When Nan and I were in counseling back in the late 1980’s we took a comprehensive psychological assessment. Among other measurements it pinpointed aspects of our personalities. I can’t say that I remember most of it, but one category stood out to both of us. And that was our struggle to manage our emotions during conflict.
What we discovered was that during an argument we could dysregulate somewhat rapidly. And simultaneous dysregulation leads to symmetrical escalation. What that means in plain terms is that the ever increasing intensity of both our feelings were driving our responses into the red zone. Our parasympathetic (emotional braking) systems were out of whack.
But our counselor David saw something in the assessment that was very helpful. Although we both had high scales in this particular category, he pointed out that mine was lower. And he assigned the job of de-escalation to me. (Thanks for nothing, David). But the truth is, he was right. I discovered that I did have the greater ability to slow the escalation down. I just didn’t always want to do it. (There’s that sin nature!)
Think about your relationship. Do you tend to “one up” each other in a conflict? That’s symmetrical escalation. If you do, is it because you believe you have no control over your tongue? Or might you be more like me and see trouble coming, but not want to restrain yourself. Those delicious but biting remarks seem so tasty at the moment, don’t they? Unfortunately the Bible has a lot to say about not controlling our tongues. They can speak life or death into a marriage.
Often the escalation of our emotions takes place in our head before we even address the issue with our partner. We fuel it with our ruminating thoughts.
So what can you do?
You will definitely have to get a firm grip on your destructive self talk.
You can process the big feelings with God until you are confident that you can manage to keep them relationship-sized.
You may need to talk with a safe person who will listen to you and help you deescalate your intensity.
You can surrender your insistence on having the last word in argument.
If you are already dysregulated the best tactic I have found is withdrawing temporarily until you calm down. I believe there is always a jumping off point if we decide to look for it and choose it. It may be difficult in the heat of a conflict, but it will always work. Have an agreement with your spouse that if either of you needs to take a “time out” that you both will honor it. It is not okay to follow an upset person and keep talking at them. Conversely, when we withdraw we must return after cooling down, and try to bring the issue to a resolution if at all possible.
One last note: dysregulation can also take the form of progressively shutting down and eventually emotionally freezing. In this case the solution is the same. It requires withdrawing until we are able to "thaw out" and reengage.
Regardless of which tendency we have, to power up or shut down, once we emotionally regulate we need to come back together, hopefully as friends.