How to deal with Disagreeable, Confrontational, Unfriendly or Upsetting situations

How to Think when in confrontational/upsetting situations

by Jordan peterson

Do you lose your ability to think straight or intelligently in confrontational or unfriendly social situations?

Suggestions for adaptation or improvement?

1. When people get nervous in these kinds if situations, generally, they start paying attention to themselves.

   When people are in confrontational situations, they start paying attention to themselves.

   1. They get self conscious.
   2. What happens then?
   3. You will stop paying attention to the questions or the topic at hand or what you are doing.
   4. Instead you will start paying attention to how you are feeling, the nervousness and then you will start becoming aware of the fact that you are not responding properly.
   5. That will make you more nervous and that will make you more aware of that. Eventually, it can shut you down entirely.

2. Its not so much that you need to stop attending to yourself. Because if you start thinking “I should stop attending to myself”, then you will keep thinking about yourself even more.

3. Instead,

   pay more attention to the situation and to the people that you are talking to.

   1. So you have to

      increase the degree to which you are attending outwardly.

   2. That will stop you from attending inwardly.

   3. It it a very effective technique.

   4. You can practise it - generally speaking.

   5. When you get nervous,

      start paying more attention to the topic or issue at hand.

   6. It is a good suggestion for social anxiety in general.

4. Most people have enough implicit social skills - because they were reasonably socialized when they were children.

   1. They do know how to act in social situations.
   2. But they get anxious and that interferes with implementing what they know.
   3. For example, if you are a pianist and knows how to play the piano well, but you get anxious when you are playing for an audience.
   4. Because you have activated a different part of your brain.

5. If you can

   remember to pay attention

   and you can

   direct your attention outward

   and you

   attend hard enough, try to put the other person at ease and try to ask them questions

   because you are paying attention to the person, what they are doing, their facial expressions, etc.

   1. Then, what will happen is,

      that will clue in the automatic and implicit knowledge that you have and make it much more smooth and anxiety-free.

   2. So,

      attention really plays a huge role in regulating anxiety