Difficult Conversations: A Challenge or a Threat?

The science behind why your answer might change the course of a conversation.

In this newsletter, we regularly explore science that upends assumptions we hold about our relationships. For instance, we’ve investigated the error of assuming that being out of sync in relationships is a bad sign and the erroneous assumption that skillful communication can prevent misunderstandings. Today’s surprising relationship science is brought to you by stress researchers. Don’t worry, they’re a fun bunch;)

In an earlier post about expectations of confrontations, we reviewed research demonstrating that people tend to have pessimistic expectations of conversations going badly. But conversations often go much better than we expect! A new study we’ll discuss today goes a bit further into how expectations about difficult conversations can unhelpfully shape those conversations.

These new findings reveal that our impressions about how manageable a conversation will be influences our behaviors during the exchange. That is, thinking a stressful conversation will be a total disaster increases the likelihood of behaviors that… make it go badly.

But first, let’s get a background in stress research so we can put these relationship findings in context.

Stress Response 101

Our modern world is littered with messages of “Stress is bad for you!” This framing, however, is incomplete. For one thing, our stress response is adaptive in a whole lot of situations.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the stress response helped humans protect themselves from predators. Getting all panicked about a saber toothed tiger in our midst was far wiser than being like, “I’m cool, nothing to worry about here.” These days, we still need that panic response to keep ourselves safe. Say a bus is coming at you. You’ll want to stress because stressing will help you do some very strategic things: tune out anything not relevant to the bus, narrow your attention both visually and cognitively, and get yourself out of the way quickly. The stress response helps you meet demands through your own resources, by asking for help from others, or sometimes even by hunkering down. These are our natural “flight-fight-freeze” responses.

So, stress serves us well… except when it doesn’t. Stress researchers have discovered that stress becomes less adaptive when a stressed out nervous system doesn’t have the opportunity to rest and recuperate.¹ A persistently aroused nervous system can occur in highly stressful circumstances, like living in an unsafe neighborhood or residing with an abusive partner. But problems also arise when our interpretations of the stressor don’t match the gravity of the stressor. That is, repeatedly perceiving that you’re under threat, even when the stressors aren’t actually a real danger to your safety, causes a far less adaptive stress response.

Here we get to a distinction in the ways we interpret stressful situations having to do with perceiving “threat” versus “challenges.” When we perceive a “threat,” we assume that the stressor is putting us in mortal or social peril, that we won’t be able to manage it, and that the consequences will be catastrophic. Alternatively, we may interpret a stressor as a “challenge,” that is, something that we can develop or find resources to deal with adequately.

You can think of these two distinct ways of interpreting a stressor as the story your mind tells about the creepy shadow moving across the yard towards you:

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

1. The shadow is your partner coming to kidnap or harm you or your kids—a threat that should prompt immediate and significant action!

2. The shadow is likely your partner walking across the yard to have a conversation with you. This is a tricky challenge that motivates you to think creatively about whether you need a better hiding spot so you can nab a few more minutes of quiet.

Your mind telling a story about a “threat” versus a “challenge” is attached to distinct physiological and behavioral responses. Perceiving threat leads to your heart beating fast, your digestive and immune activity quieting, and your cognitive and visual attention narrowing. All of these physiological changes get you ready to take life saving action, but they don’t do much for creative, flexible, or cooperative thinking since that’s not what’s most important if your life is under threat.

When you perceive a “challenge,” your body also gets adrenaline moving and wakes up your body and mind, getting them ready for action. But not in quite the same way. For one thing, “challenge” thinking is more creative and flexible. In fact, lab experiments helping people to see stressors as a “challenge” show that that in challenge states, people have heightened motor and cognitive control and can perform optimally on cognitively and emotionally demanding tasks.²

As pioneering stress researcher, Hans Selye, once said:

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

So how does this research inform thinking about relational stress?

Relational stress as a challenge rather than a threat

New research shows that how we interpret difficult conversations has a significant impact on how we show up for them. Across three experiments, researchers found that interpreting the stress of having a difficult conversation as a “challenge” was associated with more reassurances, communications of trust and commitment, and cooperation in conflict resolution. On the other hand, interpreting a difficult conversation as a “threat” was associated with more avoidance behaviors, including efforts to downplay problems or to hide their angry or disappointed thoughts. Even when statistically controlling for relationship satisfaction, interpretations impacted behaviors.

The implications here are important. Seeing a difficult conversation as a “challenge, “rather than as a “threat,” helps us approach conversations in more productive ways.

Author of Conflicted (another terrific book!), Ian Leslie, summarized this general research:

When people feel challenged but not threatened, confident they can handle disagreement without losing face, they can take a looser grip on their own arguments. That prevents the discussion from degenerating into a personal competition, and keeps the group focused on solving the problem at hand.

It’s also important to note a caveat to this particular study: unlike stress research reviewed earlier, this new study pertaining to relationships is correlational rather than experimental. That means that the researchers didn’t do experimental manipulations to prove that the way people thought about the conversation was causally linked to their conversation behaviors. But given the vast research demonstrating the cognitive and physical benefits of viewing stressors as “challenges” rather than “threats”—including in interpersonal situations—these findings may be important to pay attention to and maybe even experiment with in our own relationships.³ In other words, if you are someone who tends to go into difficult conversations with predictions of dire outcomes, it may be worthwhile to test the effect of adjusting your thinking.

Bringing it home.

When we see difficult conversations as a challenging opportunity to grow together with people we care about, it becomes less difficult to approach those interactions. And, a mindset of stress as manageable (rather than threatening) can help us not only prioritize having those conversations, but engage in them in more productive ways. So, consider trying out the following:

1. When you recognize that a conversation will be stressful, try to adopt an internal narrative that helps you view it as a challenge with opportunities for growth and learning. Try thinking about how you can manage it. For instance, “While this conversation might be hard, I can handle it” or, “In order to manage this conversation well, I need to do some thinking/planning/meditation before it.”

2. Use the mindset of difficult conversations as “challenges” to prompt behaviors like offering reassurance, communicating trust and commitment, and demonstrating intentions to cooperate and resolve conflict.

Let me end by noting that, yes, difficult conversations are inherently stressful. True even for me, and I teach this stuff for a living! But stress, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. For one, when we see it as a manageable challenge, it often offers us a pathway towards learning about our partners, ourselves, and our relationships. That kind of challenging work is the fodder for growth as individuals and as a partnership.

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¹ A terrific book about the nature of over-activation of our stress response is primatologist, Robert Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. I’m just generally a sucker for a good title, and this one totally nails it.

² If you’re looking for a deeper dive into these ideas, I highly recommend Kelly McGonigal’s book, The Upside of Stress.

³ Shameless plug alert: I talked a lot about the science of re-thinking stress in my book, Work, Parent, Thrive. My interest was in helping people shift their mindsets to use the stress of being pulled in a million different directions to their benefit. If you’re interested in checking out the book, message me and I’ll send you the first chapter!