For a long time I was the friend people texted mid breakup. “Is this biting enough?” And I'd be like, no, add this, and this, and this.
I've calmed down a lot since then. But I still know the feeling of writing something long in the heat of the moment and rereading it and thinking it's genius. Then I send it and I can't even look at the response. And when I finally go back and read what I wrote, it's like… yeah, I was kind of a dick. It does not sound nearly as smart as I thought it did, even on the second read. Some part of my mind was still working overtime to justify everything I was feeling.
If you've ever wondered how to stay calm in an argument, that moment is a good place to start. I opened my conversation with Dr. Jeremy Pollack by asking why arguments make smart people say such dumb things, and his answer was simple. In that state, we kind of are dumber.
Why do I get so angry in an argument?
Jeremy is a psychologist and mediator who wrote Wired for Peace, and he explained it like this. When an argument makes you defensive, certain parts of your nervous system ramp up. The parts tied to self reflection, executive function, and higher self awareness start to come down. So the smarter parts of you go offline and the more emotionally charged parts take over.
I asked if it even matters how smart you are once you're that worked up. He said no. The smartest people in the world can still make intellectual arguments, but they stop listening. They lose curiosity. They lose empathy. All the social intelligence goes first.
His fix for the email situation is almost annoyingly simple. Write it if you need to. Just don't send it. Wait six hours and then ask yourself if you still want to send it like that. Most of the time you'll rewrite it, because it doesn't sound like you on a good day.
Why does my body tense up around certain people?
This is the part of the conversation that was personal for me.
There's one person in my life I have real conflict with. Only one. And she's going to be in my life forever, so I've tried everything. Every technique, every reframe, every careful conversation. When I was reading Jeremy's book, I realized something I'd been missing. My nervous system is so trained to be tense around her that I feel it before any words happen. By the time we're actually talking, I'm already halfway gone.
Jeremy said this is exactly what his book is about. You can do all the mediation and communication training in the world, but if two people's brains have learned to see each other as a threat, nothing sticks. The first bit of friction sets the whole thing off again.
He breaks the way out into three parts. Motivation first, because rewiring how you perceive someone is simple but definitely not easy or quick. Then awareness, which means noticing what happens in your body and what stories you're telling yourself about this person. Then action, which he compared to treating a phobia. You expose yourself gradually and teach your body it's safer than it feels. You don't even have to be around them at first. You can just think of the person, notice what your body does, and consciously relax. Over and over.
He also suggested writing what he calls safety stories. If your brain keeps telling one story about this person, you start practicing a different one.
I asked what happens if you're the only one doing the work. He was honest. You can't control the other person, and you won't be zen all the time. You'll still get triggered sometimes. The work is having your own way to come back down when that happens, and not depending on them for your regulation.
Is it okay to avoid talking about politics with family?
My family has had a code word since the 2016 election. Hummingbird. Whenever a conversation starts heading somewhere it shouldn't, someone says hummingbird. And because my family is ridiculous, everyone else starts saying it too, and that takes over the moment and we move on. I'm pretty sure it has saved us more than once.
I asked Jeremy if having topics off limits is healthy or if we're doing ourselves a disservice. He said it's totally fine. He talks about two approaches to conflict. There's direct dialogue, where both people want to work through the issue. And there's a common ground approach, where you find the values and interests you share and you stay there. He has a friend who can't talk politics with his dad without a two week silence, so they don't. They talk about everything else.
What worries him is the other direction. Over the last decade we've gotten a lot of permission to cut people out, and some of that was needed. But for a lot of people it went from “we don't talk about that” to “if I know you believe that, I can't be around you.” Jeremy called that a sad state of affairs. If you only surround yourself with people who agree with you, your beliefs get more extreme. That's group polarization, and you also lose any ability to handle conflict at all.
I have a theory that social media made this worse. We all have our own billboards now. If you change parties or find Jesus or change your mind about anything, it feels like you have to update the billboard. Politics stopped being who you vote for and became who you are. So when someone disagrees with you, it feels like they're rejecting you.
How to stay calm in an argument when you think they're wrong
This is where Jeremy got into something I think most of us skip. He separates care from trust.
Trust takes time. It's built slowly and it breaks easily. But you don't have to trust someone to care about them. And in long conflicts, political or family or both, we stop believing the other person cares about our needs at all. Once we believe that, we go straight into defense.
He used guns as an example, which is one I honestly see both sides of. I come from a family of police officers, then I moved to LA and got very liberal, and now I have kids and live in a red town. Jeremy's point was that the underlying value on both sides is usually safety. If the person across from you can say “I care about you and your family, and I wouldn't vote for something unless I believed it made you safer,” your threat response calms down. You still disagree on how to get there. But you're starting from the same place.
I told him it feels almost like a physical wall when I'm talking to someone I already expect to disagree with. Everything they say just bounces off. And the sneakiest version of that is when we feel calm because we're so sure we're right. We're not getting heated, but we're not connecting either. Jeremy said our brains are prediction machines that crave certainty, so curiosity is going to feel a little scary. Staying open anyway is part of the work.
One thing I say to myself when someone's point of view sets me off is, “In the realm of infinite possibilities, that's definitely one of them.” It reminds me that I don't actually want to be right about everything. What kind of wonder would that take out of my life?
We ended up somewhere spiritual, which I loved. Jeremy described the ego as the thing that creates the illusion of separateness. Anytime you're in conflict and feeling that threat, you're in ego mind, and that's okay. We're human. But if you can also hold a little bit of your witness mind, the part watching yourself in that state, you get a little more access to the oneness underneath it.
Should you use ChatGPT to respond in an argument?
I'll admit I've done this. With that one relationship, I'll write my draft really carefully and then run it through ChatGPT to take out anything that could possibly read as threatening. I'm in a gray area of hypocrisy here, because I also think it's kind of dangerous.
A friend of mine was going back and forth with her boyfriend and sent me the screenshots. Her responses were clearly ChatGPT. Seven paragraphs. And then I read his and he was obviously doing the same thing. Were either of them even reading each other?
Jeremy sees this with his corporate clients all the time. He called it two robots arguing with each other, with no humans involved. Where he does think AI helps is self exploration, like testing your thinking before you talk to someone. And he has always said, even before AI, don't do emotionally charged conversations over text or email at all. Do them on the phone, on video, or in person.
My own theory is that people are getting meaner because they've practiced being mean online. You can't see someone's face. You can't catch the flash of pain right before they snap back. Do that enough times and it gets easier to do in person too. Jeremy added that public arguments make it worse, because when your side jumps in to support you, your brain gets a reward for it and wants to do it again.
How to have a hard conversation with someone you love
Here's what I'm taking from this conversation into my own life.
Before you talk about the issue, make sure the other person knows you care about them. That was Jeremy's challenge for the week. Tell them what you care about, their concerns, their needs, their goals. Let them actually feel it before you get anywhere near the thing you disagree on. It lowers both people's defenses.
If the conversation is charged, don't have it by text. And if you've already written the perfect cutting message, give it six hours.
When I catch myself putting all the blame on the other person, I ask what my part is. Even if I think it's 10 percent, what's my 10 percent? I'm not the problem every time. But my perception is always part of it.
And if there's one person who sets your body off before they say a word, that's not something you can think your way out of in the moment. That's practice, done slowly, when you're not in the middle of it.
Take this work deeper
This is the kind of thing that's so much easier to practice with people doing the same work. Inside the Mind Love Collective, we meet once a month for themed calls where you get coached on whatever you're working through, including that one relationship that keeps setting you off. It's free to join at mindlove.com/join.
Resources from this episode
- Wired for Peace by Dr. Jeremy Pollack: his book on the seven neuroscience based principles for resolving conflict
- Pollack Peacebuilding: Jeremy's conflict resolution work with companies and teams
- The Work of Byron Katie: the “who would you be without that thought” inquiry I mentioned
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