THIS Kind of Person Might Ruin Your Life

Most of us can think of someone in our lives who despite being a good person leaves a trail of interpersonal drama and broken relationships. I know that I’ve had people in my life like that and I’ve really thought about what’s going on. Why despite being a good person do they cause so much damage in their relationships? I believe that I’ve observed a pattern that helps explain what’s going on for many of these people. I call these emotionally

Reactive traits. The ideas I’m going to tell you about today are actually from one of the most popular essays I’ve ever written. And I still get comments from people saying that this helped them understand themselves better or have better relationships with someone in their life. One person wrote me and said, “I ended up recognizing myself in this concept. I couldn’t see fully what I was doing that was destroying my relationship with my partner until I saw

Your systematic and analytical presentation of the emotionally reactive concept.” Another person commented and said, “Thank you for this article. I believe I do live with an emotionally reactive person who’s activated under stressful conditions. Emotionally reactive traits consist of two aspects and I’m going to try to be really precise with what exactly I mean by each of these because they could be easily confused for other things. Aspect one is having intense negative emotional reactions to innocuous situations. Now,

Of course, people can differ about what they consider an innocuous situation, but I’m talking about situations where neutral third party observers who are aware of all the facts would say that the emotional reaction was very excessive in that situation. Of course, everyone sometimes is going to have an excessive emotional reaction in innocuous situations. That’s just part of being human. What I’m talking about here is a systematic pattern of doing so to a very excessive degree. Aspect two

Is emotional reasoning together with blame. Emotional reasoning is when we have a negative emotion and we assume that that negative emotion reflects objective reality and that it doesn’t say anything about ourselves. If you’re sad, then it means you must have truly lost something. If you’re angry, then someone must have truly done something harmful to you. Coupling emotional reasoning with blame means blaming other people for that reality that we perceive. Now, let’s work our way through an example, and you’ll also see

How delicate and tricky a subject this can be. Suppose that you have a friend Bob, and your friend Bob makes a joke. That joke you find deeply offensive. It makes you extremely angry and then you say, “Because I’m so angry, Bob must have done something really wrong here, and you blame Bob for the situation.” Now, this could be indicative of emotionally reactive traits that you yourself have. Or it might not be. It depends on Bob’s joke. Imagine that a

Large number of independent third parties who have no axe to grind and know all the facts and details of the situation would agree that Bob’s joke was appropriate and not at all offensive. Furthermore, suppose that you misheard Bob and when Bob tried to point out that you misheard it, you denied Bob and said, “No, I heard it properly.” Well, in that case, we would say this is emotionally reactive traits. You’re clearly having an excessive reaction. you’re engaging in emotional reasoning,

Assuming that because you’re really angry and offended that Bob must have done something really wrong and then you’re blaming Bob for it. On the other hand, suppose it’s a situation where Bob made an actually really deeply offensive, bigoted joke. In that case, your offense and anger might be totally warranted and appropriate. You may not be engaging in emotional reasoning. You may simply be reasoning about the actual facts and your blame for Bob may be totally appropriate. So, we have to be

Very careful and nuanced here when we’re talking about emotionally reactive traits because it really does hinge on what the situation is and how innocuous it was. Why do I think that this idea of emotionally reactive traits is an important concept? Well, first of all, because I think it helps explain a mystery that many people experience. Why good people in their life seem to cause so much damage emotionally. Second, I think it helps us understand why some

People have this history of damaging relationships with many different people. Third, because I think understanding this idea of emotionally reactive traits can help us when we have someone like this in our life. So, what are some other situations where emotionally reactive traits might be at play? One case is where someone has a very severe history of trauma. Let’s consider the case of a hypothetical person named Alice. Alice had an extremely abusive ex-boyfriend who took advantage of her and controlled her

Severely. Because of this, she’s very sensitive to any behavior that seems controlling. Her new boyfriend, Bob, is thankfully kind and good and does not want to control her. However, the other day, Alice made fun of Bob in front of his friends, and it left him feeling deeply hurt. Bob brings this up to her calmly and says, “Look, I know you didn’t mean it, but it really hurt my feelings when you made fun of me in front of my friends.” Alice has an

Extremely negative emotional reaction to this because of her deeply traumatizing experiences with her abusive ex-boyfriend who tried to control her. Alice then engages in emotional reasoning, assuming that her intense negative reactions mean that Bob has done something truly wrong, and she blames him, saying that he’s trying to control her and manipulate her. This is an example of emotionally reactive traits. Emotionally reactive traits are not gendered. Can happen to anyone. So let’s now use an example of emotionally

Reactive traits in a man. Suppose that Colin has a very fragile ego. He’s very sensitive to rejection and whenever he feels rejected, he gets extremely angry and upset. Colin asked his friend Diane to do a small favor for him yesterday. Diane agreed to do it, but was busy all day, so hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Colin realizes that Diane hasn’t yet done the favor and assumes this means she was lying to him and that she

Secretly despises him. Colin gets extremely angry, calls Diane, lambasting her, telling her she’s a horrible person and to never talk to him again. In this case, Colin was showing emotionally reactive traits. He took an innocuous situation of his friend not yet having time to do the favor she was planning to do. He blew it out of proportion. He assumed that his emotions reflected the actual reality of the situation and he blamed it on her. Let’s consider a third

Case. Edgar was raised in a culture where men are taught to be chivalous towards women. That means paying for their meals, opening doors for them, picking up heavy objects for them, and so on. Fiona, Edgar’s friend, however, believes that chivalry is deeply toxic. When Edgar and Fiona hang out, Edgar naturally engages in chivalous behaviors. These make Fiona very mad, but she doesn’t say anything. And in fact, she hides the emotion so that Edgar’s not aware that she’s angry about

It. Then one day when Edgar goes to pick up her bag without asking her, Fiona gets extremely angry and calls him a misogynist. She ends their friendship and tells their mutual friends they shouldn’t spend time with Edgar anymore because he’s a terrible person. This is yet another example of emotionally reactive traits. Now, there’s nothing wrong per se with thinking chivalry is bad or even feeling annoyed when someone tries to pick up your bag. It’s the whole pattern of behavior here that

Reflects emotional reactive traits. having an intense negative reaction to an innocuous situation, engaging in emotional reasoning, and then slowly putting the blame on another person. So, what causes emotional reactive traits? I think there can actually be a lot of causes. One of them we’ve talked about already, which is trauma. If you’ve had severe trauma of a particular type, it’s very likely that situations that resemble that situation may make you feel upset. And that is not in and of

Itself emotionally reactive traits. For example, maybe your partner does something that reminds you of a traumatic situation and that makes you feel upset. Well, that’s not yet engaging in emotionally reactive traits. If you feel bad in a situation because of trauma in your past and then you say, you know what, these kinds of situations make me feel really bad. Would you mind behaving differently in the future? Well, that’s not being emotionally reactive. Or if you feel really upset in

A situation because it reminds you of a past trauma, but then later you say, you know what, I realize that my reaction was due to my past trauma and the other person isn’t to blame for it. That’s also not emotionally reactive. It only becomes emotionally reactive if you then not only have a negative reaction in an innocuous situation, but you engage in emotional reasoning and put the blame fully on the other person. But for some people, emotionally reactive traits

Could be caused by something completely different. For example, suppose someone has difficulty reading social cues and they also tend to distrust people because of their past experiences. They might read negatively into very benign social signals, assuming that they’re a sign that someone’s manipulating them or trying to harm them. that can lead to emotionally reactive traits. A third distinct cause of emotionally reactive traits can be beliefs that people hold about the world. Suppose, for instance, that someone believes that anyone who

Identifies as a feminist is a man-hater who wants to take men down. This could cause them to totally misinterpret the behavior of people who identify as feminists, assume negative intent, become very upset, and blame it on the other person, even though it all stems from their own strange belief about the world. Hence, emotionally reactive traits can come about from weird beliefs we have about the world. So, how can you tell if someone in your life has

Emotionally reactive traits? Well, the way it looks from the outside is that they get extremely upset about things that are very innocuous. They then assume that their emotions reflect an objective fact about the world and then they blame it all on you or in other people. Their emotional reasoning may be so strong that they actually warp reality. They’ll assume, for example, that they’re so angry that you must have said something truly deeply harmful, and they’ll actually distort the words that

You said to make them more harmful than they really were. People with emotionally reactive traits typically have a long history of drama and failed relationships. Whenever two people have conflict, they usually have trouble seeing the other person’s side as well as they see their own side. That means that if you have conflict with another person and you assume that they’re fully to blame, that they’re having a negative reaction to an innocuous situation, it could be that you’re actually in the

Wrong and the situation is not innocuous. You’re just struggling to see their point of view. So, I would strongly encourage you in these situations to bring the information to one or more neutral third parties. Give them the full set of unbiased facts and explain to them that you’re struggling to see the perspective of the other person. ask if they can help you do it and to see if they can help you see any reason why the situation may actually

Not be innocuous or why this person’s reaction may not be an overreaction to the situation. It’s very easy to demonize or dismiss people with emotionally reactive traits. But I think that’s a huge mistake and to understand why it helps to think about what it feels like when you have emotionally reactive traits. It feels like you have these situations where again and again people do things unexpectedly that are extremely upsetting and harmful. When you call them out on it, they then blame

You or gaslight you, telling you you’re totally wrong and misperceiving the situation. And this happens to you frequently, meaning that you end up with all of these upsetting experiences, fractured relationships, and broken friendships. Now, of course, there’s no guarantee that someone with these traits is fundamentally a good person. But the reason that I say that someone could be a really good person and still have emotionally reactive traits is that these traits are not fundamentally about being evil or sadistic or narcissistic

Or anything like that. They’re about misperceiving situations, having intense negative emotional reactions, engaging emotional reasoning, and blaming them on other people. So, it’s not about being a bad person. It’s just a pattern that can be very harmful and can cause damage to a lot of people. I also want to address something that may be on some people’s minds. When I talk about emotionally reactive traits, they may think of borderline personality disorder. is characterized by intense emotionality as

Well as deep focused attachment to a single person where that person becomes the most important thing in the world to you. Now, while I do think that people with borderline personality disorder tend to be more likely to have emotionally reactive traits, I want to point out that there are people with borderline personality disorder that don’t have these characteristics and that many people with emotionally reactive traits don’t have borderline personality disorder. So, at best, we can think of these as things that are

Correlated, but they’re definitely not the same thing. So, what should you do if there’s someone in your life who you know has emotionally reactive traits? Well, the first question is, do you want this person in your life? And to what extent? That’s an important question to ask yourself. But suppose that you decide that you do want this person in your life or you have no choice but to have them in your life. Then the question is how can you relate to them

In the healthiest way? What I suggest is that when they’re feeling upset, you don’t contradict what they’re saying. Instead, you try to validate their emotions. You try to help them get emotionally regulated, but at the same time, you don’t validate their false perceptions. This is something that I call lighting. It’s a play on the word gaslighting. Whereas gaslighting is getting someone to doubt their sensory perceptions and make themselves feel crazy. Lightging is the reverse when we

Validate false perceptions that someone has. So don’t engage in light gassing, but try to help this person get emotional control and regulation by validating their emotions and finding what you can to agree with them that’s actually true. If you try to contradict them while they’re feeling really upset, it’s unlikely to go well. You might also encourage this person to seek therapy if that’s something that they’re willing to hear from you. But I don’t recommend doing that in the context of them being

Upset at you. I recommend doing that as a separate topic on a different day. In addition, if you’re in a situation where someone with emotionally reactive traits is very upset at you, if you’re able to work with them to help get them into a more regulated state and you listen empathetically and validate their emotions, you can then ask them whether it would be okay if you tell them what your perception of the situation was. The goal is to help them empathetically

Relate to your experiences of the situation without feeling blamed for it. But what if you have emotionally reactive traits? What should you do? Well, what I’d highly recommend is exploring dialectical behavioral therapy. While it was originally developed for borderline personality disorder, it provides a really helpful toolkit for dealing with intense negative emotional reactions. You can work with a DBT therapist or you can even do a workbook on your own. We’ll put a link in the description below.

Throughout this discussion, I may have made it seem as though emotional reactive traits are a binary. But of course, that’s not how it works with human nature. This is a spectrum. Almost everyone has some experience of having emotional reactive traits. Some people have a little bit, some people have a moderate amount, and some people have a very, very large amount. It’s of course the people with a very large amount that I’m talking about in this video. But

This is really a nearly universal human experience we can all relate to. What we’re talking about here in this discussion is people who have a very high degree of this trait. You can learn a lot more about this topic by checking out my in-depth essay. We’ll put a link in the description below. If you found this interesting, we’d really appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel. We regularly put out videos on psychology, including our own original research.

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