It is related to the fact that people tend to strive to maintain an internal congruence between our opinions, values and ways of proceeding. The moment this balance is threatened, the person feels very uncomfortable and there is an interest in restoring it.
Anxiety in childhood or adolescence is an adaptive reaction of children and young people to occasions that are experienced as dangerous or threatening. If this experience is quite recurrent, it can produce a nosology. In childhood and adolescence, anxiety can manifest itself in different ways: through fears such as specific phobias, school phobia or popular phobia, separation anxiety from attachment figures, excessive and extended daily restlessness in front of different occasions or through panic attacks. Anxiety is accompanied by physical, cognitive and behavioral manifestations, which must be evaluated and also intervened.
- Physical reactions: Increased heart rate, tremors, sweating, trouble breathing, nausea, dizziness… It is necessary to help children and young people to buy items that allow them to monitor and disable these reactions, learning tactics such as relaxation, breathing and breathing. meditation, which will allow you to return to tranquility.
- Cognitive reactions: Children and young people, in these situations, develop thoughts related to insecurity, helplessness, anticipation of risks or low self-esteem that complicate the fight against what anguishes them. You must intervene to help them admit the thoughts and explore tactics to challenge or distance them.
- Behavioral reactions: Children and young people with anxiety or depression tend to develop ways of proceeding that want to avoid what they worry about or care about.
The moment the «must» collides with the «need»
The cognitive discord in sensitive dependence appears at the moment in which the person feels that every day is a sentence to the side of another person. So be it because the couple harasses, annuls, is combative or quarrelsome, is unfaithful, and so on. The result is that the self-esteem of the linked person is little by little more damaged.
At the moment when the sensitive ligature has a moment of lucidity, he opens his eyes and manages to contemplate this situation, he becomes aware of the evil that he is tolerating. In this trance, your thoughts veer towards “I should leave this relationship because it hurts me”.
Cognitive Discord in a Toxic Relationship with a Narcissist, Psychopath or Sociopath
An individual who is abused by their narcissistic, psychopathic or sociopathic partner does not want the situation they are experiencing. However, because of questioning herself, or because of fear of being left alone, or because of all that she has now invested in the relationship, she can stay.
When it comes to investing in the relationship, being in the first weeks of a relationship with someone is not exactly the same as having a marriage and 2 children together. The more we find ourselves emotionally invested in a relationship with someone, the more likely it is that we will eliminate the cognitive discordance with defense mechanisms such as denial or rationalization rather than leaving the relationship. Cognitive discordance, in such a case, will manifest itself as follows:
How can I understand if I have a cognitive discordance?
There are three signs that may indicate that you are struggling with cognitive discordance:
- You feel bad physically: you have anxiety, problems, confusion, palpitations, dizziness or much more vertigo than what you are used to having.
- You have spent time trying to find reasons to justify an action that does not conform to your values.
- You avoid some occasions that, you have no idea for what reason, make you quite uncomfortable: you have the feeling that there is a horrible situation that you do not want to even approach and that, sometimes, you are about to find out.
WHAT IS COGNITIVE DISSONANCE?
Let’s look at what Wikipedia says:
In psychology, the term cognitive discord is related to the tension or internal disharmony of the system of ideas, opinions and emotions (cognitions) perceived by an individual who has two thoughts in conflict at the same time, or by an action in conflict with their opinions. In other words, the term is related to the perceived incompatibility of 2 simultaneous cognitions, each and every one of which has the possibility of harming their reactions.