4 Types of Emotional Reactivity in Families, Churches, and Groups
Introduction to Self-differentiation
We’ve all got stories to share about negative emotional reactions within our family.
A particular favorite in my family is the story of one particular evening during a family vacation with extended family. The conversation turned to politics and got particularly heated. In a moment of anger and frustration (and after probably a few glasses of wine), one family member grabbed her suitcase in the loft of the cabin we were staying at, and hurled it over the rail, letting it crash below on the first floor as she yelled out ‘that’s it! We’re leaving!’.
I remember the head hospital chaplain during seminary telling me, ‘if you ever think you’re enlightened, just spend time with your family’.
Unfortunately for my family member, and I think most of us, we walk away from these emotionally reactive situations with the understanding that the rest of the system (family, church, coworkers, whatever) are the ones who have issues and have something to work on, when in reality, we are acting in reactive ways ourselves that we could benefit from looking at.
Change must begin with us.
Don’t believe me that you have emotional work to do?
Keep reading and see if you’ve ever engaged in any of these behaviors when the anxiety and tension goes up in the family, church, or group you’re a part of.
Self-Differentiation Series
This is the first post in a new series on Self-differentiation.
This post will cover the 4 Common Ways We Emotionally React to Others, and hopefully show us that, actually, we all have some work to do.
It’s nothing bad or shameful, it’s just a part of being a human in this world.
Posts over the next few weeks will cover:
4 Common Ways We Emotionally React to Others
7 Signs of Emotionally Healthy Behavior (Self-Differentiation)
Self-Differentiation in Scripture
Concrete Steps to take to work on Self-Differentiation in your own life
If you’ve never heard of Bowen Family Systems theory before, it may be helpful to start with the very first post in our larger ongoing series about Bowen Family System Theory and the church. You can find the first post here.
Alright - here we go:
Intro to Emotional Reactivity
My own definition of self-differentiation is remaining calm, curious, and open with others, while also being true to yourself.
It’s easier to do in relatively low stress environments, but, raise the anxiety level or the stakes in the conversation/situation, and most of us begin to have emotional reactivity.
I define emotional reactivity as anything that we do that keeps us out of vulnerable authentic connection with ourselves and others.
Ronald W. Richardson wrote a great book called Becoming a Healthier Pastor, in which he briefly lists 4 common types of emotional reactivity. These are not all the ways that you can react emotionally, but they are common things he has seen in his work with family systems.
All of us have, and will, engage in some or all of these four throughout the course of our lives…they’re totally natural ways to deal with our anxiety and allow us to put the focus on others, instead of ourselves and our own vulnerability.
I have engaged in all of these actions, and I know I will again.
But hopefully the frequency, and intensity of these reactive actions decreases over time as we do the work of self-differentiating (Again, I’ll talk about how to do the work in a future post)
What follows are the 4 Types of Emotional Reactivity.
It’s probably easy to look at the list and think of others who have acted this way…but that’s not particularly helpful. We can’t control others or change their behavior…and if we try to, we’re just getting caught up in cycles of emotional reactivity ourselves.
The harder question is - when have I noticed these behaviors within myself.
4 Types of Emotional Reactivity
1. Compliance
I mentioned this method in depth in my post on the stereotype of Pastor’s Kids.
(which you can read about here)
Compliance is what happens when there is too much togetherness in a family/church/system, and a person does not have the ability to express their own individuality for fear of how it will affect the group.
People utilizing compliance may be praised and rewarded for their behavior, and honestly, most churches, families, and organizations love people who will just “go along to get along.”
However, when we are acting out of a sense of compliance, we aren’t actually ‘chill’ or ‘laid back’ or ‘easy going’...we’re actually acting out of a sense of anxiety.
If we can find the freedom to risk discovering and coming into contact with our own true values and self, and risk speaking that truth out loud, even if it will cause short term conflict, we will be much freer and more authentic individuals. Furthermore, when we begin finding and speaking our truth, we can raise the level of health in the entire group, and help others to find their voices as well…which benefits the whole system.
If you try to break this tendency to be compliant in your family/church/system, there will be pushback when you try to find and share your voice.
However, if you can find within you the ability to simply hold on to your truth, and share that truth, eventually the system will adjust to you.
(I should note that, it is also possible that the system will adjust by attempting to kick you out of it…but if they don’t, the system will adjust eventually and everyone raises their level of self-differentiation and new possibilities emerge for all members of the group).
2. Rebelliousness
Like compliance, I covered rebelliousness here when talking about Pastor’s Kid stereotypes, but it’s important to note that rebelliousness is not actually the same thing as self-differentiation.
With rebellion, you’re not acting out of your true self, you are still emotionally reacting to the system.
If you find yourself saying things like ‘they can’t control me’, or ‘they can’t make me’...that’s rebelliousness.
I went to a work event one time where every member had a mandatory employee shirt we were supposed to wear. I honestly still don’t know why, but I decided when I got there, I was just not going to wear the shirt unless the boss came up to me personally and made me.
The real internal work to do here is to discern whether I am rejecting the control of the group out of an emotionally reactive act of rebellion, or, whether this is a considered, thought-out, discerned act of self-differentiation. (Remember, in self-differentiation we remain calm, open, and curious about others, while true to ourselves as well)
I once heard a story from a pastor that when he arrived at a new church he had a worship leader he came into conflict with the first couple weeks of him arriving. He and the worship leader had planned the order of worship together during the week, and then when Sunday morning came, the worship leader went completely off script and then just did his own thing. After the service, the pastor told the worship leader that he needed to stick to the script in the next service as they had planned during the week. The next service, again, the worship leader rebelled and did what he wanted, completely ignoring the order of worship they had agreed upon. After the service, the worship leader told the pastor that he was not the pastors ‘slave’, and he was going to continue to do what he wanted to do.
As you can imagine, this worship leader did not last long in his position.
Again, this doesn’t sound, at least to me, like an act of self-differentiation and speaking his authentic truth…it sounds like an act of rebelliousness and like he was playing out relationship dynamics from another system (probably his family of origin). The relationship between the pastor and the worship leader somehow created some tension within the worship leader that he did not have the tools to deal with in a healthy way at the time, and unfortunately, lost his job because of it.
3. Power Struggles
In the introduction to You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz (a great couples therapy book), Schwartz describes what happens when we find our partner is not acting in the way we expect them to:
The first, and most common project involves directly trying to force our partner to change…we get out the blunt saws, scalpels, and dynamite in an attempt to break through the crust surrounding her heart. We plead, criticize, demand, negotiate, seduce, withhold, and shame - all in an effort to get her to change. (Schwartz, 7)
With power struggles, we get the sense that someone is not acting according to how they *should*, or that they are attempting to change us.
We attempt to change the other person as they are trying to change us.
We criticize those who are critical of us, shut down others trying to shut us down, and control others trying to control us.
The issue here, again, is that this behavior is still trapped in the same old emotionally reactive pattern…our behavior is attempting to change the situation by getting other members of the group to change, which is not going to happen.
As the other side senses you trying to control them they push back harder and solidify their position, which makes you push back harder and try to solidify your position, and you move further and further apart from each other.
Side note: Ronald W. Richardson’s book Polarization and the Healthier Church deals with this dynamic well for those who may be going through this in their churches. Richardson’s recommendation is, essentially, raising your own self-differentiation, which we’ll talk about how to do in a future post, as well as avoiding triangulation, which we covered in a series of posts starting here.
The important difference between self-differentiation and power struggle is that power struggles attempt to change others, while self-differentiation involves attempting to clarify your own position, while being calm and curious about others' positions.
4. Distancing
Distancing is just like it sounds - moving away from others emotionally, physically, or both.
The extreme example of this is called emotional cutoff, and occurs when family members break contact entirely with other members of the family.
Just because you physically separate yourself from members of the system, does not mean you have self-differentiated. You are still emotionally reacting to them.
Furthermore, because you have not worked through the issue and raised your level of self-differentiation, you are likely to find yourself repeating the same patterns as the original system, even against your own wishes and intentions.
Again, as with the other emotional reactions, distancing is natural and happens with all of us at some level.
A particularly good question to ask yourself when you are in any system, but a church in particular, is -
Who am I avoiding?
I believe I heard this first from pastor Rich Villodas on The Resilient Pastor podcast. (This episode has lots of gems about applying Family Systems Theory to churches)
It’s natural when we feel hurt or attacked or wounded, or if a relationship reminds us of our past woundings in any way, to pull away and distance out of a desire to keep safe, manage our anxiety, and keep ourselves from getting hurt again.
The temptation is to distance from the thing (whether the entire church, or a single individual within the church) that is hurting us, and then to create a triangle by talking about what is bothering us with others in a way that attempts to get them to agree with us, easing our anxiety, but not fixing ourselves or the situation.
The difficult, hard work, however, is to find ways that we can have vulnerable, honest, conversations in ways that could become transformative for us.
All of this, of course, is much easier said than done!
I remember during one family gathering a family member had said something that was particularly bothersome to my wife. She reacted by mentioning it to me in the bedroom, and, after we talked about what happened for a few minutes, I invited her to consider talking to the other family member about it sometime from a place of curiosity, seeking to understand what was going on in that person. She thought about it for a moment and then said, ‘that sounds really hard!’.
Yes!
It is hard and risky to lean into tension and have difficult conversations, instead of separating out of a desire to ease our pain and anxiety…but…it is the hard path that can lead to growth for us, as well as others in the system.
Taking a hard look at our emotional reactivity, choosing to address it and work towards self-differentiation, putting ourselves in situations where we will have to own our own truth and speak out if we have a history of compliance, or lean in to tension knowing we could get hurt again if we are distancing takes courage.
Learning to access that courage and act out of that space is probably a lifetime journey, but, it is possible, and we can make great improvements with a little guidance and support.
I normally associate courage with people in the marine corp who jump from helicopters into combat and risk their lives for others without thinking twice…and that certainly is a kind of courage…one I have to admit does not come easily to me!
But another kind of courage is the willingness to take a long, honest look at the way you are acting in emotionally reactive ways.
With courage, we can be honest about how we’ve contributed to compliance, rebelliousness, power struggles, and distancing in our own family, in our church, in our job, and in the communities we are a part of.
With courage, we can live with the humility that, even as we work on it, we will engage in these activities on some level because that’s a part of what it means to be human.
Okay…so now you know the 4 common ways we emotionally react to others:
Compliance
Rebelliousness
Power Struggles
Distancing
The next few posts in the series will look at self-differentiation…including
7 Signs of Emotionally Healthy Behavior (Self-Differentiation)
Concrete Steps to take to work on Self-Differentiation in your own life
I didn’t have space to include any examples from scripture of these emotionally reactive behaviors…but if you think of anyone who comes to mind that exhibits one of these 4 behaviors, I’d love to hear it!
Go ahead and post it in the comments section.
Thanks for Reading!
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About the Author
Travis Jeffords is a National Certified Counselor and Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Associate in North Carolina. He holds a Master of Science degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a Master of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary. Travis writes on the intersection of faith, spirituality, the church, and mental health.