Between a person experiencing stimulus and response there is super-fast appearing a space. And in that space is it your power to choose your responses when engaging or interacting with others. In your response lies success and freedom.

Providing you understand this and can do it!

Emotional reactivity is a term coined by cognitive psychology and it refers to the tendency which we are all prone to, to respond quickly and intensely when we experience situations that feel stressful, intimidating, threatening and challenging.

For many people in some circumstances the emotional response can be much stronger than the situation itself appears to warrant, therefore leaving a person reacting even before they had the chance to think through what is happening.

The reactivity can be explosive and way too fast.

This pattern can affect many areas of a person’s life including personal relationships, work and everyday interactions, so understanding why these rapid emotional responses occur can be an important part towards recognising them and developing greater control over how we respond to social situations and other people who can trigger the hell out of us.

Educational Disclaimer: This article discusses sensitive educational concepts and training topics. It is provided by Open College UK Limited for informational purposes only and does not replace professional medical or psychological advice.

Emotional reactivity is the rapid and relatively automatic emotional response to a stimulus. Automatic automaticity is the response that occurs with little conscious deliberation. Or in other words choice.

And fight or flight responses is when the perceived stimulus is interpreted as a threat or dangerous.

And threat appraisal is when the brain rapidly evaluates what another person’s behaviour means such as am I being challenged? Humiliated? Threatened? or disrespected?

Additionally cognitive reappraisal is the interpretation of the threat that contributes to the emotional reaction where two people can experience exactly the same behaviour but interpret it completely differently.

Many people have all these ingredients running at the same time and it can result in all sorts of explosive, angry, defensive and emotional outbursts often with dire consequences.

This now leads me to present you with response inhibition which is the capacity to stop an initial impulse before acting upon it.

Metacognition is also noticing your own thoughts, emotions and mental processes arising while they’re actually occurring.

All this behaviour and psychological phenomena is a central concept within cognitive and behavioural psychology or the study of it.

In psychology, the instantaneous, subconscious reaction that appears within a millisecond of engagement with others who have triggered you is commonly referred to as emotional hijacking which is often called the amygdala hijack.

So, when a person winds you up, they are actually stimulating your amygdala! And you were unknowingly allowing them to do it.

The overall automatic pattern is known as automatic reactivity also known as stimulus response reaction. Some people might call that being temperamental and overreactive or being a Karen!

The ability to pause, observe and choose a response is available to you but only available to the very few who can do it. And it can be done with knowledge and training. This is also called response flexibility!

Psychology terminology

Here is a brief overview of the specific terminology psychologists and neuroscientists use to describe the contrasting or conflicting states that I’m talking about.

The first is called the instantaneous reaction or the Low Road.

When a person reacts within a millisecond without thinking, your mind is experiencing something that is called low road or threat processing.

When this happens the amygdala which is the minds emotional alarm system perceives a threat and immediately triggers an instantaneous fight or flight response completely bypassing the rational thinking conscious brain which is the prefrontal cortex.

The immediate flood of feelings of being small, reduced or shrunk down by belittled, humiliated, intimidated or argumentative engagement from others is driven by automatic thoughts or subconscious and deeply ingrained past hurt or wounded beliefs that fire off instantly in response to the trigger!

Psychology strictly differentiates between being reactive which is driven by unconscious survival-based impulses and being responsive which is driven by conscious choice.

Metacognition and choice.

This now brings me to the widening gap also known in psychology as metacognition and choice.

There is a term often used called – widening the gap – which is what is experienced through deep meditation and it is now a recognised neurobiological shift, so by meditating you are in effect training your mind to opt for the High Road as opposed to the low road as previously described.

This is where sensory input travels to the thalamus up to the prefrontal cortex for analysis and then the amygdala.

Response flexibility

Response flexibility is the exact technical term for the ability for a person especially those who enter deep states of meditation daily to pause in the face of powerful stimulus and inhibit an automatic impulsive response. This allows you to sort through a variety of possible outcomes and differing actions and select the most appropriate constructive outcomes.

In mindfulness-based therapies and daily meditative practice practitioners develop the ability naturally to step outside of the immediate emotional arising and appearing experiences whether they are arising or being triggered or stirred by something or someone from around you. Instead of being pulled into the anger or anxiety and fear.

Knowing this liberates you as most people are completely susceptible to this emotional reactivity.

Through daily consistent meditation you will develop psychologically and this strengthens your prefrontal cortex allowing you to down regulate the amygdala’s automatic alarm bells and you then move from a state of unconscious reactivity to one of conscious response.

In other words, you’re not slave to the subconscious automatic responses to situations you encounter whatever they may be anymore.

The avoidance of feeling small

In most cases these instant millisecond defensive responses are appearing to avoid the very thing most people cannot look at or feel and that is the feeling that they are being made by the actions of others behaviour to feel or look small.

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