When Your Reaction Becomes Their Excuse

An LCA Contemplation on Provocation, Deflection, Blame Shifting and Emotional Policing

Many people have learned to see conflict as something negative. If you find yourself in conflict, the assumption is often that you must be difficult, dramatic, or a bad person.

At LCA, we would like to offer a different perspective.

Conflict is a normal part of life. It happens when people have different needs, perspectives, experiences, and boundaries.

The problem is that many people have never learned healthy conflict resolution skills. Without these skills, conflict can turn toxic quickly. The conflict itself is not the issue; the lack of skills to move through it is.

Part of healthy conflict resolution is learning to examine all sides of a conflict. That means looking not only at someone’s reaction, but also at what happened before it: the words that were used, the boundaries that were crossed, and the role each person played.

This post explores common unhealthy behavioural patterns that often show up during conflict, and one healthier alternative: self-reflection.

Provocation

Provocation is deliberately saying or doing things to get an emotional reaction, push at a known boundary, or draw someone into conflict.

For example, a person may calmly say, “Stop putting me in the spotlight. I don’t like being singled out.” The other person may then continue to draw attention to them in front of others: “Come on, tell everyone what you said earlier,” or “Why are you being so quiet? Everyone is waiting for you.”

If this continues after the person has made their discomfort clear, it can be classified as provocation. Their reaction should be understood in the context of what preceded it.

Deflection

Deflection is when someone shifts attention away from their own behaviour and onto something else.

An example of deflection is when a person says, “That comment hurt me,” and the response is, “Why are you so sensitive?”

Instead of engaging with the comment that caused the hurt, the response shifts the focus to the person’s sensitivity. The original concern is left unaddressed.

Blame shifting

Blame shifting is when someone makes another person responsible for the conflict or for their own behaviour.

For example, a person may say, “I became upset because you kept making comments about me after I asked you to stop.” The response may be, “This only became a problem because you got upset.”

The message is that the reaction, rather than the behaviour that came before it, is the cause of the entire conflict.

Deflection changes the subject. Blame shifting assigns the blame.

It is unfair, unhealthy, and emotionally manipulative to use a person’s reaction to erase the behaviour that led to it.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a repeated pattern of denying, distorting, or rewriting what happened in a way that makes someone doubt their own memory, perception, and sense of reality.

For example, a person says, “Yesterday, you changed the locks and put my belongings outside.” The response is, “No, I did not. That never happened. You chose to leave, and now you are trying to make me look bad.”

The person is not simply disagreeing with what happened. They are denying a clear event and reframing it in a way that makes the other person doubt their own reality.

Over time, someone may begin replaying conversations, keeping evidence of what happened, or relying on others to confirm what they saw and heard because they no longer feel able to trust themselves.

Emotional policing

Emotional policing is when someone tries to control, restrict, or decide what another person is allowed to feel.

For example, a person says, “I am angry about what happened.” The response is, “You do not get to be angry. You need to calm down.”

The response does not engage with what caused the anger. It treats the anger itself as unacceptable and positions the other person as having the authority to decide what someone else is allowed to feel.

It is possible to take responsibility for how anger is expressed without treating the feeling itself as unacceptable.

Women’s anger is often judged differently

Many women receive the message that anger makes them difficult, unlikable, or “too much.” For Black women, this is intensified by the racist and sexist Angry Black Woman stereotype.

Research on workplace evaluations found that observers were more likely to attribute Black women’s anger to their personality rather than the situation, which was associated with worse performance evaluations and lower perceptions of leadership ability.

The stereotype can turn a situational response to disrespect or unfairness into an assumed character trait.

Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive. A Black woman’s anger, directness, or self-advocacy should not be treated as proof of an aggressive personality.

Black women do not have to betray, abandon, or silence themselves to fit someone else’s narrative of what femininity, professionalism, or emotional acceptability should look like. We deserve to exist fully.

The psychological impact

When these patterns are repeated, they can have a real psychological impact.

A person may begin to monitor their tone before they speak, anticipate the next dig or boundary-crossing, hide their feelings, or feel guilty for having a normal emotional response. When their account of events is repeatedly dismissed or denied, they may lose trust in their own perception. Staying quiet can start to feel safer than speaking honestly.

Repeated tactics that are used to avoid accountability, control the narrative, or make someone doubt themselves are emotional manipulation.

When this behaviour is used to control, frighten, disempower, isolate, or steadily undermine someone’s confidence and sense of reality, it is emotional or psychological abuse. A single disagreement or mistake does not establish an abusive pattern; repetition, context, and impact matter.

People may not recognise that they engage in these behaviours or understand how harmful their patterns are. That does not make the impact harmless.

Research on psychological abuse within intimate relationships has found associations with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. These outcomes are not inevitable, and the research focuses specifically on intimate partner violence, but it shows how seriously repeated psychological mistreatment can affect a person.

When ending becomes a substitute for relational skills

Too often, people end relationships, cut others off, or push someone out of a shared environment before learning how to have difficult conversations, repair harm and work through disagreement.

Of course, not every relationship is safe or repairable. Some situations require distance, protection or an ending.

But ending a connection should not become a substitute for developing relational skills.

Without reflection and growth, people carry the same harmful patterns into new relationships and environments.
The harm does not disappear; it accumulates, touching more people along the way.

Reflection, Accountability and Repair: Healthier Relational Skills

Healthy conflict is not about never getting things wrong. It is about what we do when someone tells us that our words or actions caused harm.

Three relational skills are especially important: reflection, accountability and repair.

Reflection is the ability to look honestly at what we said or did, how it affected another person, and what part we may have played in a situation. It begins with curiosity rather than immediate defensiveness.

Accountability means acknowledging the impact of our behaviour and taking responsibility for the part that is ours. It does not mean accepting every accusation as fact or taking responsibility for everything that happened. It means being willing to examine our choices, patterns and impact honestly.

Repair means following accountability with action. It is the willingness to apologise where needed, change harmful behaviour, and help restore safety or trust over time.

For example, when someone says, “That comment hurt me,” a reflective response might be: “I did not realise it landed that way. Can you tell me more about what hurt? I want to understand.”

After listening, accountability might sound like: “I can see why that hurt. I am sorry.”

Repair might sound like: “I will not make that kind of comment again.”

When someone says, “Stop putting me in the spotlight. I don’t like being singled out,” reflection might sound like: “What did I say or do that made you feel singled out?”

After listening, accountability might sound like: “I understand why that did not feel good. I can see that I put you in an uncomfortable position.”

Repair might sound like: “I will stop doing that.”

These skills do not require perfection. They require the willingness to stay present, listen, take responsibility for our impact, and make a meaningful change where needed.

Healthy conflict takes two willing participants

Having healthy conflict resolution skills does not give one person the power to resolve every conflict.

A repair attempt requires mutual willingness. One person can communicate clearly, reflect on their own behaviour, take accountability and make repair. But when the other person remains committed to deflection, blame shifting, gaslighting or emotional policing, the conflict cannot be repaired by one person alone.

Healthy skills do not cancel out another person’s unhealthy patterns. Without mutual accountability, the situation can still become toxic.

Healthy conflict resolution also means knowing what is within your control and knowing when to exit.

You can communicate clearly, take responsibility for your own behaviour and make repair where needed. You cannot make another person reflect, take accountability or change.

When a strong emotional reaction enters a conflict, reflection asks:

What happened before this reaction?
What part did each person play?
What needs to change so that the same harm is not repeated?

This is why reflection is one of LCA’s three core pillars. Reflection helps us look honestly at our own behaviour, our impact and the patterns we may be repeating. It creates the possibility of accountability, repair and healthier ways of relating to one another.

Sources

Dokkedahl, S. B., Kirubakaran, R., Bech-Hansen, D., Kristensen, T. R., & Elklit, A. (2022). The psychological subtype of intimate partner violence and its effect on mental health: A systematic review with meta-analyses. Systematic Reviews, 11, 163. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-022-02025-z

Motro, D., Evans, J. B., Ellis, A. P. J., & Benson, L. (2022). Race and reactions to women’s expressions of anger at work: Examining the effects of the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(1), 142–152. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000884

National Domestic Violence Hotline. (n.d.). What is emotional abuse? https://www.thehotline.org/resources/what-is-emotional-abuse/