Mastering Emotional Detachment: Responding with Clarity Instead of Reacting with Emotion
I. Introduction
As living creatures, we tend to react to high stress situations with hormones in a physiological reaction known as the "fight or flight" response. While this can serve us well in life-or-death situations, it can also get us in trouble when a situation is more complicated than simply "fight or flight".
This type of reaction is just that, a reaction. In fencing, this means you do not have the initiative. In life, this means you aren't in control. When we react to what is happening, the situation is determining what we do; when we respond to what is happening, we are taking control of our actions in lieu of what is happening around us. The only way to accomplish this is to stop doing something and start thinking.
The concept of detachment has been known for centuries. The samurai referred to it as Mushin (No-mind): being in a state of mind that is dispassionate and without bias. What we have failed to do is teach this principle, and in return, apply it. Even the infamous Bruce Lee spoke on detachment and remaining calm in order to respond faster and with more force. While this applies to physical combat, it applies equally to combating a chaotic scene, an interpersonal conflict, or even our day-to-day lives. When we relax, are dispassionate, and absorb ourselves in the entirety of the moment, we prevent tunnel vision and can more easily see the big picture, allowing us to respond in a proactive manner. This helps immensely in decision-making speed and accuracy.
Mastering emotional detachment through mindfulness and intentional pauses for cognition allows us to respond thoughtfully in high-stress situations, leading to better decision-making and stronger relationships.
Understanding this principle is easy. Learning and applying it requires far more effort than simply reading up on the idea. It requires continuous practice—and there are plenty of tips, tricks, and techniques to help develop this skill, such as physically relaxing and stepping back, breathwork, or the simple act of sitting up straight and looking around to absorb the environment. We will go over these and more to help us make better decisions and not react to the situation, but to control the situation.
II. Understanding Reaction vs. Response
Defining Reaction:
Reaction is ego driven. It is often impulsive and driven by emotion. In other words, there is nothing thoughtful about it. Have you ever lost your temper? Have you ever said or done something you later regretted? These are reactions driven by emotion that rarely lead to positive outcomes. Reactions are generally focused on immediate outcomes—they serve to make us feel good, or feel safe, even if these actions are contrary to our desired long- and short-term goals.
Defining "Respond":
Responding is a far more tactical way of tackling a situation. It is more focused and intentional. This makes it inherently a more thoughtful way of engaging with a problem, and often looks at the big picture and long-term outcomes. Responding is how we maneuver in a manner that pushes the situation towards the goals we desire, but to respond well, we require two very important abilities: awareness and self-control.
We must be aware of the entirety of what is going on, this includes others involved. In an interpersonal conflict, we need to be aware of the other person’s feelings, goals, desires, and what the problem is. When reacting, we often don't partake in perception taking; when responding, we know it is required to de-escalate and take control of what is going on. I mention awareness first, as this is a necessary trait before self-control can be applied. We must be aware of ourselves before we can control ourselves.
Self-control is about understanding what we are feeling and why and getting it under control. This doesn't mean we aim to stop feeling emotions; we are humans, not robots. The goal is to recognize our emotions and biases and not let those things impact how we act and the choices we make. These two skills make detaching difficult but is something we should all strive to do.
Why Emotional Detachment is Key:
Detachment is the key to unlocking the ability to see the big picture during a situation where tunnel vision is a common reaction. Oftentimes it can make the choice in situations stand out like a flashing beacon once you have detached from the chaos, panic, or emotions of the environment. It can literally make decision-making easier. At the very least, learning to detach, and implementing detachment, will ensure you do not make a situation worse. Oftentimes engaging in a situation in a heightened emotional state will cause things to become worse, or, at the very least, it will heighten the emotional state of everyone else around you, and this often results in poor outcomes.
III. The Benefits of Staying Calm and Detached
1. Improved Decision-Making:
Experiencing heightened levels of emotions engages more of our amygdala in the brain and can actually lower the activation of the frontal lobe. As shown in a study published in the journal Cognition heightened levels of emotion has the consequence of dampening one’s ability to engage in logical decision-making processes. Emotions like fear and anxiety can hijack our thinking process and cause us to act in irrational and risky ways. Being able to detach and remain calm allows you to engage your prefrontal cortex (the logical center of the brain) and make more well-reasoned decisions.
2. Reduced Conflict:
The ability to remain calm during potentially heated conversations helps to reduce conflict and increase positive interpersonal interactions. As shown in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, individuals who engaged in "cognitive reappraisal" (a strategy for everyday living in which a person deliberately aims to modify their emotional response to their environment by changing their thought process) had "greater positive emotion and lesser negative emotion" and experienced better interpersonal functioning. This involves evaluating an emotionally charged situation from a different perspective than what comes automatically to mind. This same concept can be applied to any situation that causes heightened stress levels and emotional arousal, including a chaotic scene, crisis, or a heated argument with a non-compliant individual.
3. Increased Emotional Resilience:
The act of cognitive reappraisal not only helps interpersonal relationships but can also enhance emotional resilience. In a study published in the journal Emotion, it was shown that cognitive reappraisal allowed participants to remain emotionally detached from negative events, reducing the emotional impact and increasing their ability to recover quickly from stress. Being able to detach and practice cognitive reappraisal allows us to view challenges in a more constructive manner, leading to enhanced resilience.
IV. Strategies for Cultivating Calm and Detaching
1. Mindfulness and Self-Awareness:
Mindfulness, which encourages emotional detachment from immediate reactions and fosters a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment, helps us to remove the bias of emotions during chaotic situations. Using breathing techniques such as box breathing (four counts of breathing in, four counts of holding your breath, four counts of exhaling and four more counts of holding after your exhale) can help to regulate the fight or flight response and return your physiology into a calmer state, allowing for more logical thought processes.
Self-distancing is another good practice, especially to increase self-awareness. It involves viewing things in a third person perspective. By viewing things as an outsider, it allows you to gain emotional distance and respond in a calmer manner. In stressful moments, imagine watching yourself from a distance. Think about how you would advise someone else in your situation.
2. Pause Before Acting:
Taking a moment to pause and take in the environment before engaging in an action is a powerful way to gather your wits and make a clear decision. It allows a brief time for additional information gathering, reflecting, and assessing of the situation before making a decision. The pause allows you to detach emotionally, consider different perspectives, and respond with intention rather than react impulsively. It creates a situation where you are more likely to engage your prefrontal cortex, which has been shown to enhance rational decision-making abilities. Performing this act is simple and can be combined with breath work. Simply take a deep breath and observe the situation. When I worked in EMS, I would always wait until I arrived on the scene to put on my gloves. This gave me time to absorb the scene, analyze, and then, by the time my gloves were on, I could act in a more thought-out fashion. It also had the added benefit of displaying a calm demeanor, which assisted in lowering the emotional distress of anyone observing the scene.
3. Restructure the Situation:
Cognitive restructuring is a technique used to shift your mindset so you're able to look at a situation, person, or relationship from a different perspective. When you shift your interpretation of an event or interaction, it allows you to reduce stress, avoid taking things personally, and to maintain professional composure. The first step in being able to deploy this technique is to know when you are beginning to feel frustrated, defensive, or angry. Once you have recognized that you are starting to lose your composure this allows you to take a step back, look at the big picture, and try and perceive things from a different perspective. This can be done by asking yourself “How else can I view this situation?” or “Is there another way to interpret their behavior?” Another good way is to use more positive or neutral language in discourse or in your thought process. Instead of thinking, “This is a problem,” reframe to, “This is an opportunity to resolve an issue and prevent it from escalating.”
4. Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence involves the awareness of your own emotions as well as the emotions of others The key to being able to bring yourself back into a non-agitated frame of mind and to be able to respond appropriately in a detached manner is to recognize your own emotions. There are four main components within Emotional Intelligence:
- Self-awareness: Recognizing your emotions and their impact.
- Self-regulation: Managing your emotional responses effectively.
- Social awareness: Understanding others' emotions and perspectives.
- Relationship management: Using emotional awareness to interact positively with others.
One of the largest hurdle is being able to recognize your own emotional state and being able to maintain a calm, professional, and detached frame of mind. We have already gone over several self-regulating techniques to help in assisting you to get back into the state of mind in order to respond appropriately during a stressful situation or encounter. I add
Emotional Intelligence in this article as it is an important thing to develop for not only managing high stress situations, but to help you manage yourself and your personal life as well.
5. Developing Empathy:
Having empathy is key to de-escalating interpersonal conflicts and requires taking perspective and active listening. Taking perspective is something a lot of us were never taught to do, and almost none of us do it naturally —his goes for active listening as well. We want to get our point across; we want everyone else to understand us, but we never take the time and effort to understand others. Active listening is a skill that leads to proper perspective taking of other people. This, by its very nature, requires that we detach from ourselves and view things from another person's perspective in an effort to understand them. Understanding another person will lower the levels of frustration you may feel and will help you speak in a more clear, measured, and calm manner.
V. Challenges to Overcome
1. Recognizing Triggers:
One of the more difficult aspects of maintaining composure is recognize when you start losing your composure. Finding specific things that trigger you can help you be more mindful of when you may lose your composure. This will assist you in developing techniques to ensure you do not lose composure or are able to return yourself toa calm state of mind. An easy way to do this is to look back at times where you have lost your composure, panicked, or done something you have regretted. Go back and think about these times and try to understand what caused it. This can be a simple mental walkthrough or you can write down the events if it helps you to better process your emotional state.
2. Breaking Habitual Responses:
Once you've recognized what triggers you, whether that be a specific insult, perceived disrespect, another person panicking, or any other number of issues, it is time to break the cycle. This is something that will take time, repetition, and practice. It may seem cliché, but the act of pausing and counting to ten, or any other grounding technique, as well as regulating your breathing, has been demonstrated to help lower heightened emotional states.
3. Patience with the Process:
Understand that this is a process. Being able to detach and approach potentially chaotic and volatile situations with a clear mind will take a lot of practice, self-awareness, and actually being submerged into these situations in order to practice these techniques and desensitize yourself to any emotional triggers you may encounter.
Best of luck to you in your efforts to improve yourself during times of crisis!
Citations:
Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Damasio, A. R., & Anderson, S. W. (1997). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50(1-3), 7-15.
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.
Troy, A. S., Wilhelm, F. H., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2010). Seeing the silver lining: Cognitive reappraisal ability moderates the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms. Emotion, 10(6), 783-795. doi.org/10.1037/a0020262
Clark DA. Cognitive restructuring. In: Hofmann SG, Dozois D, eds. The Wiley Handbook for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, First Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. doi:10.1002/9781118528563.wbcbt02
Kross E, Bruehlman-Senecal E, Park J, et al. Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2014;106(2):304–324. doi:10.1037/a0035173