of them. We must get out of simplistic thinking, stop our own thought patterns and look at the situation with perspective. Some people, a large percentage in Western societies from what we mentioned, will naturally and reactively tend to flagellate themselves and desperately seek forgiveness from others, because they will feel guilty. Others tend to put in place a reductionist defense mechanism that tends to think, for example, that a withdrawal of words inevitably harbors some type of envy and this is not true in many cases. For their part, proud or more resentful people will tend to think about the bad intention of silence on the part of the person who starts it, “he does it to hurt me.” And he who feels shame, most likely feels that he has been rejected because there is something in him that is not worthy, that he does not like, that generates rejection.
Communicating with the other person in a slow manner can help them reduce their fear levels, stopping them from seeing us as dangerous beings in some sense or another. Perhaps the person needs a series of reality tests to make sure that we are not going to harm them, we are not going to harm or humiliate them and that we have no resentment towards them, that we understand the reason for their actions and that therefore there is no reason. so you have to feel guilty. To achieve all this, the first thing we are going to have to do is deal with ourselves. our own emotions, in order to be able to be frank in our speech. If this person is not willing to listen to us, we can always write them a letter and, if we consider we were wrong, we can try to correct our mistake in some way. This does not guarantee that you will return your word but, at least, it will give us the peace of mind of knowing that we have tried.
