How crisis quietly costs us connection and joy, and how we find our way back
The relational effects of a crisis
At work you guide your team through restructuring, making difficult decisions daily, you keep essential work going, yet you lose the trust and openness of the team along the way. Questions sound like resistance, hesitation is interpreted as unwillingness. People are quietly labeled those who are helping and those who make things more difficult.
A couple facing financial pressure, or parents dealing with a difficult parenting situation are so focused on what needs doing, who is carrying responsibility for what that every conversation feels like an assessment of the other person’s competence or commitment. Or maybe conversations become purely transactional and matter of fact.
The effects of a crisis are not limited to those directly involved. We carry them home in our bodies, moods and listening. After a tough day at work, a partner or child’s ordinary request may feel like just another demand that needs to be handled. A child’s noise or meltdown can feel like an intrusion. A concern may sound like criticism. We may become impatient, controlling or emotionally absent without recognising that the people closest to us are now encountering the crisis through the we it has already affected us.
An acute crisis, or a season of continuous strain can take up so much relational space that people at best remain together physically while slowly losing the experience of togetherness. At worst anger outburst or cold polite manipulative behaviour have changed the atmosphere.
Enemy mode - the state we often do not recognise in ourselves
Most of us recognise hostility, defensiveness,controlling behaviour or mere exhaustion more easily in others than in ourselves. We notice when they become unreasonable, aggressive or emotionally unavailable. However, we are far less likely to notice it in ourselves!
From the inside, this does not necessarily feel like hostility.
It may feel like responsibility: Someone has to take control.
It may feel like clarity: I can see what the real problem is.
It may feel like protection: I cannot allow them to make this worse.
Or it may feel like exhaustion: I just don’t have the capacity to deal with their stuff as well.
We may think we are focusing on the problem, but somewhere along the line the person has become the problem. Jim Wilder and Ray Woolridge* use the term enemy mode to describe this shift. Enemy mode is a non-relational brain state in which our relational circuits “switched off” and the other person begins to feel like an object, annoyance, interruption or plain out the enemy, rather than someone we are in relationship with. Enemy mode can look like becoming emotionally reactive and verbal attack. Sometimes it looks like hatred or anger. Other times it looks like pure disconnection and disengagement. It could also be calm, calculated, highly controlled using our intellect and emotional intelligence to secure the outcome we want.
One thing is clear though: We lose compassion, connection and sight that the other person is a legitimate human being of equal value to ourselves. We think we know what they are all about.
Why connection and joy disappear and the cost of it
The cost of enemy mode is not only that we communicate poorly or make unwise decisions. We lose relational connection with our work colleagues or our family and friends. As this happens, what Chris Coursey** calls relational joy begins to disappear. He describes joy as the experience of being glad to be together and knowing the other person is glad to be with us. Relational joy is not cheerfulness or forced positivity. It does not require us to pretend everything is fine. It can exist alongside fear, grief, anger and uncertainty. It communicates that the relationship remains larger than the problem.
The big cost of this is that when relational joy diminishes, our capacity to carry difficulty together and individually also diminishes. We feel increasingly alone, unseen, burdened and isolated. We could become defensive, withdrawn, which then appears to confirm our assessment that they are the problem and enemy mode becomes self-reinforcing.
We often imagine that connection and joy can return once the crisis has been resolved. But some crises continue for months or years. Others leave relational patterns that persist long after the immediate problem has passed. Restoring relational joy cannot always wait until everything is resolved. It is part of what gives us the strength to live through the crisis!
Finding our way back
Connection and strength
Chris Coursey has a practical framework (called CARS for short) for returning to relational presence when stress or enemy mode has reduced our ability to connect:
Connection means reaching towards a safe person or God rather than carrying distress alone;
Appreciation helps us remember what is good and see the other person as more than the current problem;
Rest creates a purposeful pause before exhaustion or reactivity causes further damage; and Shalom My Body uses grounding, breathing and bodily awareness to restore inner steadiness.
CARS help us calm and regulate ourselves AND it helps us recover enough relational capacity to listen, recognise the other person’s humanity and move towards helpful conversation and repair.
Restoring love and human legitimacy of the other
From another higher moral view Scripture calls us to love with agape love. Self-giving love That actively seeks another person’s good, regardless of feeling, agreement or reciprocity. More pragmatically, Maturana, a Chilean biologist, systems thinker, describes love not simply as affection, but as a way of relating with another person in a way that honors their humanity and legitimacy to exist alongside us. We cannot do it while we are in enemy mode.
From self-regulation to relational repair
The CARS framework can help us regain enough relational capacity to respond more wisely, but self-regulation is not the final aim. The purpose of regulation is to become capable of returning to a connected relationship.
Repair may involve acknowledging how pressure has shaped our behaviour, listening without immediately defending ourselves, apologising for our impact, and restoring ordinary moments of appreciation and connection.
The crisis still needs our attention, but so do the relationships that we need to carry us through it!
A few questions for reflection:
Who has begun to feel like an obstacle, an additional demand or part of the problem?
What happens in my body, mood, language and listening when I interact with them?
Which assessments about their motives or character have I begun treating as facts?
How is the crisis entering my home through the way I am showing up?
Am I seeking regulation only so that I can function better, or so that I can return to relationship more responsibly?
What part of our connection has been displaced by the crisis?
Until next time,
Carine
*Jim Wilder & Ray Woolridge, Escaping Enemy Mode, How our brains unite or divide us. Northfield Publishing, Chicago, 2022
**Chris M Coursey, The Joy Switch, How your brain’s secret circuit affects your relationships and how you can activate it. Northfield Publishing, Chicago, 2021
