Why Your Arguments Keep Escalating, and What to Do to Reconnect Quicker
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
Vicky Murgatroyd is an Emotional Safety Educator and Relationship Specialist who helps people break recurring conflict cycles. With over 15 years of experience working with trauma-informed relational patterns, she teaches emotional safety as the foundation for meaningful, secure connections.
Most couples don't have a communication problem, they have a nervous system problem. But while we keep working on our communication, the same arguments keep running, taking us further from resolution and connection than either partner wants.
The real reason your arguments keep escalating
When an argument starts, most people try harder to get their point across, they explain, justify, and repeat themselves in slightly different ways. They’re convinced that if they could just find the right combination of words, their partner would finally understand. We tend to believe that this understanding will end the argument and return us to our usual connection, even though historically, it never has.
Because the argument isn't going in circles because the words aren't right. It's going in circles because both nervous systems are in a threat response.
From that threat response, we’re unable to receive or process the words being said, however well structured or factually correct they are.
What's happening beneath every circular argument
When tension rises, like it does when we’re in conflict with our partner, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for empathy, rational thinking, and communication, is deprioritised. Instead, survival and self-protection take centre stage. This is never a conscious decision.
From that state, your partner doesn’t have the capacity to process your words. They’re responding to the activation underneath them, the urgency in your voice, the tension in your body, the felt sense of threat that your nervous system is broadcasting, which also isn’t a conscious decision.
It’s two activated nervous systems trying to communicate through avenues that aren’t available in that moment and accidentally escalating one another, even though the intention is to repair.
The resolution to your arguments is in your body
The quickest route through conflict involves us working from where the activation is, in your body. This is how we bring both people back to a physiological state where communication is neurologically available again.
This is what I teach my clients to get them out of these argument loops.
The RESET process is a five-stage framework that moves you from those triggered states to a repair-ready state by working directly with the nervous system.
Through the five stages, we discharge the activation, identify what's actually happening beneath it, and return to a state where you can show up for the conversation your relationship needs right now.
Conflict like this becomes a way of resolving issues and bringing you closer together.
In the next section, I'll take you through the first two stages. These alone can interrupt an argument that would otherwise run for hours.
1. Recognise: Identify what's happening in your body right now
Without judgment or trying to fix it immediately, take a moment right now and notice, "Where are you feeling activation in your body? Is there tightness in your chest? Heat in your face or throat? A heaviness in your stomach? A restlessness that makes it hard to be still?"
In our societies, we are deeply conditioned to live in our minds, so initially accessing the sensations in the body can feel a little clunky. It requires repetition for it to become easier, and practising this in moments of lower activation, outside those big blow-ups just yet, is deeply helpful.
Start here, without trying to analyse it or make it make sense, just acknowledge the sensations in your body.
“I’m having a physical response to what just happened. My heart is beating quickly, I can feel tightness in my chest and heat in my face.”
That's a human nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s detected a threat, and it’s responding to it. When we take even a second to recognise it, we become the observer of the pattern rather than being swept away in it.
2. Exhale: Work directly with the body to create space
In this stage, we use somatic techniques to discharge some of that activation, creating the space for us to process the reaction and the necessary emotions without being overtaken by them or acting from them, which is often where our arguments escalate.
Start by shaking your body. Yes, this will likely feel strange, but egos aside, shaking is one of the most primal and effective ways to discharge stress from your nervous system. Animals do it instinctively after a threat has passed. Let your body move, arms, legs, shoulders, loosely and freely.
Let your breath flow deeply as you do, and do this for around 30 seconds.
When you come to stillness, take a deep breath and do a slow scan of your body. Notice what's shifted and where any activation is still noticeable. Has anything softened or moved?
Next, take your left hand and place your palm gently over your left eye, covering it completely. With your uncovered right eye, slowly roll your gaze upward toward the ceiling. As you hold that for around 30 seconds, repeat internally, “It’s 'ok' that there is activation in my body. I am still safe.” Stay with this until you feel a physical release, like a deep breath, a yawn, a shiver, or a sense of something softening or releasing. Then gently lower your gaze.
Finally, take a full breath in, and as you exhale, hum. As loud as feels comfortable. Really let yourself feel it resonating in your chest and throat. Repeat this three times.
Notice what's different now from when you started.
That shift, even if subtle, is your nervous system moving out of a threat response. From that slightly more regulated place, reconnection becomes possible.
Access the RESET process here to end arguments quicker
The remaining three stages of the RESET process take you from this even slightly more regulated place into the heart of what the argument was actually about.
Together, these five stages move an argument that would otherwise last hours into something that can be resolved in minutes, all by addressing the nervous system conditions that were making resolution difficult first.
The full guided RESET training is free and available on my site. In it, I guide you through the entire process, including the complete somatic exercise sequence and the framework for moving from triggered to repair-ready in 18 minutes. It's designed to be used in real time, for me to guide you through it in the moment you need it most.
Understanding why your arguments last longer than they need to is a great place to start. Having a process that actually interrupts the cycle is where real change happens.
Access the full RESET training here.
Read more from Vicky Murgatroyd
Vicky Murgatroyd, Emotional Safety & Relationship Specialist
Vicky Murgatroyd is an Emotional Safety Educator and Relationship Specialist who helps people break recurring conflict cycles and build secure, fulfilling connections. With over 15 years of experience working with trauma-informed relational patterns, she has helped thousands of clients understand their triggers, regulate reactivity, and rebuild connection from a place of safety rather than survival. Vicky’s work focuses on teaching emotional safety as a foundational human skill, using intimate relationships as the arena where our deepest patterns are most visible.
