Let me start with a provocative question: How are you feeling about the current state of U.S. politics?
I encourage you to take a moment to really sit with this question and tune into how you are feeling.
Maybe you feel anxious or afraid about what is to come, or maybe you feel angry, frustrated, or resentful with the way things have been. Or perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed or totally exhausted by it all. Or maybe you’re feeling some combination of those things.
For those of you who are feeling perfectly calm and peaceful about the state of politics in the United States right now: My guess is you are either a high-level zen master, or you live under a rock.
For the rest of us who are feeling some version of the challenging emotions I listed above, I encourage you to seriously ponder a second question: Why do you feel this way? (Note: It may be helpful to use the Nine Whys exercise I described in my last blog).
What most of us will come to—if we do deep-enough digging into what is really driving these emotions—is that we or something we value feels at risk, whether that be our own physical safety, our rights, our wellbeing, our belief system, or democracy itself.
In other words: we sense a threat.
Dysregulation is our natural threat response—and sometimes it leads us astray
As I have described in prior blogs, when we detect a threat (whether to us or something we care deeply about), our bodies do a miraculous, albeit sometimes inconvenient, thing: Our neurological system takes action to protect us from harm. In particular, it drives us to go into fight, flight, freeze, or appease (or what is sometimes called “fawn”) mode in an effort to keep us and the things we care about safe. When this happens, we are unable to think calmly, rationally, and creatively for a period of time, and we instinctively default to protective behaviors.
In other words: we get dysregulated.
This built-in dysregulation feature is extremely helpful if we encounter a bear in the woods or another immediate threat to our survival. However, it can get us into trouble in our social and political lives, since our bodies treat disagreement and conflict the same as a physical threat. This leads us to behave in protective ways—mainly attacking, accommodating, or avoiding. As many of us know all too well from experience, such behaviors rarely lead to good outcomes in our personal and professional lives. Indeed, instead of helping us productively resolve issues, they tend to result in us escalating situations, pushing others away, becoming resentful, and/or allowing problems to fester until they explode.
The good news is, we have other options. We don’t have to dysregulate and default to unproductive behaviors when we encounter disagreement and conflict. Instead, as I have discussed at length in prior blogs, we can choose to behave in conflict-competent ways, and doing so consistently leads to good outcomes for us and others. However, to behave in conflict-competent ways, we absolutely have to be calm and present (i.e., well regulated, not dysregulated).
This is why in order to navigate conflict productively, we need to understand dysregulation, including why we get dysregulated, what purpose it serves, how it can lead us astray in our relationships and politics, and how to prevent that from happening.
To understand dysregulation and how it can affect our ability to navigate conflict and our social lives, it is also important to recognize that we dysregulate anytime our body feels out of whack—e.g., if we are too cold or too hot, tired or sleep deprived, hungry or nutritionally imbalanced (e.g., too much sugar), or in significant pain or discomfort (including if we have repressed or suppressed emotional pain or discomfort). It is also important to understand that when we dysregulate, our brain goes looking for an outside reason to explain why we feel so uncomfortable.
Let me illustrate with a personal example: I recently discovered that when I get too physically hot, my brain goes directly to feeling angry and looking for a reason why I feel angry. The first two times this happened, I was out skiing in the warm spring sun with my significant other, Ian. All of a sudden, I found myself getting super irritated, and then I got grumpy and snappy at him. Thankfully, Ian is a very well-regulated human, and he noticed this was totally out of character for me and that he hadn’t done anything that seemed to merit my irritation. After the second time this happened, he lovingly approached me when I was in a calm state of mind and shared his observation that I seem to get angry at him for no particular reason when I get too physically hot. After this happened a third time, I realized he was right: There wasn’t a conflict between Ian and me. I was just getting hot, and then my brain was looking for a reason why my body was uncomfortable—and it irrationally decided the reason was Ian.
Crazy, right? But this is how our neurological systems work! When we get dysregulated, our brain stops thinking logically and it just goes straight into attack, accommodate, or avoid mode (blaming Ian was my version of attack mode).
I share this personal example because I think it so perfectly demonstrates how dysregulation works: It hijacks our brains and can make us behave in weird, irrational, and often out-of-character ways.
It is also a good reminder that learning how to not let our nervous system hijack our brain is a lifelong practice, including for people like me who teach about conflict resolution and dysregulation.
Additionally, this example clearly illustrates another key thing we need to understand about dysregulation: Much of what we experience as conflict isn’t conflict at all; it is just dysregulation.
Dysregulation is not conflict—and we need to learn to separate the two
To explain what I mean, let me first remind you that conflict is the intersection of different needs and concerns (i.e., interests) that are in tension with each other and not easily reconcilable.
Think of recent conflictual experiences in your life. Perhaps you thought of an argument with your significant other over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher; a clash with one of your children over their failure to clean their room; a disagreement with a work colleague about how a project should be completed; or your family arguing over politics last Thanksgiving.
In all of these situations, it is possible that there is real conflict—an intersection of different needs and concerns (i.e., interests) that are in tension with each other and not easily reconcilable—that needs to be resolved. It is also entirely possible that the main dynamic had more to do with, or was entirely caused by, the fact that you and/or others were tired, weary, overworked, overwhelmed, anxious, or just generally feeling threatened or like your basic needs weren’t being met.
In other words, maybe the problem was just dysregulation, not conflict.
Learning to identify when you are dealing with dysregulation (whether yours or other people’s) instead of conflict is important, because the solutions and strategies for dealing with these situations are different.
If someone is simply dysregulated, the most helpful interventions will be things that help them feel safe, secure, and well resourced. For example, when I start to feel the heat rage, I just need to take my jacket off and cool down a bit (it truly works wonders!). Or if someone is tired, they need more sleep. Or if they aren’t feeling secure in their relationship, they may need affection and reassurances.
In contrast, if real conflict is at play, we and other parties need to lean into our conflict competencies and work together to negotiate solutions that meet all parties’ key needs. While behaving in conflict-competent ways (such as listening effectively and treating others with compassion) can help us help others calm our neurological systems, negotiation isn’t the right solution for addressing dysregulation. Instead, if we try to negotiate solutions when someone is really just feeling threatened or out of whack physically, we’re probably going to make the problem worse.
Don’t pass go until you are well regulated
All of these points taken together drive home why it is so important that all humans understand dysregulation, why it happens, what purpose it serves, and how it can lead us to behave in unproductive ways in our relationships and our politics. It also speaks to why it is so important that we learn to recognize our own signs of dysregulation and understand how to maintain and return to a calm, present state of being.
I have come to believe that nothing could be more important at this time in human history. Research suggests that most people in America are living in a constant state of mild to extreme dysregulation due to being underslept, overworked, overstimulated (such as by a constant feed of information and misinformation), poorly nourished, overly stationary, and (likely most importantly) feeling disconnected and lonely. Unless the drivers behind these challenges are addressed, such issues are only likely to get worse with rapid technological innovation and the social change that comes with it.
My observation is that much of the political and social angst we have seen in the last few decades has a lot more to do with this widespread dysregulation than actual conflict. This is why I am convinced that people learning to become, as clinician and author Deb Dana puts it, “active operators” of our nervous system, is going to be key to our future flourishing and thriving as individuals and as a society.
Therefore, as we move beyond the divisive 2024 election into whatever comes next, I strongly encourage everyone to take responsibility for your neurological system and state of being—and to help others do so as well. You might be surprised by how much of a difference it makes in how you see and experience the world, as well as how empowering and liberating it is.
Danya Rumore, Ph.D., is the director of the Environmental Dispute Resolution program in the Wallace Stegner Center at the University of Utah. She is a research professor in the S.J. Quinney College of Law and a clinical associate professor in the city and metropolitan planning department at the University of Utah. She teaches about, practices, and conducts research on conflict, negotiation, dispute resolution, leadership, and collaborative problem solving. She is also the founder and a co-director of the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative.