While I think there are very serious concerns that advancing technologies, and AI in particular, raise (such as lack of control over these systems with could be a tremendous threat, reduction of agency, and the potential for extreme concentration of power), if we can keep these technologies well under control and pointed at the betterment of humanity (a big if) I don’t think they have to destroy meaning. Here’s why:

While some people do derive a lot of their sense of self-worth from their work (such as myself), and such people could be especially hard hit if they are replaced by technology, there are, thankfully, many things that humans intrinsically value, and therefore, lots of potential sources of meaning. By seeking and then (at least to a reasonable degree) creating what we intrinsically value, we create meaning.

So let’s have a quick look at different human intrinsic values (i.e., things people value for their own sake, not as a means to an end) and how advancing technology, such as AI, may impact each of them:

—

Spirituality and purity: there are no reasons I see that technology would have to interfere with spirituality, religion, or attempts to act purely. So these values could continue being a source of meaning.

Truth and learning: if anything, really effective technology can accelerate the search for truth and our ability to learn. At the same time, technology gone wrong could make the truth harder to discern (e.g., if technology facilitates misinformation outcompeting accurate information).

Achievement: this one could be hard hit by technology insofar as it’s related to doing things that eventually AI may do better than all of us. At the same time, humans find a lot of value in achievements regardless of non-human performance. For instance, people compete in sprints (even though cheetahs could easily outrun us) and find value in achievement in chess (despite AI being able to easily beat the best human). A lot of people also value personal achievement – merely doing the best you can, or improving to do better than your own previous results.

Freedom: while technology could impair freedom (e.g., if it concentrates power into the hands of certain actors, they might choose to limit freedom), there is also potential for technology to expand freedom a lot by allowing us to do many things that weren’t possible before, either because we didn’t know how to do them or because they were too costly before.

Pleasure, non-suffering, longevity: there is no fundamental tension between technology and these values, and technology may be able to improve these by reducing sources of suffering (such as disease), increasing lifespans, and making pleasure more easily accessible.

Happiness (as distinct from pleasure and non-suffering): This is a tricky one, because technology can cut both ways here. For instance, while it’s likely social media has increased some kinds of pleasure, it may well have reduced overall happiness for some people by making them more disconnected or impacting the way they see the world.

Caring, reputation, respect, loyalty, and virtue: these don’t have to be impacted by technology; we could continue valuing these in our relationships with others, even in a world where AI has replaced most work. The main threats I see here from technology are the ways that social media can cause people to spend less face-to-face time together, and the way that AI friends or “relationship” partners could take the place of human relationships.

Justice and fairness: this could go either way. Technology could concentrate power in a way that makes these worse or systematize bias. On the other hand, if the benefits of technology are distributed widely, they could create increased abundance. Technology also has the potential, if harnessed correctly, to reduce (currently commonplace) human bias.

Diversity: globalization tends to reduce diversity, and so technology could accelerate that trend. On the other hand, giving people more freedom through technology could end up increasing forms of diversity (such as how people choose to live their lives).

Protection: technology has the ability to make us safer, so while we may experience more protection (for ourselves and our loved ones), it also could mean that our own role of protecting others is reduced, which could reduce the meaning derived from providing protection. On the other hand, if technology is not developed thoughtfully, the world could feel increasingly chaotic and even become more unsafe, so protection could become even more important.

Nature: technology has a track record of destroying nature, so that trend may continue. However, it’s possible that with sufficiently advanced technology, that trend will go the opposite direction (e.g., cheap green energy makes it easier to protect nature). Technology often destroys nature either as a means to accelerate or as a side effect of acceleration, but sufficiently advanced technology may reduce that effect.

Beauty: technology has the possibility of increasing beauty in the world (making it easier to create and experience beauty), but also runs the risk of filling the world with generic slop.

Overall, while advancing technology may have a negative impact on some things that humans intrinsically value, as long as we don’t destroy the world with these technologies and avoid allowing extreme concentration of power from them, other intrinsic values may not be impacted or even be benefited by technology. As long as we can seek and (to a reasonable degree) create what we intrinsically value, there are sources of meaning available.

This piece was first written on November 16, 2025, and first appeared on my website on December 22, 2025.

Consider the quote:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

-Albert Einstein

Of course, that’s not the definition of insanity, and Einstein didn’t say it (despite the quote often being attributed to him). For those reasons, it sounds pretty stupid. But I would argue there is something wise about the quote and that it’s worth paying attention to.

If we are in a situation that’s deterministic and static – that is, nothing is changing, and nothing is random – then it’s absolutely true that doing the same thing over and over again won’t lead to different results. And, while real life is never perfectly static, and there’s an element of uncertainty in much of what we do, we sometimes do find ourselves in situations that are static and deterministic enough that trying the same thing we’ve always tried would be foolish.

And yet, it’s not so uncommon for people to continue using the same failed strategies over and over again. Let’s call these situations “Futility Loops” – where we try the same strategy over and over even though it has failed every time, and we have ample evidence to suggest it will continue to fail.

Here are a few examples I’ve witnessed myself:

•Someone trying to get a family member to change a harmful behavior by nudging them in the same way, year after year, even though it never works. For instance, by making the same kind of remarks that bother the other person but never get them to alter their behavior.

• Someone who is depressed and stuck in a bad life situation, making the same life choices again and again that leave him stuck in that same spot. For instance, by not taking any actions that could plausibly improve his depression.

• Someone who makes the same sort of bad relationship decisions again and again with each new relationship. For instance, getting into relationships with a certain type of personality that they are attracted to inevitably badly hurts them.

These are fairly obvious examples of Futility Loops, but I also see much more subtle examples (which I’ve engaged in myself): where your behavior isn’t exactly the same, and the situation isn’t exactly the same, so it is easy to miss the fact that it’s a Futility Loop. But the situations and your behaviors rhyme each time – effectively, you keep trying to apply a strategy that the world keeps telling you doesn’t work, but you don’t realize the pattern because each situation feels different enough not to notice.

In Futility Loops, whether the more obvious kind or the more subtle kind, a person repeatedly does the same behaviors that have never worked before, and of course, it doesn’t work this time either, leaving the bad situations to endlessly repeat – there does seem to be something insane about the behavior like the fake Einstein quote suggests.

But if we adopt another frame, where we view the person involved as part of the situation itself, the behavior is understandable and not really insane at all. The person themself hasn’t changed, so when they are thrust into the same bad situation, they engage in the same useless behavior. They have static habits, instincts, emotions, reactions, and so on, so when the same situation arises, their behavior is just what it was before – they are static, and the situation is static, so their behavior is static.

From this point of view, we see that they will be stuck in the Futility Loop until something changes: either something in the situation or something within themselves. But if they aren’t willing to wait until the situation luckily changes on its own, that leaves only one option: self-change.

Thankfully, the self-change doesn’t have to be profound to break out of this sort of loop. All you really need to do is recognize that:

(a) what you have been trying so far hasn’t worked

(b) if you try the same thing again, it’s likely to lead to the same outcome, and

(c) as Eliezer Yudkowsky put it: “Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change; you can’t do anything BETTER unless you can manage to do it DIFFERENTLY.”

Then you just need to try a different strategy. And if that strategy proves itself not to work, don’t get stuck on that one either – try yet another strategy. And so on.

It may be worth taking a moment to reflect: which situations may be a Futility Loop for you? Is there a type of bad situation that keeps repeating – and could it be that you’re trying to solve it each time with a strategy that doesn’t work? For instance, is there a person whose behavior you keep trying to nudge in the same way, even though it never helps? Is there a kind of person you keep being drawn with predictably bad outcomes? Is there a type of decision you routinely have to make where you apply the same ineffective approach?

The first step to breaking out of our Futility Loops is to identify them.

This piece was first written on September 18, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 3, 2024.

When you pay attention to one thing, there is an opportunity cost – you could be paying attention to something else, like one of your loved ones, a meaningful project, your source of income, or a hobby you love.

When you get sucked into a dumb argument online or read an upsetting news story (that will never lead you to take any kind of positive action), you’re consuming moments of attention that could be better used.

What is less obvious than that, though, is that we can create more moments of attention – because often we’re not doing anything in particular, or we’re just partially paying attention, or we’re letting our minds wander without attention in a pointless or stressful way (rather than in an interesting, relaxing, fun or helpful way).

We can create more moments of attention within our familiar activities to make them even better – like being more present with a loved one or new acquaintance, noticing more fully the delicious flavor of our food, or being more focused during our work (to get closer to peak performance).

Attention is what our life experiences are made of; it’s worth paying attention to what we pay attention to.

Or, as Sam Harris puts it: “How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.”

This piece was first written on July 9, 2024, and first appeared on my website on September 9, 2024.

Here are four incredibly bad ideas (that are still commonly believed):

1) That people should be judged for, blamed for, or feel shame about the behavior of their ancestors.

Of course, if your ancestors did bad things, you should condemn those acts. And if you directly benefit from something bad your family member did, you should consider if you can make amends.

But, logically, people cannot be morally responsible for events that they were unable to affect.

This bad idea (that we are responsible for the behavior of our ancestors) is partly responsible for numerous cycles of violent conflict, as well as for unjust punishments and unhelpful guilt.

2) That small differences in group means are a good justification for jumping to conclusions about members.

This idea is partly responsible for a variety of forms of prejudice and harmful stereotyping.

Epistemically, a small mean difference provides only a sliver of evidence about individuals. Morally, it’s unjust to treat individuals as though only their group matters.

3) That there’s a simple explanation for all or most human behavior.

Variations on this idea have led to a great deal of confusion about human nature.

Human behavior is not all about sex, or self-interest, or happiness, or status, or individual survival, or even love.

Humans have a very diverse set of forces that influence behavior: emotions, culture, values, habits, instincts, heuristics, goals, etc.

4) That you need to follow a prescribed template in order to have a fulfilling life.

This idea has led to countless people being pressured into or trapped in lives that are bad for them.

Some people will be happiest as homemakers, others as professionals, and still others as adventurers, etc. Sometimes, the best life for a person will match the stereotype for their gender or group; other times, it will be the opposite, and at other times, it will seem completely out of left field.

Our boxes are much too small to force people’s lives into.

This piece was first written on July 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2024.

We recently conducted qualitative research by crowd-sourcing over 100 open-ended responses to the question:

“What signs do you look for that help you identify people who are likely to be untrustworthy or who are likely to hurt you if they become your close friend or partner?”

We thought the answers contained some insights that may help you to identify people with whom it would be risky to get too close. 

Here is a summary of the common themes that our respondents suggested as potential red flags or warning signs for an untrustworthy or harmful person:

1. Manipulation: This takes many forms, including guilt trips, gaslighting, peer pressure, negging, emotional blackmail, and a variety of more subtle behaviors, such as when someone is excessively nice early in a relationship in a way that is not congruent with their underlying personality. These are attempts to control or influence others without being straightforwardly coercive and without appealing to rational persuasion.

2. Inconsistency and Dishonesty: This includes inconsistencies in narratives they tell and dishonesty, but also more subtle forms of deception (such as repeated small untruths and inconsistencies between words and actions) or a lack of continuity in self-presentation over time. This can also include describing projects, connections, or behaviors in grandiose ways that are detached from reality. 

3. Self-Centeredness: This includes a lack of awareness or care regarding the impact of their actions on others, with a focus just on how situations impact themselves. This self-centeredness can also appear as an over-concern with outward appearances (or how situations make them look), frequent bragging, an excessive focus on seeking attention, and the tendency to only talk about themselves without inquiring about others.

4. Anger: Everyone experiences anger sometimes, but frequent, uncontrolled, or unexpected anger tends to be seen as a red flag. Similarly, approval of vengeful or vindictive behavior (or engagement in these behaviors) can be problematic.

5. Lack of Empathy: A lack of empathy for the suffering of others or an absence of kindness in words or actions can signal that someone is more likely to harm you if you become close friends with them or enter into a relationship with them. 

6. Extreme Emotionality: This refers to emotional instability or extreme mood swings. It is even more problematic when accompanied by blaming others for their emotional reactions, especially when those reactions are highly inappropriate (given the circumstances). Extreme emotional reasoning can cause people to become detached from reality (e.g., “Since I feel angry, you must have seriously wronged me!” or “Since I feel anxious, you must be threatening me!”).

7. Avoidance and Poor Communication: It can be difficult to be close to someone who is extremely avoidant of conflict, who hides intense negative feelings that they experience (e.g., pretending not to be angry when they are furious), or who has poor communication skills, especially when resolving issues or conflicts.

8. Lack of Responsibility and Accountability: This includes impulsivity, recklessness, a lack of consideration for others’ safety, an inability to take responsibility after making mistakes, failing to follow through on commitments, or blaming others for their own shortcomings. This can also include serious addiction issues that they are not seeking treatment for, constantly identifying as a victim of their circumstances while not taking responsibility for their role, and projecting personal issues onto others (or lacking self-awareness of their serious faults).

9. Poor Handling of Their Other Relationships: It can be offputting if someone seems unable to healthily handle other relationships in their life or if they treat people poorly if they disagree with or dislike them. Other behaviors, such as asking to borrow money from someone early in a relationship with them, may reflect a lack of common sense or a general inability to navigate relationships in a healthy way.

10. Negative Talk and Gossip: It does not bode well when someone often speaks negatively of others, especially as a source of entertainment or habitual gossiping. This can include talking badly about past associates or partners, such as saying that all their exes were “crazy.”

11. Judgmentalness: Signs of judgmentalness could include passing harsh negative judgments of others based on little information or being very critical or judgmental of other people’s minor faults.

Please note that these traits and behaviors are a summary of over 100 people’s views, not our personal opinions and not professional advice. If you’re concerned that you might be in an abusive relationship, we strongly encourage you to seek support. Seeking help is a brave and important step toward ensuring your safety and well-being. Remember, you’re not alone, and there are resources and people ready to assist you. 

If you are in a relationship that you want to improve, we have a few free tools that might help:

1. Kind And Effective Communication (15 Minutes): Learn and practice principles of non-violent communication to build stronger relationships, resolve conflicts, and improve your self-understanding and awareness.
2. The Relationship Review (15 Minutes): Examine different aspects of your relationship with a partner, close friend, or family member using an open, non-judgmental approach
3. Managing Arguments In A Relationship (20 Minutes): Learn how to navigate arguments effectively and kindly using a situation of your choosing.

Having social interactions and spending time with a variety of kind people is an essential part of our general well-being, but this can become counterproductive when your interactions are with people who are untrustworthy or who aim to harm you.

We hope this “wisdom of the crowds” summary helps you to identify some of the warning signs of unsafe people!

This first appeared on Clearer Thinking on November 3, 2023, and first appeared on this site on November 8, 2023.

Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their sanity or senses, can cause psychological damage.

There’s an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it “lightgassing” (or “light gassing”). Here, I explain how lightgassing works.

Lightgassing is when one person agrees with or validates another person’s false beliefs or misconceptions in order to be supportive. 

Unlike gaslighting, a tactic of jerks and abusers, lightgassing is an (unintentionally harmful) tactic of friends and supporters.

Here are common examples I’ve seen that are sometimes, but obviously not always, lightgassing:

• “Since they did X, they don’t deserve to be with you.”

• “It was reasonable for you to do Y because they made you feel bad.”

• “You did nothing wrong. It was 100% their fault.”

Ideally, when you’re upset, friends should validate your feelings and help you feel heard and understood, but they should do so without agreeing with statements they themselves know to be false.

We do a disservice to people when we encourage their false beliefs. Most people have a value of truth-telling (and knowing the truth), and by avoiding lightgassing, we stay truer to these values.

But how does one listen with openness and empathy to an upset friend and still validate *feelings*, without validating *false beliefs*? This can be a tricky maneuver, which I think is one reason people feel tempted to lightgas.

If you want to avoid lightgassing, the key is to validate those elements of a person’s *beliefs* that you know to be true while empathizing with them and validating that their *emotions* are understandable and okay to feel. But the key is to do this without reinforcing beliefs in false things.

I think it’s usually not helpful to challenge what another person believes is true right in the heat of emotion when that person is sad or upset. So avoiding lightgassing will often initially involve simply not validating/agreeing with what you believe is false. Later, when the person is feeling better, if they ask for your opinion on the facts (or you feel it’s important for them to hear your opinion), you can tell them what you believe to be true at that point.

A caveat that I think is worth mentioning is that sometimes, the only thing we know about a situation is what our upset friend or loved one has told us. In such cases, I think we should start with the assumption that what they have described is an accurate representation of what they experienced (unless any reason to doubt it emerges).

Lightgassing (or light gassing) typically happens in ordinary situations where someone feels hurt or upset. But it can also happen in more extreme situations, such as when you’re trying to help someone who is feeling upset due to severe delusions caused by psychosis. 

In the case of someone with psychosis, the path of least resistance is to lightgas them by agreeing with their delusions, but this is not in their own interest. On the other hand, if you invalidate their emotions, you will likely make them more upset and may lose their trust. The tightrope to walk is to help them feel cared about, listened to, empathized with, and understood, without saying that their delusions are reality. In other words, to avoid lightgassing them while also not causing them to feel gaslit.

Does lightgassing really deserve its own term? Why not just call it “enabling”? Well, lightgassing can be a type of enabling, similar to how gaslighting is typically a form of manipulation. But lightgassing is much more specific than enabling, and enabling can include lots of things that are not lightgassing (e.g., buying an alcoholic some alcohol is a form of enabling but not lightgassing). Having a more specific term (lightgassing) makes it easier to spot and communicate about this specific pattern of behavior.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on my website on May 13, 2024.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

I would say that the main difference between the healthy validation of emotions and the unhealthy version is that the healthy version is based on genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in the other person’s experience, whereas the unhealthy version involves a willingness to sacrifice those things in an attempt to make the other person immediately feel good.

At a more detailed level, I think the healthy way to validate other people’s feelings involves expressing the following ideas (but ONLY when these ideas are true).

Healthy Emotional Validation

1) Care: I care about you.

2) Willingness: I’m totally okay with you feeling this emotion right now in front of me.

3) Acceptance: I don’t think badly of you for feeling what you’re feeling.

4) Interest: I am interested in learning more about what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.

5) Compassion: I have compassion and/or empathy for your suffering and want you not to suffer (unless you want to suffer right now, in which case I want you to suffer only insofar and in the ways that seem appropriate to you, such as the suffering that most people feel is right to feel after the loss of a loved one).

6) Understanding of facts: I understand the facts of what happened in this situation (and if I don’t, I’m going to ask open-ended questions in an effort to understand it).

7) Understanding of feelings: I understand why you’re feeling this way (and if I don’t, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

8) Legitimization of feelings: I think it is totally reasonable that this combination of your situation, your beliefs about this situation, your thoughts, and your past experiences causes you to feel this way right now (and if I don’t see how the combination of your situation, beliefs, etc., lead to your emotion, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

While some of this is helpful to say aloud when a friend or loved one is upset, much of it will typically be expressed through body language, attention, attitude, presence, tone of voice, and so on. The main thing is that these ideas get expressed in a way that the other person receives them, whether that expression is verbal or non-verbal, explicit or implicit.

On the other hand, I think that it’s usually unhealthy to attempt to validate emotions when it’s done expressing the following ideas.

Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

1) Disingenuousness: you say things that you don’t really mean or believe, such as supporting their claims about what happened when you don’t believe those claims are true.

2) Emotional reasoning: you support the idea that whatever their emotional response is to the situation is a perfect guide to what actually occurred (e.g., if they feel angry at someone, that implies the other person must have done something objectively harmful, or if they feel they’ve lost someone they had a fight with, that means that person is gone forever).

3) Justification: you support or encourage harmful or self-destructive actions they took or are considering taking as a consequence of their negative feelings (e.g., normalizing them taking revenge on the person they are angry about or justifying why it is okay that they did so).

4) Absolving: you encourage the idea that they made no mistakes or behaved perfectly or that someone else is 100% to blame for the situation (unless, of course, you really believe this to be true). On this point, it is often the case that victims of crimes did nothing at all wrong, but this is much less commonly the case when it comes to, for instance, interpersonal conflict between romantic partners, which usually involves both parties having behaved imperfectly, though not necessarily to the same degree.

To recap, people often want emotional validation from their friends and loved ones when they are feeling upset. People are often confused, though, about what this means exactly. There are both healthy ways and unhealthy ways to do emotional validation. 

The healthy version is not always easy to do, but I think it is what we should aspire to when a friend or loved one wants emotional validation. 

To do the healthy version, aim to imbue your responses to their emotions with genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in their experiences. And avoid sacrificing those things just to make the other person feel good.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on October 11, 2023.

Lately, I’ve been trying to accept a bit more awkwardness (rather than reflexively avoiding it) in cases where I think doing so can produce value.

Here are four areas where I’m leaning more into awkwardness:

1. When asked for feedback on a project (and I think it will fail), I’m usually tempted to focus on what I like about it. 

I’ve now become more likely to explain what challenges I expect it to face (while suggesting routes to improvement).

I think that, usually, more value is produced by trying to help them succeed at their goals than by trying to help them feel good about their current plans. Ideally, though, this feedback is given in a way that is encouraging and not demoralizing.

2. When someone annoys or frustrates me (e.g., makes a request in a manner that bothers me), the easy thing is to ignore it. 

I’ve become more likely to gently tell the person that it bothered me and explain why – while trying to avoid making them feel attacked.

This gives others the opportunity to learn and improve, and also, I think, tends to strengthen your best relationships (by making them more open and honest, and by preventing you from feeling worse about your friends due to behaviors they were doing that they didn’t even realize were bothering you)

3. When I think someone is making a false claim, it reduces tension by just letting it go. 

Instead of letting it go, I’ve become more likely to tell them that I don’t agree with their point and explain why.

This gives us the best chance of arriving at more accurate beliefs together.

4. When there is something that I value, but it requires making a somewhat awkward request, the path of least resistance is to give up on it. 

I’ve become more likely to make the request while doing what I can to make it very easy and non-awkward for the other person to decline.

Often we can set up a situation so as to at least minimize the awkwardness for the other person (e.g., by giving them a simple way out of the request and making it clear you won’t be offended if they decline). By not making such requests at all, we end up missing out on opportunities that others would, in fact, be happy to provide for us.

I’m certainly not perfect at this. I still avoid awkwardness at times when more value is produced by pushing through it. But I’m getting better.

While awkwardness is certainly not a good thing, if you are too motivated to avoid it, then – much like with other forms of anxiety – you and others may miss out on a lot of value.

Of course, some people need the opposite advice – they put others into awkward situations too often or lack awareness of the awkwardness they create. And I think you should try to reduce awkwardness whenever there is not a good reason for it.

But if you (like me) tend to avoid awkwardness, it may be better to strategically lean into awkwardness in cases where more value is lost by avoiding it.

This piece was first written on September 25, 2022, and first appeared on this site on September 30, 2022.

After spending a while thinking about my past experiences with such cases, I now have a name for a cluster of traits that I believe, in at least some of these cases, help explain what’s going on.

I call this cluster “Emotionally Reactive Traits.” You could think of someone who has these traits as an emotionally reactive person, or as someone who has a reactive personality, or as someone who is emotionally reactive in relationships, or you could view this as a specific way of being emotionally unstable.

But I prefer to use the word “traits” because I’m referring to rather long-lasting tendencies, but they are not immutable. A person can change these traits over time, for instance, by healing from trauma, going to therapy, or learning to see the world differently.

Emotionally Reactive Traits have two main aspects:

Aspect 1: Strong negative emotions triggered in innocuous situations

The person tends to have intense, negative emotional responses to harmless (or very nearly harmless) situations.

It’s, of course, up for debate what a reasonable reaction to any given situation is. Everyone sometimes has negative emotions in innocuous situations. But what I’m referring to here is a pattern of intense reactions to situations where reasonable, unbiased third parties would all agree that a situation was basically harmless.

Aspect 2: Emotional reasoning with blame

To an unusually high degree, the person interprets their emotions about a situation as indicating the objective truth of the situation. For instance, if they feel scared by something someone said, they assume the other person must have done something objectively scary. Or if they feel angry, they assume the other person must have done something really harmful on purpose. Additionally, they tend to blame other people when their emotions are triggered (rather than considering whether their reaction might have more to do with themselves than the other person’s behavior).

The emotional reasoning can be so strong that, when they are emotionally activated, the facts of the situation (as remembered by this person) get warped to fit their emotion (e.g., “I’m feeling X, and that only makes sense if the other person had said Y, so they must have said Y, even though all the people who witnessed the event say they said Z.”) Important details about the situation or context can get glossed over or forgotten so that the situation (as remembered) better fits their emotional response to the situation.

Of course, everyone engages in emotional reasoning at times (e.g., when we’re feeling anxious, we tend to think that something frightening may happen, and when we’re feeling angry, we tend to think that someone is trying to harm us). What I’m referring to here is a recurring pattern of engaging in emotional reasoning to a very unusually high degree.

Where do Emotionally Reactive Traits come from? That is, why would someone have intense emotional reactions (coupled with blaming others) in harmless situations? This pattern can have a diverse range of causes, for instance, arising from:

i. Past trauma (e.g., getting triggered in situations that superficially resemble those of the trauma, such as a friend saying something harmless in a tone of voice that an abusive partner used to use)

ii. Difficulties reading situations in general, but with a bias towards assuming negative intent (e.g., misinterpreting body language in such a way that innocent behavior seems nefarious)

iii. False beliefs about the world that cast others in a bad light (e.g., being convinced that someone who believes X is bad or scary, even though X is a harmless belief)

iv. Paranoia, which in some cases could be linked to psychosis or drug use (e.g., believing that others are out to get you when they aren’t)

v. Anger management issues (e.g., feeling attacked and getting extremely angry as a result of gentle constructive criticism)

vi. A highly sensitive ego (e.g., a friend doing something that feels at all like a put-down or social comparison will cause an intensely negative reaction)

vii. A long history of being mistreated (e.g., jumping to the conclusion that they are being mistreated – when they are not – due to sensitivity from years of actually being mistreated)

What are some example situations with people who have Emotionally Reactive Traits?

Below are some examples of what you might experience with different kinds of people who have these traits. Note that these situations are NOT real ones I’ve encountered, but I’ve designed each of them to try to capture key themes of what I have experienced with real people who I think have Emotionally Reactive Traits.

Example 1: Traumatized

Riley has serious trauma from an abusive past partner. Riley’s current partner, Blake, unfortunately, sometimes accidentally triggers this trauma. For instance, Riley’s ex used to engage in extremely controlling behaviors (e.g., controlling what they would eat, wear, and say). Blake, on the other hand, is not more controlling than an average partner but sometimes asks Riley to behave differently (e.g., Blake was upset about the way that Riley acted around Blake’s friends and asked Riley not to behave that way anymore). This request triggered Riley’s trauma related to their controlling ex, causing Riley to become extremely upset. Riley blamed Blake for this, interpreting their own extreme emotions as proof that Blake had done something very bad. Riley yells at Blake that Blake is being abusive and misremembers details of Blake’s request that make it seem abusive. Blake is really upset by this accusation and tries to defend themself, but these attempts to defend their own behavior make Riley even more upset, as Riley experiences them as being invalidating.

Example 2: Angry

Gideon has a bit of a hot temper and a fragile ego. He regularly doubts his self-worth but also tries to protect himself from this doubt by blaming other people when he makes mistakes. One day, Gideon asks his friend Alice for a small favor. She agrees to do it but hasn’t gotten around to it yet due to a busy schedule. After a couple of days, Gideon realizes she hasn’t done it yet and takes this as a form of rejection, assuming it means Alice doesn’t care about him. He leaves her a voice message screaming at her for lying to him about doing the favor and accusing her of only pretending to be his friend.

Example 3: Ideological

Jill believes that all masculinity is toxic and that most men disrespect women in myriad small ways. In her friendship with Johnny, this presents a problem because he grew up being taught to engage in “chivalrous” behaviors like holding doors for women, paying for their meals, and carrying bags for them. Sometimes, he attempts to do these things for Jill, and it makes her mad (but she successfully hides this anger from him). One day, when he picks up her heavy bag and carries it for her without asking, she blows up at him, suddenly enraged, telling him she can’t stand his toxic behavior anymore. He is shocked and confused, failing to understand why she appears to suddenly be so enraged with him. His denial of toxicity enrages her further. Jill stops responding to Johnny, writing him off as a bad person. Jill tells her and Johny’s mutual friends that Johnny is a misogynist and suggests that they avoid spending time with him.

What does it feel like if you have Emotionally Reactive Traits?

One reason that this cluster of traits is tragic is that the people who have it are often very good people (e.g., they are often very kind and empathetic), yet they end up with a pattern of ruined relationships.

Another reason it is tragic is that, from the inside, what it feels like to have these personality traits is that other people you trust keep suddenly doing things that harm you. Then, when you get upset, they deny that your emotions are valid and tell you that you are being unreasonable (or they suddenly distance themselves from you). Not only does it feel like people keep hurting you, but it feels like they seem to be attempting to gaslight you in the process, and may cause you to doubt your own interpretations. This is a terrible experience to have.

What other traits could be confused with Emotionally Reactive Traits?

There are a few different situations that might sound like what I’m describing above, but which are importantly different.

First of all, you could simply be friends with assholes or harmful people who WILL repeatedly harm you and then deny it or gaslight you, or be unwilling to take responsibility. This feels very similar, I suspect, to having Emotionally Reactive Traits. The difference is really in the people around you and the facts of the situation. If the people around you are kind and good, and the things you are getting upset about are actually innocuous, that’s really different than if the people around you are jerks who are actually doing harmful things. Of course, there is a great deal of subjectivity here since it’s hard to say what precisely the truth is in any given situation and what exactly is innocuous vs. harmful behavior. But if you find that even with the most good, kind people in your life from a wide variety of social circles, you are experiencing something like this, again and again, that is evidence that you have Emotionally Reactive Traits (but, of course, you could just be very unlucky and are continually surrounded by jerky behavior).

Another thing that may be confused with Emotionally Reactive Traits is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While people with BPD have an elevated chance of having Emotionally Reactive Traits (because there are some common elements), BPD also has other symptoms that are not related to Emotionally Reactive Traits (such as intense fear of abandonment), and I think that most people with Emotionally Reactive Traits would not have BPD.

How do Emotionally Reactive Traits lead to ruined relationships?

The basic pattern of relationship destruction is that a friend (or colleague or romantic partner) will do something innocuous or very slightly harmful, which leads to an intense negative emotional reaction, which gets blamed on the friend. Then, emotional reasoning kicks in, with the intensity of the negative emotions being interpreted as a demonstration of how harmful the friend’s action was. Details of the situation or context may also be misremembered or reinterpreted in light of the negative emotion, which can cause a disagreement about the basic facts of the situation.

If the friend is empathetic and patient, they may try to accept blame or apologize, but come away feeling that the other person acted in a harmful or unreasonable manner and may (especially if this pattern is repeated) choose to distance themselves. On the other hand, if the friend is not as empathetic or patient, they may themselves grow angry or argue that the person is acting unreasonably, which can intensify the negative emotions, making things even worse and causing a sudden blowup in the relationship.

What is useful to do if a friend or romantic partner has Emotionally Reactive Traits?

I think it is usually unwise to challenge the perspective of a person with Emotionally Reactive Traits while they are in the midst of experiencing strong negative emotions. They are likely to feel the challenger is denying an obvious truth or harmfully invalidating their emotions, either of which may cause anger or other intensification of negative emotions (potentially leading to the feedback loop of even stronger emotional reasoning).

Hence, attempting to directly correct a misunderstanding in the heat of the moment can backfire. A better approach may be to validate the fact that they are feeling those emotions, express empathy and concern, and apologize for accidentally causing them negative emotions without validating any misinterpretations of events they may have. When the acute negative emotions have subsided, that is a much better time to gently explain your perspective on the situation.

Of course, before assuming someone has Emotionally Reactive Traits, it’s also useful to do some self-reflection. Maybe you’re just being a jerk, doing things that hurt this person, or are in denial about your own behavior? A stronger signal that someone has Emotionally Reactive Traits is that they have acted this way with many people in their life, not just you.

Another observation I’ve had is that when people with Emotionally Reactive Traits are dealing with a lot of stress in their lives, these traits may manifest to a greater degree. Basically, the threshold to experiencing this intense emotionality seems to be lowered by other stressors. So anything you can do to help reduce stress for a person with these traits might, at least to some degree, reduce their emotional reactivity or emotional instability.

What should you do if you think you may have Emotionally Reactive Traits?

I think that one of the most helpful things you can do is to learn to notice when you are experiencing strong negative emotional reactions and have strategies you can use in that situation. For instance, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has a number of useful techniques for this (there are helpful books available about these techniques, such as “The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook”). Additionally, it can be really helpful to wait until you are in a more calm and collected state to dig into the details of what happened in a situation. If you try to talk it out with someone while you are still feeling really bad, it can lead to unfortunate outcomes.

I think it can also be really useful to recognize that you may have a tendency to engage in emotional reasoning and try to remind yourself that feeling angry doesn’t always mean that you have been wronged, and feeling anxious doesn’t always mean that something dangerous has occurred, etc. If we think of our emotions as smoke detectors for different sorts of situations, yours may be like those that often go off while cooking. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t really a fire, but the smoke detector is not always a reliable indicator of fire. Techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be helpful for processing emotional reasoning after the fact (e.g., considering the evidence for and against different interpretations of an event).

I also think it can be helpful to get really curious about other people’s frames if you have Emotionally Reactive Traits. If someone feels that a situation was really different from how it felt to you, it can be useful to explore with curiosity what they experienced by asking them open-ended questions. Once you empathize with their perspective, you may see that your original interpretation was not as objective as it seemed.

I think it’s worth keeping in mind that you don’t choose to have sudden, intense negative emotional reactions to things. But you do, to an extent, have a choice of how you behave once you are having such a reaction (though it may be difficult to make choices in that state). You also choose whether to seek to reduce those emotional reactions (e.g., to work on yourself or, if you can afford it, to find an expert to try to heal the trauma that may be causing the reactions to occur).

Finally, if you have close friends whom you trust with the information, you can consider explaining to them that you sometimes have emotionally reactive behaviors, and you can tell them how you’d find it most helpful for them to behave in such situations.

People with Emotionally Reactive Traits are typically not bad people (often, they are unusually empathetic and kind). But they can accidentally leave a trail of broken relationships.

As with all aspects of personality, Emotionally Reactive Traits exist on a spectrum. Some people are not at all like this, others are just a bit this way, and others are very much this way. It is people who are very high on these traits that I’m referring to in this post.

If you think that someone you care about may have these traits, I hope this essay will give you some ideas for how you can have a healthier friendship with this person. And if you think that you may have these traits yourself, I hope this essay will give you some ideas for how to have better relationships in the future and reduce the chance of them falling apart.

After posting this, five people have reached out and said that they feel that they have Emotionally Reactive Traits. Here is what one such person said, if you’re curious (posted here with permission):

“I ended up recognizing myself in [this post]. 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 Emotional Reactivity concept.”

This piece was first written on August 13, 2022, and first appeared on this site on September 9, 2022.

It has been estimated that over 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Consequently, the majority of friendships and relationships will involve at least one person who has experienced trauma.

This article investigates how one person’s trauma can “clash” with another person’s trauma to cause relationship breakdown and what you can do to resolve conflicts like this if you experience them yourself. You might find it helpful to read if you…

• have some trauma in your past that sometimes gets triggered by other people’s behavior;
• find that your friends or romantic partners sometimes suddenly hurt you for inexplicable reasons;
• struggle to understand other people’s hostile reactions to actions you take;
• want a new model that might help you understand conflict with people close to you.

Let’s look at some specific examples of what we mean by Clashing Trauma: 

1. Trauma from anger and abuse 

Bob is sensitive to teasing because of a physically and emotionally abusive ex that used to tease him incessantly. Anne lightly teases him in what she thinks is a playful way, and he blows up in anger. Anne is sensitive to anger due to trauma in her childhood. She stops replying to Bob’s messages, which makes Bob even angrier. 

2. Trauma from abandonment and unwanted sexual advances 

Bob is physically affectionate with his close friend Anne. It starts to freak Anne out – when male friends have acted this way in the past, they have usually tried to initiate a sexual relationship with her in a way that she found traumatic. To prevent this, Anne stops being warm to Bob. Bob, however, regards Anne as a dear and platonic friend. Because Bob had a traumatic experience of abandonment in the past, he finds Anne’s sudden coldness very upsetting. The fear of abandonment causes Bob to be more affectionate toward Anne as he tries harder to reconnect. This triggers Anne further, causing her to withdraw even more, leading to Bob feeling even more hurt and confused. 

3. Trauma from substance abuse 

Anne has a history of alcoholism that Bob doesn’t know about. Years ago, she resolved to stop drinking when she realized she was becoming like her parents, whose drinking would often lead to physical fights that she found distressing. Bob drinks around her and encourages her to drink, which makes her angry. Bob has protected himself from people’s anger in the past using humor, so he tries to downplay Anne’s reaction by joking around and making light of the situation. Anne finds herself even more triggered and upset by Bob’s behavior – she wants her anger to be taken seriously because alcoholism was a huge challenge in her past.

In all three examples above, one person’s reaction to their trauma being triggered in turn triggers the other person’s trauma response. Clashing Trauma is an example of a broader pattern of Clashing Reactions, where one person’s reaction to an action that upsets them triggers the other person to become upset or angry, which in turn intensifies the first person’s negative emotions, and so on. We’ve noticed that a surprisingly high proportion of fights between people who care a lot about each other fit this basic pattern. The cases of Clashing Reactions on which this essay is focused involve reactions that have their foundations in trauma, but be mindful that trauma doesn’t have to be at the root for similar patterns to occur.

What is trauma?

Trauma refers to enduring changes in your emotional reactions or self-protective behaviors that are the result of painful or frightening incidents in your past. Examples of trauma that people are usually familiar with include experiences with war, abuse, or sexual assault. For example:

• A soldier who was shot at in combat may find that loud noises that sound like gunshots cause her to panic, even in completely safe environments.
• A man who was sexually assaulted by someone with an English accent may feel anxious around people with those same accents.

But it is important to remember that trauma occurs on a spectrum; many people have emotional reactions to reminders of upsetting experiences in their past, even when those experiences were not life-threatening or severely upsetting. For instance:

• Someone who received bad news over the phone may experience a sense of dread and anxiety when they receive a call from an unknown number.
• Someone who was teased by a school teacher for stuttering during a class presentation may find that they get nervous when asked to speak in front of people.

Trauma is the result of a mechanism your brain uses to protect you. This mechanism is often helpful – by sensitizing you to patterns that are similar to ones where you were hurt or frightened in the past, your brain tries to protect you from getting hurt again. Unfortunately, this protective mechanism sometimes goes too far, leading to reactions that can seriously impact people’s welfare (at which point we call it “trauma”).

The soldier, who is now in essentially no danger of getting shot, may have recurring panic attacks that reduce her quality of life and avoid places she used to love just because there are loud noises there. Trauma can manifest in relationships, too; many people are hurt by those close to them (unintentionally or not), and this can make us extra vigilant about avoiding similar painful experiences in the future.

What is going on when people’s trauma clashes?

Here is what we think is going on in situations where friendships or relationships break down due to Clashing Trauma:

1. Anne takes an action that seems normal and reasonable to her. Anne doesn’t know it, but her close friend (or partner) Bob is sensitive to this kind of action due to trauma in his past. Consequently, Bob experiences intense negative emotions as a result of her action.

2. Bob instinctively tries to protect himself from this negative emotion using whatever approaches seemed to help him during past traumatic events (e.g., by avoiding Anne, yelling at her, getting very distraught, or trying to control her behavior). But he doesn’t explain clearly to Anne what is happening. Anne is caught off guard by Bob’s reaction—she doesn’t understand why he’s behaving this way. Even worse, due to trauma in her own past, she gets triggered by Bob’s reaction and starts experiencing intense negative emotions of her own.

3. Anne now acts instinctively to try to protect herself from the way that Bob is making her feel (e.g., by lashing back out at him, avoiding him, shutting down, or trying to control him). This reaction results in Bob feeling even more upset, causing him to intensify his self-protective behavior.

You can now see how Clashing Trauma works:

• From Bob’s perspective, Anne suddenly did something that triggered his trauma, and when he tried to protect himself, she doubled down and hurt him more.
• From Anne’s perspective, Bob suddenly started acting in a strange and hurtful manner, and when she acted to protect herself, he hurt her even further.
• From the outside view, it’s clear that neither person intended to hurt the other, yet both feel hurt, and the relationship suffers.

Incidentally, if you think that you might be Anne or Bob, you’re not alone. When we shared a draft of this article, one friend of the author reached out asking if Anne represented them, and another reached out asking if they were Bob. But the post wasn’t actually about either of them! We are trying to describe a general pattern that we’ve observed many times. Or, put another way: if you think you are Anne or Bob, then this post may well apply to you, but it’s also about lots of other people as well.

How can you prevent Clashing Trauma?

Strategy 1: Prevention

The best way to prevent this pattern of conflict is to discuss in advance with trusted friends and romantic partners what triggers you each have, how to avoid these triggers, and what the best actions to take are if you trigger each other by accident.

For instance, Bob could have told Anne in advance that he can feel very attacked when someone is critical of him and that he tends to lash out in anger as a defense mechanism. Then Bob and Anne can work together to plan how Anne can give Bob feedback in ways that won’t trigger him.

Strategy 2: Interception

Barring Prevention, upon being triggered the first time, Bob would ideally wait until he’s calm and then tell Anne (without blaming her) that her action triggered negative emotions for him, explaining what the trigger was and how to avoid it. (See our post on non-violent communication for advice on how to communicate this kind of thing without making the other person feel bad.)

Then, Anne, caring about Bob, would ideally apologize for inadvertently hurting him and commit to trying to avoid those triggering actions in the future. But behaviors can take time to alter—Anne should set realistic expectations about how quickly she can make that change.

Interception is hard, but appreciating the negative consequences of unresolved Clashing Trauma might help motivate you to implement this strategy.

Strategy 3: Repair

If it’s too late for Interception, try Repair: once Anne is hurt by Bob’s response to her behavior, Anne could wait until she feels calm and then initiate a conversation with Bob.

During the conversation, she could explain how Bob’s behavior seemed (to her) to suddenly and mysteriously change and how this had hurt her, while expressing interest in hearing Bob’s experience of the situation. She would try to genuinely understand Bob’s experience (non-violent communication could also be a helpful way to employ this strategy).

Bob could then explain what he experienced in the situation and what made him react that way towards Anne. They could each commit to new behaviors to reduce the chance they trigger each other in the future.

Understanding trauma

Each of the Prevention, Interception, and Repair strategies involve Anne or Bob explaining their triggers (and/or the trauma that underlies them) to each other. These strategies will therefore be harder to implement if you don’t understand your own trauma or what can trigger it. One way to build an understanding of your trauma and triggers is to discuss it with a trained therapist or trusted friend (or partner). Conveniently, this is a great segue into setting up Prevention strategies with a trusted friend or partner so that you can avoid triggering each other!

Did you find this model of relationship breakdown helpful?

The next time you feel suddenly and unexpectedly hurt by a close friend or romantic partner, it may be worth asking yourself – could this be an instance of Clashing Trauma? Or, more generally, could it be a case of Clashing Reactions? In either case, consider the strategies of (1) Prevention, (2) Interception, and (3) Repair. A lot of great friendships and romantic relationships end for preventable reasons. We hope you can use these strategies to stay close to the people that you love.

This essay was first written on April 17, 2022, was turned into an article on Clearer Thinking (coauthored with Holly Muir) on May 5, 2022, and first appeared on this site on May 6, 2022.