This article is an excerpt from a CharityVillage webinar, Managing Emotions in Workplace Conflict. View the full video recording here, or scroll to the end of the article to watch the video.

This stress response is problematic in conflict because none of these [stress response] options are particularly conducive to resolution. Fighting brings us to a win-lose mentality, flight means the situation will not be resolved at the time and could impact the other person’s willingness to return to the process later, freeze, flood or flop does not allow us to handle the situation at all, and please almost ensures that we will not get our own needs met, potentially leading to resentment and further conflict. So we want to try to move past these initial responses so that we are able to better assess the situation and how we want to and are able to move forward.

So how do we do that?

Let me give you a couple of tools here that you can use for these immediate reactions or physiological emotional reactions when they happen.

The first one here comes from Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast, The Huberman Lab – I don’t know that he came up with this but he talks about it a lot. He recommends the Physiological Sigh as a way to reduce stress or anxiety – please check with your doctor before attempting this if you have any heart or breathing difficulties. But it’s just two deep inhales through the nose followed by a long exhale through the mouth – so it’s consciously controlling your breathing, keeping it slow, and telling your brain things are safe and that it can relax. My two inhales were pretty fast, so just a point on that. Heart rate doesn’t catch up right away, doing 2-3 repeats here should help to move you out of an arousal state. And I personally don’t see anything wrong with doing this in a conversation if you feel like you’ve been activated, but you could always do it somewhere private if you know you have a conversation coming up. Box breathing or of course any breathing is another variation of this.

But it’s really just about like a focus on the breath and slowing it down. Something else you can try is cold water – even just on your wrists, or a drink of ice water – you don’t have to go right for the cold plunge or shower, but that is a way of interrupting looping thoughts. Cold showers have been shown to produce endorphins, which are basically the “feel-good” hormones in your brain, so that’s another reason why they’re helpful here.

Two tiny little changes of your body that you can do in the moment are a half-smile (such as turning the corners of your mouth up a little bit) or opening your hands – this one is a little easier when you’re sitting but these are both subtle shifts in body language that not only signal to your brain that you’re ok, but they signal open body language to the person you’re talking to. It’s a big difference from sitting with your arms crossed or looking tense and closed off.

Some emotional reactions may have a lot of energy around them, so physical exercise or movement if that’s available to you can be helpful, or even muscle tensing and relaxation. The level of vigorousness is up to you – some people find something more intense helpful, and others may want to do something more slow and calming. You may also want to incorporate fresh air into this.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention mindfulness here – there’s all sorts of different kinds of meditation, whether that’s for you or not, one part of mindfulness that can be really helpful in these situations is just to take that step back and look at the situation without judgment – just curiosity for what’s going on. There’s also the separating of the experience – so instead of “I’m furious right now” – “I’m experiencing anger” or “I’m noticing that I’m feeling angry” is a much lower intensity.

And there’s another one here that comes from bystander training – and that’s to use something like a “catchphrase” – so if you’re in a conflict with someone or a situation where an emotional reaction comes up, it can be helpful to have a word or phrase that you can use as your “go to” to create some space to process the reaction – could be like a “whoa”, “stop”, or even something funny like “bananas”. That one might feel inappropriate for your workplace, totally get that – make these things your own. But this is actually something that I’ve incorporated into team training – come up with a word together so everyone knows when things have escalated and it’s time to take a minute to address it.

Once you’ve tried an intervention, it can be helpful just to look at the intensity change with some metrics, so assigning a value to the initial state and then to the changed state. So for example, when I was really mad I was at a 9, and after cold water, I’m at a 5. In coaching, I might ask you what would it take to get to a 1 or 2, or even just a lower number, but it can be helpful to put values on these things that are typically abstract. And then you can compare them over time and watch your progression – so last time I had to talk to this person I was at a 7 and this time I was prepared and was at a 3 for emotional reactivity.

So I think I said this earlier, but these are learnable skills/techniques/interventions – whatever you want to call them. There is no shortage of things you can do in these situations. Watch the full webinar recording to learn more, click here.

Sarah Albo is a Certified Workplace Mediator and Trainer who helps employees and organizations manage reduce the time, stress, and costs associated with destructive workplace conflict. She founded Novel HR to bring a consulting focus to the link between interpersonal conflict and mental health in the workplace. Sarah provides coaching or mediation to resolve workplace disputes due to interpersonal conflict, and training for managers to incorporate dispute-resolution techniques into their leadership style. She is also available to consult on implementing Psychological Health and Safety strategies to support employee health and organizational culture.