The way that we emotionally respond today often comes from our past experiences, particularly if they’re negative. Growing up or living in an environment where conflict often signified harm trains your brain to react with fear. And fear is a signpost, an alert that something is wrong, you’re in danger, and that needs to be addressed.
The past experiences detailed below may help you better understand why you feel the way that you do. And if you can identify well with them, it would be worth talking to a mental health professional about it, as that may point to unresolved trauma that needs working through.
1. You were punished for expressing your feelings.
Abusive people rarely care about your feelings, other than how they can use them as a weapon against you. For example, if you’re annoyed or sad about something that the abusive person did, then they will often fire back anger or manipulation to assert control and force you into submission.
By punishing your valid feelings with anger, the abusive person conditions you to want to retreat to avoid the coming conflict. Even punishments that aren’t laden with anger can cause that sort of conditioning. Like, if you were upset with a parent, and then they just punished you for getting upset, then you’d develop an aversion to wanting to upset the people around you.
But that doesn’t change the fact that your brain will still want to alert you when something is wrong, so instead, you may just feel anxiety rather than anger or sadness in later social interactions.
2. You had people close to you who held grudges.
As therapist Nathan Feiles writes, a grudge is a passive-aggressive behavior that does nothing but ruin one’s own peace and happiness. Still, emotionally unhealthy people often hold grudges and use passive-aggressive behaviors to “communicate” their displeasure because they see no value in doing otherwise.
And by “communicate,” I mean that in the loosest definition of the word, because passive-aggression is not a healthy form of communication. I know that because I used to do things like that due to a lack of emotional intelligence and being on the autistic spectrum. I would get into an argument with a partner, and instead of addressing the core issue or taking the time to understand what I was feeling, I would close off.
But you can’t do that and maintain a healthy, loving relationship. The problems don’t get addressed, so they fester quietly, resentment builds, and communication stops. In my situation, my partner became averse to sharing difficult things with me because she could never know if I was going to act like a pouty, immature, man-child about it or handle it maturely. And this caused her undue stress and anxiety for however many weeks it took me to get over myself.
3. You grew up in an environment where anger led to physical abuse.
It’s an obvious thing to point out, but it still needs to be said. People who grew up in physically abusive environments come to associate anger with violence, because that’s usually when the violence happened. What your subconscious is doing is spotting the pattern emerging that led to physical harm and warning you of what may come next.
That’s where you start getting into the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (C-PTSD) territory because those feelings aren’t always accurate or helpful. That is, your instinct doesn’t necessarily know the difference between an angry person who isn’t violent and an angry person who is. Any kind of anger, conflict, or excitement can start setting off those warning bells because your brain wants you to be safe and wants to survive.
All it knows is that conflict is stirring, conflict means pain, and that you need to avoid conflict. The result is that your brain makes you afraid and anxious so that you’ll protect yourself.
4. You were taught that “good” meant agreeable.
Some parents and partners condition the people around them to be agreeable and compliant, not through anger, but through soft manipulation. Instead of being acknowledged and praised for standing up for oneself, they may instead chastise you for it and praise your silence. By praising your silence, they are reinforcing that your feelings don’t matter. This praising of compliance is something that’s common in the “good girl” rhetoric that many women grow up with.
That’s an issue because it teaches a lack of boundaries. And again, your conscious mind may then struggle with asserting boundaries, but your subconscious mind wants you to survive, to be happy and safe. So when you swallow your discomfort just to make other people comfortable, your subconscious is going to remind you in other ways that you deserve safety, security, and comfort, too – just as much as anyone else.
5. You’ve had your boundaries violated in the past.
Far too many people are comfortable with disrespecting or ignoring the boundaries of other people around them. That, of course, can lead to either mild or traumatic experiences that may cause your subconscious to be on high alert in similar situations. In the present day, your subconscious will see the same pattern emerging and start kicking off your warning systems to avoid being harmed again.
Boundaries are so important for healthy relationships because they teach other people how to treat you. They provide guidance on how other people should interact with the most fragile or sensitive parts of you. When other people don’t respect that, then you can’t feel truly intimate or close to them because you don’t know what kind of harm they may do.
Your subconscious remembers that from your previous experiences, so it’s no wonder you want to avoid it.
6. You’ve never experienced healthy conflict.
Anger happens in relationships. It’s only natural. Everyone is different, so sometimes our values or perspectives may clash. Sometimes arguments happen, or people get emotionally heated when they are trying to defend themselves. Not every agreement can be boiled down to perfect calmness and clarity, particularly if the other person doesn’t care so much about it.
There are some people who are just used to that style of conflict, and that’s what feels right to them. It’s unhealthy, but they feel comfortable in the familiar chaos, so that’s a pattern they repeat. However, healthy conflict doesn’t have to involve passive-aggressiveness, aggression, or screaming. Instead, it can be a discussion, if both parties are emotionally mature enough to do that.
But what if they aren’t? Well, sometimes you just have to be uncomfortable to stand up for yourself. For example, if you’re at work, and your boss is pushing on you in a way that is unacceptable, you may have to stand up for yourself with a bit of fire in your belly. Anger is the only thing some people understand, unfortunately. And if you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then you have to find a way to survive and thrive.
In closing…
As you’ve probably realised through reading this article, the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and heart racing that accompany the thought of conflict are often caused by unpleasant past experiences or trauma. The experiences that we have formulate who we are as we move through life. If you’ve been through an abusive situation or were surrounded by negative people, then your brain is going to be trying to protect you from that further.
It’s a situation where you want to address it with a mental health professional, because it may point to PTSD or CPTSD that need appropriate treatment. But remember, if you get anxious during conflict, that’s okay. Anxiety is normal for that situation. Do whatever you think will keep you safe to get out of that situation, and then see about not finding yourself back there.
