What is unhealthy reactivity
Unhealthy reactivity is the ability of a person to handle or offer a healthy response to a matter or a situation that requires a subtle approach. We understand that people react differently and in different situations. We are social beings who enjoys relationships, partake in our interests and express our emotions.
We all love tranquility and equinimity. We relish situations where we are approached with a sense of calmness and subtle form of reaction even in extreme difficult circumstances.
Unfortunately, there are people whose reaction to every situation is completely damaging to the wellbeing of others around them including themselves.
Although this intense negative and aggressive reaction to issues could result in most cases childhood trauma from abuse. Those who suffers childhood abuse and also people raised in unhealthy or dysfunctional environment, due to the pain they suffer can become erratic in their behaviour. People suffering addiction as a result of frustration and unfulfillment or unmet needs tend to adopt unhealthy reactivity as a coping strategy to suit their emotional needs, which however add another layer of problem to their existing negative emotional issues.
Causes of negative reactivity
Negative reactivity could be as a result of our extreme identification with the mental mind. Emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind. There is the false mind which is the ego mind, and the true mind which is your authentic self. The false mind identifies strongly and connects deeply with the “ego” while the true mind identifies with the “heart” What message does the ego mind send to the body?… Danger. For example, “I am under threat”. And what is the emotion?… Fear! Remember that there are different types of fear, there is fear of loss, failure, fear of being hurt etc. All fear is the ego’s fear of death, annihilation, to the ego, death is just around the corner. When you identify intensely with your ego mind, fear of death affects every area of your life. If you identify with a mental position, mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation, to be wrong is to die if you easily identify with the ego. Embracing the ego mind is to toughen up to fight all threatening situations because the ego mind dwell in fear leading to all forms of unhealthy reactions to defend and protect it fragile fearful identity. The negative reactivity result from threat and fear of a lose, which can be lose of anything. The ego mind is forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious, it needs to be right. It is an illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictious entity. By making this pattern conscious you disidentify from them.
How to overcome unhealthy reactivity
Tunning in to your authentic self would give you the opportunity to react with equinimity instead of reacting in an unhealthy manner. The true self is not protective of anything, it sees itself as whole and complete. It’s never in competition with anyone, it is fully grounded with a high sense of worth and always allowing things to happen naturally. When you are yourself, you are not afraid and don’t live in fear of anything or defending things that are not worthy in order to protect yourself against vulnerability or prove yourself to others. It is okay to be vulnerable, it is okay to allow things to happen and okay to release resistance and allow the flow of things and events to unfold. If you result to living this way, no unhealthy emotion can control you.
If you train yourself to live and show up in this true version of yourself, you naturally become calm and able to deal with unhealthy reaction and that help to build trust.
Well, people often defend this unhealthy reactivity with claims of people are different and so perceive this form of negative reactivity as normal. However, people who react in this manner actually need help, the fact that some people tend to defend it does not make it in any way healthy and acceptable, insofar as no one enjoys it even the perpetrators who exhibit this irrational approach of responding to people are totally against it, in fact they are even the first to aggressively attack people who approaches them in such matter.