#Microblog Monday 386: Psychological Reactance
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I learned a new term that explained so much: psychological reactance. It’s “a reflex reaction to being told what to do, or feeling that your freedom is under threat.” Freedom is a loose term: someone impinging on your free time can bring out this reflex. Or your manager telling you that you need to do something differently. Or even annoyance at a book club you’ve chosen to join because you now feel obligated to read books that someone else is telling you to read.
It’s that initial thought of, “But I don’t want to.”
I guess knowing the name of it (beyond what Josh always calls it: “the don’t wannas.”) means that you can combat it. You can acknowledge what the feeling is, tell yourself that you can feel it for the next ten minutes, and then need to set the feeling aside and be open to the request or demand. Or counter with what you will do if there is a good reason to push back against the request.
I guess I just liked learning a new word.
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4 comments
I get the “don’t wannas” sometimes. I wish I got them more often, I think.
And new words are always good.
My husband always had a case of the “don’t wannas” – I would give him suggestions, and he would interpret them as orders. I would say “you should go to pharmacy school! That sounds like something you would enjoy!” and he would get upset that I was telling him how to run his life. If I gave him actual orders (I was always sending him screenshots of the posts of new dogs from the Humane Society with the caption of “GO GET MY DOG.”), he was happy to ignore me.
My level of psychological reactance is almost always based on who’s telling me what to do. There are some people from whom I am willing to take advice. Everyone else…I just kind of ignore if it doesn’t fit in with my predetermined plan.
I love that, the “don’t wannas.” I have a lot of that right now but I do it anyway, mostly. But while complaining and putting my head on the table and whispering “everything is terrible,” which is probably not the healthiest. My students get major cases of the “don’t wannas” and I have to be the “wanna” or at least “hafta” fairy. I guess I have the reflexive piece, but my students tend to be pervasive? 🙂 I feel like this might be the moment where you imagine disappearing to an island where no one puts any demands on you. But then you do the things.
I like new words, too.
So THAT’s what it’s called! 😉