Stop Overreacting

by Judith Siegel

  Efficacy

  The way that we assess our own abilities may be just as important as what we are able to actually do. Dr. Alfred Bandura (1997) uses the term “efficacy”to describe the way we judge our abilities. When we believe that we are capable of succeeding at a task, we become motivated and find ways to take action. Usually this entails taking control in order to reach our goal and making sure that nothing interferes with or prevents our doing so.

  When we are confident that we will succeed, we may take risks and aggressively push through doubt. When we are fearful that we might fail, we tend to hold back from taking the lead. We allow others who possess more self-confidence or stronger efficacy to take risks that make us uncomfortable. Perhaps you can remember times in your school days when you knew the answer to a teacher’s questions and enthusiastically waved your arm hoping to get picked. There were probably also times that you weren’t so sure and timidly waited for someone else to speak up.

  Our brain chemistry is different in times of certainty than it is in times of doubt. Some people just seem more extroverted and assertive, while others get anxious at the thought of being held responsible (Depue and Collins 1999; Haas et al. 2007). Either stance can activate the amygdala and set the stage for overreaction.

  Overreactions may also be triggered when we believe that no one is in control. In the face of chaos, most people focus on the possible danger and become anxious. The phrase “out of control” suggests that there is the potential for disaster, and our amygdala prepares us to fight or flee. In this way, confidence propels us to seek control, self-doubt leads us to defer control to others, and a perception that no one is in control can create a sense of panic. The parts of the brain that monitor self-awareness also allow us to register the responses of those around us. Taking control or worrying about our capabilities makes it more difficult to stay attuned to other people who are involved in the situation.

  Alex’s Story

  Before the economy took a turn for the worse, Alex had felt confident and secure in his job. He had found the marketing job he wanted within months of graduating from college and had received two important promotions in the ten years he had been with the company. But last week he and the other directors were told that all divisions would have to face downsizing and cost-cutting measures that were necessary for the company to survive.

  While Alex was comfortable taking a leadership role with the people on his team, he tended to offer few remarks at the senior management meetings. Although he had plenty of ideas, he wasn’t comfortable arguing for something unless he was positive that it was the best solution. There were always two or three colleagues who jumped to express strong opinions that seemed rushed and half-baked. Usually, there were others who presented positions that were acceptable to him, or there was time for him to present a more thorough response in a follow-up meeting. But in a climate of downsizing, the nature of the decisions under discussion seemed to make everyone argue to protect their own best interests. In the face of the aggressive bantering, Alex found himself slipping into a silent, pessimistic mood.

  In therapy, I asked Alex to describe the thoughts and emotions he experienced in that meeting. To prevent him from censoring himself, I asked him to exaggerate so that we could more easily explore possible connections. Alex surprised himself by describing a fear of hurting others or of doing something that couldn’t be reversed. When I asked him to recall any other times in his life that he had felt like that, he recalled an incident that had occurred when he was in middle school.

  He had been part of a group that disliked one kid who was always trying to tag along with them. One day he did something that ended up humiliating this kid in public. Instead of having his friends join in the laughing and ridicule, there was silence because the incident had been observed by a teacher who immediately sent Alex to the principal’s office. Although the lecture and string of detentions was hard to face, the response from his parents was even worse. His mother had called him a bully and set up a meeting for the two families so that Alex could apologize to the boy and his parents. She also made him go to church with her for the next two months. His father said that he had never imagined that he would be this disappointed by his son and took away his bike-riding privileges.

  Alex felt that the degree of humiliation and shame he had been made to feel was far worse than anything he had done to the kid he had embarrassed. He had learned that others could get away with aggressive behavior but that he would be the one who was caught and condemned for it. He also learned how quickly positions were reversed and how one act made from a position of security could quickly spiral into humiliation and shame. Although Alex had not thought about this incident for years, the statements he wanted to make in the management meetings would have been self-serving and competitive. Because that would be a public act that could potentially harm other members of a small group, his mind had made an unconscious link to the past and to the humiliation and loss of stature he had endured so many years ago. This perceived danger had created profound anxiety that led him to shut down—an immediate protective response that puzzled everyone, including Alex himself.

  While explosions are more noticeable and tend to create more immediate harm, implosions can create different kinds of problems. If you find yourself becoming detached or tuning out, there may be an important issue that has made you feel overwhelmed because you do not feel in control or do not want to be put in a position where you have to take control. Your reason may be different from Alex’s but may also have its roots in something that has little bearing on the situation at hand.

  Learned Helplessness

  In the mid-1960s, Drs. Martin Seligman and Steven Maier conducted a series of experiments in their laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania (Seligman 1975). They were interested in learning how animals handle situations they have no control over. In their most famous experiment, dogs were given random electric shocks. In earlier experiments, the dogs had learned to stop the shocks by performing specific acts, but nothing they did worked in this experiment. Ultimately, the dogs gave up trying to control their situation and became subdued. They lost their interest in food, sex, and play and showed every symptom of being seriously depressed. Subsequent experiments with rats found that even when circumstances were changed so that the animals could later escape from the source of their distress, they had no motivation to even try. Drs. Seligman and Maier coined the term “learned helplessness” to describe a depression that is created when people conclude that they have no control over an ongoing, painful situation. In a state of learned helplessness, the future becomes bleak and a person stops caring.

  When the theories of efficacy and learned helplessness are put together, you can see how important it is to believe that you are capable of doing things that will help you reach your goals. Believing in yourself promotes initiative and creates energy that pushes you toward action. Self-confidence helps you establish the expectation that you can control the outcome and succeed. In contrast, when you surrender control, you take a passive stance and rely on the strength and capabilities of others. And if you find that you have lost all control and have no power to influence what is happening, you may become enraged or could ultimately give up altogether.

  Sharing Control

  In a world of specialized knowledge and large organizations, we all encounter situations where we have little or no personal power. When we have absolute confidence that we are in good hands, surrendering control can be relatively easy. But if you are a person who has difficulty letting others take over, your life is probably much more stressful than it needs to be. You may also find that you avoid situations that put you in a passive position, even when avoiding those situations could be dangerous to your health.

  Anxiety is an emotional response to perceived danger, but taking control is only one way to combat that anxiety. When you allow yourself to challenge the assumptions that create the anxiety in the first place, you will find yourself more comfortable
relaxing in situations where you need to relinquish control. Often a sense of safety can be restored by knowing how things are going to unfold and by developing confidence in the people who will be in charge. For example, health care professionals have learned that patient education is an important way to promote compliance. By taking the time to explain a diagnostic procedure or treatment plan, they enable patients to more easily follow their instructions. We may not like having a medical procedure that requires us to stay perfectly still in an enclosed chamber while being exposed to loud noises, but our anxiety will diminish if we understand that it will only be for twenty minutes and that there will be short periods of rest between the times we need to stay still. Knowing what is going to happen next reduces the sense of helplessness and apprehension that is generated when we have no control over a situation.

  Developing Control

  As much as children enjoy the security and sense of safety that comes when parents rule, eventually they want to have more control over decisions that affect them. Even infants know when they want to get picked up or fed and are equipped with strong vocal skills that help them influence their environment. Getting what they think they need when they want it becomes a major theme of the “terrible twos,” and children will have temper tantrums and screaming fits to make those in control bend to their wishes. Freud described this behavior as the pleasure principle and thought that regardless of education and socialization, people are born with an animal instinct to pursue pleasure. When we are intent on getting the things we want, we become aggressive in order to control the outcome.

  Family therapists are trained to examine the power structure of the families they work with. Although different family structures exist in various cultures, in almost all families adults should be comfortable having authority over young children. For example, parents of young children should be comfortable with their power to take control by making and enforcing rules. That may sound obvious, but you might be surprised to find out that many parents can’t do this and are actually ruled by their children.

  Consequences of Taking Control

  As children mature, they work to convince their parents that they are mature enough to make important decisions or at least to have a voice in how they want things to turn out. They soon learn that being responsible for their own decisions comes with a price tag of having to suffer the consequences when things don’t work out. A boy who allows his parent to decide that he should go to basketball camp instead of computer camp can complain and criticize the parent if he doesn’t end up liking it. But if he was the one who chose basketball camp, then he has only himself to blame—particularly if his parents didn’t think it was such a good idea in the first place.

  When parents fail to let older children make decisions and learn from their mistakes, things usually don’t work out well in the long run. Parents who think they know best are often basing their opinions on their own preferences or on a vision of the way they would like their children to turn out. Difficulty acknowledging that their child is different from them prevents them from really enjoying the novel and unique things she can bring to their lives. If she is made to feel wrong or inadequate for not sharing her parents’ dreams and goals, than she can either reject her parents altogether (perhaps turning to people outside of the family who seem more compatible) or sacrifice her own identity in order to comply with her parents’ rigid expectations. Years later, she will continue to be reactive to others who criticize her or ask her to compromise. Despite her wish for personal control, she might even find herself pursuing strong people who seem confident about what is right and wrong.

  Competing for Control

  Part of becoming an adult is celebrating that you are finally old enough to make your own decisions. Getting your driver’s license acknowledges that you are competent to drive and control a vehicle; being old enough to purchase alcohol means that you can be trusted with responsible decisions regarding your own health and well-being. Being old enough to vote doesn’t put you in charge of running the country, but it does allow you to take some control through voting for the candidate you would like to have represent you. At the same time, becoming an adult brings us to the life stage where we are ready to form an intimate bond with another adult. Unfortunately, there are no two people who see things completely the same way, and control once again becomes a major issue.

  When two individuals become a couple, they soon learn that what each one does has a huge effect on the other. Couples are faced with countless decisions, such as who takes over certain chores; whether they spend time with friends, family, each other, or alone; how they spend or save money; and how to furnish a shared space that incorporates two sets of preferences. Even when we feel compatible and committed to our partner, a request to compromise on something important can lead to conflict. In these situations, having control means having the final say.

  Taking control in a relationship can be done in ways that are far from obvious and not always aboveboard. The power equation between partners does not have to be balanced all the time, as long as both agree to the trade-offs. Some couples believe that one spouse has more experience or capabilities in a certain area and should have greater power in those areas. However, when one partner tries to seize control, there are always complications. People learn to dominate in a variety of ways. Some people become assertive and threaten harm or adverse consequences. However, there are also subversive tactics that are equally unfair. A husband might try to discredit his wife or threaten to withdraw love or favors in order to get his way. A wife might try to prevail by bringing in outsiders who can weigh things in her favor.

  The problem with all of these tactics is that relationships work best when there is a sense of trust and mutuality. We are more willing to sacrifice and compromise when we believe that our partner will do the same for us on a different occasion. Seizing what you want by force or questionable tactics erodes goodwill and leads partners to become suspicious, mistrustful, and adversarial.

  From my vantage point, I see that this is a self-sabotaging cycle. Relationships thrive on the security that comes with commitment and caring. For example, if Peter gets upset because his girlfriend spends too much time on the telephone with friends, he may feel threatened, insecure, jealous, or deprived. His needs, in this case for companionship and validation, aren’t being met, and he is being ignored while other people are getting the attention he wants. Peter can either trust that his partner will respond to his needs if he tells her how he is feeling, or decide that he has to take control of the situation and solve it by himself. If he uses power tactics to stop the phone calls, then his girlfriend will most likely feel resentful and angry. She might fight back or she might even decide to spend more time with her girlfriends out of spite or out of a need for sympathy created by Peter’s harsh treatment. The only certain outcome is that by trying to seize control, Peter ensures that he will never get what he really wants.

  Relinquishing Control

  While it is important to understand the motives that propel some of us to take control, it is just as important to understand why others seem to defer or easily relinquish the control they could keep.

  Fear of Conflict

  Often, a fear of conflict leads us to give up too easily. Going against the wishes of a stronger person can be very unsettling for many of us and impossible under certain circumstances.

  Children are easily frightened and made anxious by adult anger. Too many people were brought up in homes where they were exposed to family violence and have painful, emotionally charged memories of parents ridiculing, threatening, insulting, and even assaulting each other. When we witness or experience family abuse, the horror and fear is burned into our emotional memory banks. Even if we can’t remember the details, the feelings can quickly be evoked in situations that hint at the potential for violence. Once the brain has developed a neural connection between disagreement and violence, the amygdala immediately perceives danger in disagreement and responds. Av
oiding conflict may become the adaptive or at least the preferred option.

  Fear of Abandonment

  Parents who established control by withdrawing love and approval can also create problems for their children. Security is perhaps the most important childhood need and is built from the expectation that our parents will always be there to help us when we need it. When parents can’t be trusted to provide comfort and reassurance, we have difficulty knowing whether it’s better to keep trying to depend on them or whether we should give up. Some children handle this by clinging to their parents in order to get the reassurance they need, but others just seem to turn their backs and have difficulty trusting that anyone will ever be there for them. Years later, if your partner threatens to walk out because you are challenging his right to control the situation, then the old emotional memory of being abandoned may prevent you from risking any additional conflict.

  Entitlement

  Getting what you need can be even more complicated when you think you always deserve preferential treatment and the best of everything. Entitlement is a belief that your capabilities are superior to those of others and that certain privileges and exceptions should be granted to you. Frequently, entitlement goes hand in hand with narcissistic tendencies. Narcissism can be described as a pattern of defenses that makes people excessively dependent on feedback in order to regulate their self-esteem. The difficulty in tolerating weakness leads to the tendency to see things as being all or nothing, which is the hallmark of splitting (J. P. Siegel 1992). Under the influence of narcissism, we may become focused on the importance of our own needs and less able to see how that affects others (Judge, LePine, and Rich 2006). We might also lose the big-picture perspective and concentrate more on our need to prevail. When self-esteem is threatened, an overreaction is sure to follow.