Reinterpreting “Fighting Words”
My dog, Happy—a gentle, twelve-year-old golden retriever—and I recently went for a walk in a massive, wooded park. Because it was very early in the morning and no one else was around, I let her run off leash.
Things were peaceful until Happy trotted a short distance ahead of me up a hill, rounded a bend, and encountered a woman running the trails alone.
As I caught up to the two of them, the woman yelled at me, “You need to keep your dog on a leash! There are coyotes here!”
I forced a smile and thanked her. But privately, I bristled at the audacity of this stranger scolding me so aggressively for such an innocent offense, allowing my dog to walk freely while supposedly risking an attack by local coyotes.
“Geez,” I thought.
I kept walking, trying to push past my irritation and enjoy the morning. And then it dawned on me: She wasn’t scolding me. She was terrified for her own safety. She wasn’t worried about what a coyote might do to Happy; she thought Happy was the coyote!
Now I was scolding myself for being so thick-headed and insensitive. It served as a powerful, humbling reminder of a core communication trap: We constantly misinterpret other people’s fear as fight.
The Threat Processing Continuum
According to neuroscientists, fear and fight exist on a seamless, overlapping continuum within the brain’s threat-processing system. Neurologically and chemically, fear is the internal assessment of danger, while fight is the resulting physical action deployed to conquer it.
Because of this biological wiring, a person’s tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, and abrupt words will often look and sound like an unprovoked attack on you, when in reality, they are simply afraid and trying to protect themselves.
Why does this distinction matter?
It matters because, as the old adage goes, hurt people hurt people. When we understand the underlying fear, we can replace our natural defensiveness with genuine empathy.
Take a common workplace dynamic: an executive who aggressively shoots down a junior colleague’s proposal in front of the entire team. It looks like a cruel, ego-driven attack. But if you look beneath the surface, that executive is often operating out of deep professional fear—fear of missing a quarterly target, fear of losing control, or fear of looking incompetent to the board. They are acting out of an internal threat assessment.
Breaking the Cycle of Escalation
Does understanding their fear justify or rationalize the pain caused by their sharp words?
Probably not. It is unacceptable for a leader to publicly demean a colleague, just as it was a bit extreme for a runner to scream at me in a quiet prairie.
However, reinterpreting the interaction fundamentally changes our response to the wounds inflicted on us.
Instead of yelling back at the runner (or offering a hand gesture that reflected my initial agitation), I can choose to remain gracious and generous. I don’t need to defend myself, launch a counterattack, or escalate the tension. I don’t need to burn my relationship capital just to prove I’m right.
I will admit, this has been a difficult lesson for me to learn. More than once over the last few years, I’ve leaned on my car horn, given a piece of my mind to an overwhelmed airline gate agent, or dished back sharp criticism in the name of self-defense. None of those are moments I’m proud of. None of them accumulated equity or built mutual understanding. And none of my aggressive actions made the other person feel any less afraid. They only made it worse.
The Takeaway
If you want to master the art of interaction, start auditing your interpretations of other people’s “offensive” behavior.
You very well might be wrong about what is actually driving their adrenaline-spiked reactions. Most of the time, it isn’t a deliberate mission to offend or hurt you. It is simply because they are afraid.
Whose actions do you need to pause and reinterpret in your professional or personal life right now?
