De-railing the Emotional Runaway Train

By Vince Lindgren

When a couple first meets and starts dating, they get a warm glow whenever they even think of each other, even more so whenever they are actually in each other’s presence.  The positive stimulation engendered by a new lover is a multifaceted physical, psychological, and spiritual experience.  This warm glow is in part chemically induced by the body’s release of endorphins.  Endorphins are essentially feel good hormones which give a person a sense of well being, as well as obscuring the unpleasant effects of minor aches and pains.  Endorphins give a person a much higher quality high than prescription or illicit drugs with none of the nasty side effects.  It is no mystery why new lovers often have a difficult time spending time apart.  They believe that they are high on life, but from a biochemical perspective they are actually high on endorphins.

After a couple decides to commit to each other, either through agreeing to an exclusive relationship or through marriage, the excitement and the concomitant endorphin rush both lessens in intensity and in frequency.  This is essentially a good thing, because if the intensity and frequency continued at that high level, they would have very little attention and energy left over for their friends or career or anything else.  So, romance is very nice, but the cooling of romance is also a good thing.

The problem for many people is that they are somewhat unprepared for the change from the high excitement of romance to the routines of day to day life.  One of the adjustments that must be made is the adjustment to relational conflict.  Many couples during the romantic phase of their relationship fight very little, and for some not at all.  However, once they start a life together, they have many decisions to make that they often have completely different perspectives on, and previously neither needed to consider the wishes of another person.  For instance, I was a slob when I had an apartment by myself.  I once laughed out loud when I discovered something gray growing on some long ignored dirty dishes sitting in my kitchen sink.  Not only would my wife fail to see the humor in this occurrence, if cleaning and organizing doesn’t happen on a regular basis, the disorder actually creates disorder in her brain.  That is, she actually has a hard time thinking clearly in the presence of a mess.  

Needless to say, housekeeping was the source of many conflicts and negotiations in the early years of our marriage.  Over time we reached a middle ground where the house is usually picked up, but is rarely spotless.  Besides housework, other common disagreements have to do with finances, in-laws, decisions to have children, parenting decisions, etc.  These are substantive issues that it is important and necessary to fight about.  If each person in the couple does not fight for their viewpoint on these issues of substantive disagreement, there will often be problems down the road in their relationship.  That is, if one partner capitulates to the other’s wishes in an effort to keep the peace in the relationship, the capitulator will often become bitter and resentful towards the partner who gets their way.

Just as there are conflicts that a couple needs to have with each other, there are others that are not necessary and can even be destructive to the relationship if they persist.  This is the type of conflict that may start over nothing (as opposed to something like the aforementioned housekeeping example) and within a short period of time reaches an intensity of Herculean proportions.  Efforts to problem solve or attempts to discuss the conflict often make it worse, in the sense of exacerbating the pain and negativity.  This type of conflict only ends when both parties are exhausted and essentially signal that they are giving up.  After they both regain their composure and restore their energy reserves, they often implicitly agree to act as if this entire (X number of days) days of pure hell never happened, and they don’t talk about it until the next time a similar conflict erupts. 

This type of conflict can be termed the emotional cascade.  The primary distinction between the emotional cascade and other conflicts is often there is little or no disagreement about the substance of the conflict.  That is, garden variety conflicts arise because one person thinks or wants one thing, and the other thinks or wants another thing.  They then argue about this different point of view.  In an emotional cascade, the conflict is fueled by emotional contagion, not disagreement.  One person’s negative emotions stimulate a reactive and emotionally intense response from the other which increases the intensity of the first person’s negative emotions, etc. 

Just like the endorphins which fuel the aforementioned romantic interactions, the emotional cascade is fueled by adrenaline.  Adrenaline is the hormone which is released when a person feels threatened; it prepares all the body’s defensive systems for flight or fight.  Adrenaline also shuts off the part of the brain where empathy and concern for others reside (i.e. the frontal cortex).  When a person is in fight mode, adrenaline makes it easier to attack the other’s character with little or no concern for the other’s feelings.  When the person is in flight mode, adrenaline also makes it easier to leave and not tell the other where they are going; or to act as if the other doesn’t exist by not talking to them when they are in the same room.  Once adrenaline is released in one person (i.e. this person feels threatened), their resulting aggressive and/or hurtful behavior stimulates adrenaline production in the other person, and the runaway emotional train is born. 

The main problem with a person under the influence of too much adrenaline is that just like the aforementioned endorphin rush of the romantic relationship, people literally cannot hear what is being said to them.  Try to tell someone who is head over heels in love that their lover might have one or two imperfections and see what response you get.  Likewise, even something as straightforward as asking the other to stop yelling may be impossible for them to hear under the influence of large amounts of adrenaline.  As a result, talking becomes impossible once an emotional cascade has been set in motion. 

The following is a description of one possible emotional cascade.  Some small, but irritating event occurs during one person’s day.  Let’s say the wife goes in to the coffee room at work only to discover that the last person in there has drained the coffee pot and then failed to make a new pot of coffee.  She begrudgingly makes another pot of coffee, and chooses to not make an issue of it with her co-workers.  During the drive home, she stews about the fact that the men in the office never make coffee and seem to expect the women to do it.  Then, upon arriving home, she sees a huge mound of steaming dog do in the back yard.  She storms in to the house, and launches into a diatribe about how women always have to clean up men’s crap because they are too irresponsible and lazy to do it themselves.  The husband becomes grossly offended by this personal and completely unfair attack, and yells back that he scoops more poop than she does and if she doesn’t appreciate it, she can take over all the #@%*& dog chores herself.  This angers her more, because she feels it is really his dog and she yells back.  You get the idea.  What started as an irritation, cascaded into an intensely emotional marital conflict. 

That night, the husband sleeps on the couch because they are both too angry to be in the same room for an entire night.  The next morning prior to leaving for work, they make some tentative attempts to repair the emotional damage of the prior evening and before they know it are shouting and cursing at each other again with even more intensity than before.  From this point on, they spend a couple of days not talking to each other, and not even acknowledging each other’s existence.  At some point, they slowly start recognizing each other’s existence again and eventually start talking and interacting normally.  The topic of dog do has become a taboo subject in this house and doesn’t come up again until the next emotional cascade; not because it has anything to do with the next conflict, but because it is a great zinger that will effectively get under the other’s skin.

If an emotional cascade is not properly dealt with (i.e. if there is lingering blame or resentment by either partner) a further problem can evolve which is the domestic equivalent of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.  The logic goes something like this: if someone else might be a potential threat to me in the future, I can neutralize that threat by attacking them first.  In our dog do example, it is easy to see how two weeks down the road, the husband may return home to observe dog do in the back yard, become immediately enraged, and launch into an attack on his wife’s integrity the moment he sees her.  Soon they are engaged in a conflict every bit as negative and intense as the one from two weeks ago.

If you are reading this article, it is likely because you have had the dog do fight and all its wide range of variants many times.  But, if you have any notion that the fight is about dog do, or a lack of love and respect on your partner’s part, you couldn’t be any more wrong.  In fact, it is not a fight at all in the sense of people fighting over something they disagree about.  First, since there is no substantive disagreement about anything, there is no problem solving to be done.  In our example, both you and your spouse likely agree that dog do pickup needs to be done regularly and needs to be shared.  In fact, trying to problem solve when there is no problem makes both people frustrated and only fuels the intensity.  Each person is consciously or subconsciously saying to themselves, “This is a complete waste of time!” and they are both right. 

Second, the difficulty is that emotions are catchy.  Just as one partner often feels romantic when the other is in a romantic mood, angry people tend to make the people around them feel angry.  If contagion is the problem, then the solution is quarantine.  That is, in the previous example, the husband and wife need to stay away from each other until their respective anger subsides.  The only thing that keeps this type of conflict going is reacting and hence fueling the negativity.  Once they are no longer angry, they can go back to living their normal lives.  The earlier they recognize that an emotional cascade is occurring, the less time needed for cool down and the less hurtful name calling and critical remarks that fly back and forth.

To interrupt the emotional cascade requires a couple of steps.  First, at least one person needs to recognize that an emotional cascade is happening and stop engaging in arguing with other.  It only takes one partner to end the arguing because it is the reacting that keeps this type of conflict going.  If one partner sets a limit and refuses to talk anymore about the conflict (remember, neither partner is capable of listening when they are amped up on adrenaline), the other is going to stop fairly quickly without the reinforcement provided by a partner’s reactive response.  That is, the feedback loop that maintains the conflict is interrupted at this point.  It is better if both realize the conflict is going nowhere and agreeing to stop attacking each other, but one partner can be effective in stopping the escalating hostilities. 

Second, there needs to be a cool down period.  This period requires some negotiation since one partner may be ready in an hour while the other may need 24 hours to calm down.  Your parents may swear by the maxim: “Never go to bed angry,” but that doesn’t mean it necessarily fits for you.  Trying to reconnect before each partner has calmed down can often re-ignite the conflict.  Since adrenaline is a very powerful stimulant, you may need to do something physical to relax muscular tightness and dissipate excess energy.  Going for a walk or working in the garden may be very helpful during this phase.

And third, once they are both cooled down, they have to agree to start talking and engaging each other again.  In this third phase, if both partners can admit that things simply got out of control, the conflict can often completely dissipate almost as quickly as it started.  Sometimes mutual apologies can be quite helpful, but not necessary in many instances because after the cool off, both partners often will recognize that they were both equally to blame, and both equally caught up in the emotional maelstrom.

If the emotional cascade is a difficulty in your relationship, talking with each other about how emotions can sometimes get the best of you both, and discussing the situations most likely to engender an emotional cascade can lay the groundwork for recognizing this type of conflict early on when it occurs.  Having an agreed upon plan to deal with it prior to the occurrence of an emotional cascade can also be quite helpful.  Lastly, thinking about becoming emotionally overwhelmed as something everyone experiences from time to time can help both partners realize that emotional cascades are normal, and not necessarily due to some evil intent on their partner’s part.  This viewpoint is invaluable in letting go of the mutual blaming that can linger after this type of conflict.