Defuse Emotional Communications

Emotional communication can often open IRL or on the phone as those two mediums allow for rapid exchange of emotional content. However, even in purely textual communications, which typically filter/obscure most emotions, it is possible for highly emotional/irrational communication to occur, often as a result of instability or perhaps substance abuse.

This page documents some actual communications that have been received, and some of the attempts to handle, defuse, resolve, or at least defend against emotionally disruptive communications (which may otherwise cause a limbic hijack in the receiver of those communications).

Goals

1. In the realtime moment, attempt to defuse excessively emotional/irrational communications with the goal of calming people down, or at least getting them to give up on pursuing emotional messaging or emotional courses of action.

2. In the light of the next day after their emotions have receded a bit, help ensure the threaded history of your past conversation with them demonstrates compassionate, direct, calm communication on your part, never once giving into any emotional baiting on their part.

Handling

Here are a few sample emotional message examples/categories along with possible follow-up responses.

overview

When a friend is messaging irrationally late at night, e.g. drunk txting or after midnight, take three steps of progressively stronger messages in an attempt to defuse the situation:

1. You are not making any sense. Consider following-up in the light of day.

2. Like I said, u r not making any sense any more. If u want to continue emo messaging feel free to do so, but clearly it is a waste of time to respond to u tonight. Good night.

3. I am deleting all further messages sent from u tonight because u r not making sense.

examples

I'm leaving out the source messages for privacy reasons, and to reduce the chance that even those messages may leave you (the reader) in a worse emotional state. If the example responses sound harsh, keep in mind that they are specifically designed to confront/challenge much much harsher/worse emotional messages.

When a friend makes accusations to you based on bad information or flawed assumptions, calmly correct them with facts, and follow-up with calling them on their behavior:

Example response:

When a friend accuses you of something purely thru hearsay (possibly as follow-up to u challenging their flawed assumptions), especially the second time they behave like that (toward anybody) and when the first time they were obviously wrong:

Example response:

When a friend claims to be giving you advice as a friend but then sends a bunch of emotional/inflammatory accusations etc., follow-up with:

Example response:

When a friend says: "Keep advice to yourself." But then continues to give advice herself/himself:

Example response:

General good advice, especially when someone is being emotional/irrational and making assumptions/analysis about your emotional state and/or your relationship w a 3rd party:

Example response:

not saying anything

Unfortunately sometimes not saying something is the least bad of a set of bad possibilities with regards to emotional communications.

If asked about why you haven't said anything (about something), or if you are upset with the person, you might want to say:

Return to CommunicationProtocols \ SpreadPositivity \ FrontPage.