The No. 1 Reason Why Your Partner Takes Criticism Personally

"In any healthy disagreement, two people exchange their perspectives with each other. However, if the conflict is personal in nature, something else happens. The nervous system interprets criticism as danger, and your body reacts before your logic can catch up. Personal conflict can cause your heart rate to rise and your defenses to activate. You may feel shame or maybe even shut down completely."

"When someone close criticizes us, our fight-or-flight circuitry scans for danger. And before you know it, a small complaint your partner raised isn't a repair request anymore, it's a verdict on who you are. The single best explanation for that lightning-fast slide from "disagreement" to "I'm under attack" is attachment sensitivity. It influences how wired your brain is to treat close others as sources of safety and how prone you are to read criticism as a threat to belonging or identity."

"Long before interpersonal therapists called it "attachment," neuroscientists showed that social rejection lights up the brain's pain network. A renowned 2003 study published in Science illustrates this, in which researchers used an exclusion game while people lay in an fMRI scanner. The results showed that feeling left out activated the anterior cingulate cortex, the same region involved in physical pain. That was the brain's alarm, indicating that social threats literally feel like pain."

The nervous system treats personal criticism as a threat, triggering rapid physiological reactions before rational thought intervenes. Fight-or-flight responses can increase heart rate, activate defenses, induce shame, or cause shutting down. Attachment sensitivity determines whether criticism is processed as actionable feedback about behavior or as a verdict on identity and belonging. Social rejection activates the brain's pain network, including the anterior cingulate cortex. Practical responses include naming the alarm sensation, calming the body through regulation techniques, and training partners or team members to pause and return with repair-focused responses to restore connection and resolve disagreements calmly.

Read at Psychology Today