Rick asks about reactivity and being non-anxious

I haven’t heard from Rick in a while, so it was good to get another good systems question from him. Rick asks about the concept of non-anxious presence and reactivity. Specifically, he shared his observation that some people seemed to try to act as a “non-anxious presence” by showing no affect (feelings or emotions) in a given situation. Like the character of Spock in Star Trek they attempted to stay emotionally aloof and non-responsive.

Rick said,

“My point is, would it be a misunderstanding to conclude that one never showed emotion? One can show appropriate emotion to lower anxiety or keep from binding it, right?”

I responded to Rick, saying, “I concur with you about the misunderstandings associated with the concept of “non-anxious presence” and reactivity.

First, I think you are correct about avoiding labeling reactivity as “bad.” It’s just a descriptive function of emotional process (and most of what BFST does is strive to be descriptive—not prescriptive—of emotional process phenomena). But we can also say that staying reactive, or having “reactivity” as a personal characteristic of our functioning is neither healthy or helpful—-especially if we’re the leader in the system.

So, if I can get in touch that I’m being reactive in my functioning, then I’ll work at functioning out of a more “thinking” non-reactive posture. But it’s not very helpful to think that I’ve been “bad” or am a “bad person” for being reactive. And it’s unfair to label a person caught up in reactivity as “bad”—-but we can say that they were “acting badly” and that way avoid questioning motives.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle here, which your illustration highlights, and that is that it often is difficult to interpret other people’s emotional functioning. The person who seems to have had “no emotional response” may not, in fact, have been “non-anxious,” or attempting to come across as such. It may be that the lack of affect was in itself a form of reactivity. Not everyone “acts out” (cries, screams, or emotes) when experiencing reactivity. Shutting down emotionally in the wake of psychic trauma is a form of reactivity.

Second, I think you are correct about the notion that being non-anxious is not the same as being emotionless, or lacking feelings. Being non-anxious is as much a function as it is a state of being. In other words, I can “feel” anxious but strive to function in a non-anxious manner.

What you describe remains a challenge to me when people talk about “being neutral.” I think “being neutral” is a bigger myth than being non-anxious. I find no value or virtue in being neutral about something for which the appropriate response is righteous indignation, for example. And “not showing emotion,” as you described, denies the primary way in which we “connect” in emotional process. Showing appropriate emotion (as you well point out) is a more helpful corrective in an anxious system than is showing no emotion. A question then: is the attempt to deny our emotion, or not showing our emotion, a form of emotional cutoff from ourselves and others?

Perhaps one way to think about this is that feelings are a manifestation of emotions. But feelings are interpretive, and feelings are learned: feelings are our experience of emotion. Fear is a biological emotion when we are threatened—feeling afraid or frightened is a learned response (our experience of the emotion) to perceived (or actual) threat. Some people fear things they need not—we call those phobias. We may not be able to fully control or deny our experience of the emotion in the form of feeling afraid, but we can work at understanding its source, and the false beliefs associated with the phobia. The better we are able to do so the less reactive we can be and the better we can function. As someone put it, “courage is the virtue of the weak.” Meaning, perhaps, that the person of courage is the person who has been able to act appropriately despite how he or she feels.