Why It’s Hard to Communicate Well in Conflict When Stressed

If you’re like me, you find it hard to communicate in stressful moments. Scientifically, it is impossible to communicate well when under stress. The body experiences a primal response that agitates people in conflict. A stressed guy will tense his facial expressions, breathe shallowly, raise his voice, respond faster, and not think clearly. (If you controlled these, you wouldn’t be stressed). Not only does the tension hurt your communication, it also creates a viral effect as the emotional rigidity infects those you talk to.

Conflict is probably synonymous for you with stress. To be in conflict with someone is to be stressed. For me, however, I can have my mental and physical tension under control so I can communicate effectively to improve my relationships. If I don’t manage my stress, it inevitably gets the better of me, as it will to you.

Stress makes us mentally ill. A psychiatrist could diagnose you with depression, mania, psychosis, bipolar disorder, or another mental illness when you are stressed. The difference between you and someone diagnosed with one of these mental health problems is the time you and they spend in those states. A person diagnosed with depression feels down for most of the day while you may temporarily be depressed only when you are under loads of stress. No wonder it’s difficult to communicate well when stressed.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response

Stress in conflict evokes the fight, flight, or freeze responses. An argument, disagreement, or confrontation elevates tension as you yell, withdraw, stand confused. You do things you later regret.

Aggressive behavior towards another person temporarily feels okay, but then reality kicks in as you feel even more stressed from hurting the person. When you are submissive as you try your best to hide the tension, your suppressed emotions eat at you, which then hurts your relationships.

When under stress, your communication style will change in response to the situation. You can go from a cool, collected person one moment, yet when a stressful situation impinges your tolerable threshold your calm style can quickly shift to aggressive or submissive behaviors. What behavior you fall back on in stressful situations is the one comfortable to you in the past that offered momentary protection.

When someone has surpassed their tolerable degree of tension, telling them to get their act together or how ineffective their current communication is, does not work. It won’t work for you either. It’s human extinct to block out external factors, such as other people’s feelings, and listen to internal ones as your interpersonal communication skills decline. Better communication in intense conflict is a matter of managing stress otherwise it is next to impossible to deal with conflict.

“What Did I Say?” – Memory Loss and Other Dangers of Stress

Stress motivates us to take action, but it too often works against us. We yell, withdraw, or shut-down in tense communication. Our bodies produce cortisol, known as the “stress hormone”, to compel us into action. Without this double-edged hormone, we would accomplish little. If you are completely relaxed in conflict and untrained in good communication skills, you could overlook the problematic issue or give an unsympathetic response.

Research has shown cortisol to improve cognitive functioning. Too much cortisol, however, causes impairment. If you have ever forgotten what you said in a verbal fight, cortisol has literally shut off short-term memory. Cortisol obtrudes neurotransmitters that are chemicals responsible for communication between neurons and other cells. That is why you can memorize a speech 50 times and forget it when you present it. A stressful crisis temporarily results in a blank mind.

Stanford neuroscience professor Robert Sapolsky found that cortisol also causes long-term memory loss. When the receptors for cortisol located in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory, gets flooded overtime, it melts like microwaved Swiss cheese.

The affects of stress are too numerous to list here. From rapid aging of the body and heart disease, to poor sleep and skin conditions, the effects are real. You need to learn techniques to manage your stress; not just for your communication, but also for your health.

Stress Reduction Tips: 9 Key Lessons for Intelligent Stress Management

Because we have primal responses that arise deep from within our neurology, we need to attack the issue at that level. Thinking positively or talking yourself through stress isn’t going to reduce tension. I have developed nine effective ways and techniques to manage stress that you can use to keep calm in stressful moments so you can communicate better and live a happier life:

1. Prevention is the best cure. The best technique to deal with stress is to stop it before it begins. Create the appropriate measures, boundaries, and strategies to interrupt rising tensions. If the tension between two people rises beyond a safe level, one strategy is to pause, walk away, punch a pillow, and take slow deep breathes before commencing the conversation. You can incorporate other stress management techniques listed below into your plan to be more calm in conflict.

2. Accept your feelings. Never tell yourself you shouldn’t feel what you do. Do not say, “I shouldn’t be feeling stressed right now.” You must accept your feelings otherwise they will persist or repress into forms that severely affect your mental health and ability to effectively communicate. When you accept your stress, you move one step forward to taking personal responsibility.

3. Accept responsibility for how you feel. It is tempting and too easy to release your stress on other people. Do not treat people inappropriately. If you treat people in a way they don’t want to be treated, you make them tense, which they will be happy to put back on you.

Blame can only make you more stressed because anxiety is directly related to events within your control. What is beyond your reach makes you anxious. If you blame a spouse for making you angry by yelling, the only visible solution to you is for your spouse to lower his or her voice. Your anxiety and stress will continue to rise because you have little direct influence over your spouse’s voice.

When you accept responsibility, you eliminate blame. You live in truth. You do not become a victim of others. You take control of your feelings. Your new levels of responsibility cause you to do something about how you feel.

If someone causes you stress, address the person. Explain to them how you feel, why you feel that way, and what can be done to fix the problem. Do not worsen the problem by blaming them for how you feel, but focus on the problem. Be problem-oriented; not person-oriented.

4. Breathe. When tension in your body rises, you automatically take shallow breathes. This is one of the first stages prior to full fight, flight, or freeze responses that hurt effective communication. When your stress levels rise, take several deep, slow breathes and you will instantly reduce your stress levels.

5. Take time out. A walk away is guaranteed to refresh your mind. Don’t call for the travel agent to book a Caribbean cruise though, because a temporary break is all you need. Go for a walk or workout at the gym. Be active to release hormones that counter stress. Exercise is the body’s emotional reset button.

Absence from the situation that created the tension takes your mind off the problem and gives you clearer thoughts to attack the problem. Be sure to address the problem after your time out, however, otherwise you will only have temporarily avoided the real issue.

6. Be flexible. Stress is like the sunrise and sunset. It is inevitable. It is a part of your human body. Therefore, the best way to deal with it is to change your behavior and communication.

Be soft; not brittle. Recognize signals of stress by reading people’s verbal and nonverbal language, then adjust yourself accordingly. Be flexible by going a bit out of your way for them to assist their temporary needs and wants. Don’t run around the world for them, but do be more aware and respondent of them. This can lead you to less stress.

7. Discuss the problem afterwards. Combine this tip with the prior tip of remaining flexible and you have two keys to manage tense people. You need to address the problem following the stressful moment otherwise destructive, repetitious behavior occurs. Also, if there is someone you know that finds it difficult to manage their stress in communication, you can refer them to this article by clicking the “ShareThis” link at the bottom of this article.

8. Ask others about your responses in stressful moments. You are to do this because you cannot provide an accurate self-assessment when stressed. Your short-term memory loss makes it impossible to recall information.

Also, an awareness of your behavior can trigger a pattern interrupt. If the person says you consistently yell when stressed, raising your voice can trigger an awareness that your stress needs to reduce before the conversation continues.

9. Listen to binaural beats. Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove in 1839, binaural beats describes the low-frequency pulsations in the brain created by different frequencies played into each ear. The brain integrates the two sounds to form a third sound that relaxes the mind.

In terms of stress, binaural beats is a miracle. A correctly made binaural beat will scientifically make your brain produce alpha waves, which is the same brain wave you have when resting. That wonderful feeling you have when lying in bed almost asleep can be produced by binaural beats. Imagine how better your life would be by simply putting on a headphone the next time you’re stressed as you enter a relaxed state at will!

If you’re after binaural beats, Paul Kleinmeulman has a good program that includes a series of binaural beats for different purposes. You can check out his program here, where you will learn more about the proven science behind binaural beats, which can make you motivated, sleep better, intensify your focus, learn efficiently, and keep relaxed.

Conflict does not need to be synonymous with stress. Neither has to make you miserable. Stress can be a good thing – just like conflict is good for creativity, openness, and growth – when it is controlled with the above tips.

Your body experiences stress because it is threatened in conflict. Do something about it. You don’t want to feel the same way in a fight as you do when watching the Simpsons. Harness this primal response and you will be communicating more effectively in your next confrontation.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. How to Manage and Deal with an Aggressive Boss
2. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
3. The Benefits of Communication Skills
4. How and When to End a Long-Term Relationship
5. Getting Over a Relationship Break Up

The skill that gives you these benefits is effective communication. Communication has too many benefits to list because the skill enhances many areas of one’s life. Any interaction with people or lack of it can improve with communication.

Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Kipling’s quote fails to fully describe communication because it is far more than words – it also incorporates nonverbal channels of communication. Imagine the powerful benefits of communication now.

Here are a list of communication benefits that tell you the what, why, and how this amazing skill will change your life:

Communication increases your happiness. You have probably heard money cannot buy happiness. You become happy by taking the right actions. Think about it. Happiness is at the core of your actions because happiness is not conditional. You don’t become happy by getting a certain object or person in your life. When you take action on learning communication, you empower yourself to be happy.

While developing your communication skills makes you happy, at the same time your happiness increases as you minimize situations like destructive conflict that make you stressed and unhappy. Effective communication skills makes you happier by helping you reduce the frequency and severity of verbal fights, manage anger, express yourself to “get things off your back”, and change other situations to increase positive feelings.

Communication determines your attractiveness. The law of attraction states that you are a living magnet. You attract the people and resources in your life based on your internal self. Get excited because you do have invisible forces that draw and repel people. This is not mystical mumbo-jumbo. If you want to attract a fun, loving, positive, and caring person, you have to become a fun, loving, positive, and caring person.

You can control many factors in personal development to attract people into your life. Some attractive qualities that communication can boost is your confidence, self-esteem, social life, and conversational skills. These are universally attractive qualities.

Without communication, attraction dies. Physical appearance can only get you so far. Communication makes you interesting, connects you with people, builds friendships, and attracts a partner. Pick-up artists use communication to build attraction and get physically intimate with women in hours and sometimes minutes.

Communication fires up intimacy. How do people become open in a relationship? Good communication, of course, because it is the only bridge between a relationship. Communication is the relationship. When communication dies, so does the relationship. It is only through good communication that two persons intimately connect with one another.

Communication increases love given and love received. This benefit of communication ties in with intimacy. Without good communication, love becomes a plant without water. You can love people more than you think by changing the way you talk and developing active listening skills – such skills show respect and love. Giving love is the best way to receive love.

Communication makes you more popular. Though I don’t have a primary goal when teaching you communication to make you the most liked person in school, town, or club, communication does make you more popular. Once you develop good conversational skills with a positive energy, your number of friends is only limited by the time you talk with people.

Communication increases your success. John Johanson and Carrie Fried did a 2002 study published in the Teaching of Psychology Journal where they asked graduates what skill contributed the most to their success. The number one answer was interpersonal skills. Drew Appleby in a well known psychology magazine “Eye on Psi Chi” asked 39 employers what job skills they want in job candidates. Interpersonal skills was number one again. World renowned personal business consultant Brian Tracy in Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life says the highest paid intelligence in the United States is interpersonal intelligence. A person with such intelligence understands people’s feelings and desires – and employers pay big bucks for someone with these skills.

Communication makes you relaxed. Stress relates to how we manage ourselves with the world. You can become more relaxed by assertively telling someone “no” if they ask you to do something you don’t want to do. You can relax and no longer worry about the world’s reactions if you respond from a powerful source of control within yourself. (Read this article to learn of effective stress management techniques in communication.)

Communication makes you more satisfied with life. You receive satisfaction when you fulfill a need or desire. To get what you want, either someone gives it to you or you get it yourself. You cannot control what someone gives you (although you can influence them), which means in order to be satisfied you must learn how to get what you want. You do this by improving your persuasion, negotiation, and influence skills. Develop these areas of communication to grow as a person so you fulfill your needs and desires for satisfaction.

Communication gives you self-control. We interact with people everyday and often do things we later regret. Communication skills can increase your self-control to help you manage impulsive behavior. Self-control is beyond not doing actions; it also involves doing the right things.

Communication helps you understand people. This occurs at two levels. Firstly, knowledge of good communication helps you understand human behavior in general. Secondly, it helps you directly understand people you talk with as you explore their emotions and what really matters to them.

Rarely do we understand people to the level they want. Effective communication helps you see someone’s emotions, understand their emotions, and communicate at the level of emotions to powerfully connect the two of you in a way people rarely experience.

Communication helps you understand yourself. Do you know why you respond negatively when someone gives you criticism? Why do you feel occasional surges of anger towards someone you love? How do you overcome fears that stop you from talking with that hot chick or guy?

If you’re like most people, you don’t understand your behavior and this hurts you everyday. Not even I fully understand myself in a way that lets me use my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual resources to my potential. No one ever will. You will never have the complete answers to these questions, nor do you need them, but many problem behaviors solvable through communication no longer need to block your desired way of living.

This is a small list of the many benefits communication skills can give you. There is an abundance of additional benefits effective communication creates such as managed anger, increased likelihood of a job promotion, better teamwork, and effective leadership skills, but hopefully the list gives you a great idea of the impact this glorious skill can have on your life. Experience the power of communication and let it supercharge your life today by signing up to my free newsletter here.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication
2. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It
3. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
4. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication
5. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management