In general, it is absolutely normal for people to experience anxiety during their lives, especially in challenging or emotional situations. However, continuous, strong, and unreasonable anxiety may lead to serious mental health disorders that impact relationships with other people (Bandelow, Michaelis, & Wedekind, 2017). From the personal perspective, anxiety may play a role in conflict indirectly by making a person more vulnerable to the experiencing of negative emotions and their escalation.
As a matter of fact, anxiety is frequently characterized by stress, tension, nervousness, moral conflict, and restlessness due to a sense of panic or impending danger. In addition, anxiety may be expressed as a social anxiety disorder associated with an individual’s desire to avoid other people (Bandelow et al., 2017). Thus, when a person with anxiety faces an unexpected emotional situation, he may be overtaken by anger or frustration that will inevitably lead to conflict (“Psychodynamic theory and the parking lot scuffle,” n.d.).
In addition, already existing inner moral conflict or particular personal or religious beliefs that may be developed due to anxiety frequently causes negative emotions against others and cause conflicts. Concerning the case of Jay and Tim, there is no clear evidence of the impact of any party’s mental health on the situation, however, it is possible to assume that Jay had anxiety. It could be partly justified by his absent-minded state when he was parking and the intention to avoid conflict with Tim and go away.
Psychodynamic theory differentiates anxiety and fear along with internal and external danger. In other words, fear arises when a person encounters a real external danger to escape from it (Grecucci et al., 2020). In turn, anxiety appears when an individual faces an imagined or internal threat. Thus, it arises when people experience any emotion that was previously perceived as highly threatening and associate it with an interpersonal danger (Grecucci et al., 2020). Therefore, anxiety may be regarded as a signal of arising emotions that may threaten interactions with others and cause conflict.
According to psychodynamic theory, as a whole cluster of disorders, anxiety may substantially affect experienced emotions. For example, emotions become dysregulated due to association with conditioned anxiety and connection with secondary emotions caused by the mechanisms of defense (Grecucci et al., 2020). At the same time, another source of anxiety is negative emotions harmful to the relationships between people. In other words, there is a link between anxiety reactions and anger, frustration, disrespect, or fear.
References
Bandelow, B., Michaelis, S., & Wedekind, D. (2017). Treatment of anxiety disorders. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 19(2), 93-107. Web.
Grecucci, A., Sığırcı, H, Lapomarda G., Amodeo, L., Messina, I., & Frederickson, J. (2020). Anxiety regulation: From affective neuroscience to clinical practice. Brain Sciences, 10(11), 846. Web.
Psychodynamic theory and the parking lot scuffle. (n.d.). Case Study 2.2.
The Iraq War. (n.d.). Web.
The parking lot scuffle. (n.d.). Case Study 2.1.
Yip, J. A., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2016). Mad and misleading: Incidental anger promotes deception. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 137, 201-217. Web.