Copyright Patti Henry, 2005

I'm SO Angry I could SCREAM!

Have you ever traveled to a foreign country where you don't speak the native language and they don't speak yours? A curious thing happens if you need to get information from someone there. They explain their point, you stare at them blankly and say, “I'm sorry, I don't understand,” and then, they say their point all over again: louder. If you continue to indicate that you still don't understand, they say it again: even louder. Now the problem is, if you don't understand Chinese when it is spoken softly, neither will you when it is amplified!

We have this same phenomenon in many primary relationships. First of all, I contend, we teach little boys and little girls two different emotional languages as they grow up. We tell boys, “big boys don't cry,” “suck it up,” “don't be a sissy.” That is, we tell them: cut off from your emotional self, don't feel, and if you do, for goodness sake's don't show it or talk about it. We tell girls, “Talk about it!” We comfort them when they are sad or scared. We listen to their whole story about what happened. We nurture them and give full permission for their feelings.

So, we actively teach little boys to cut off from their emotional selves and even the language needed to communicate their internal process, while all the while encouraging our little girls to develop and even become articulate in emotional expression. Twenty years later we put these two in the same room and wonder, why aren't they getting along?

Women wonder, “Why don't they get it?!” while men wonder, “Why are they screaming?!”

We all need to feel heard, listened to, responded to. We all also have a natural reaction to not being heard: get louder. I am asking you in this article to become aware of this natural reaction, realize it is not effective, and do something else. Why? Because if a person doesn't understand Chinese when it is spoken softly, neither will they when it is amplified.

Let me put it another way: if screaming worked, it would have worked by now. If screaming worked, all the therapists of the world would just tell their clients to go home and yell: louder.

What really happens when you scream at your partner is that you overwhelm him neurologically. It puts him into a traumatized state where he can't even process the information you are giving him. Remember, men have missed years of practice in the area of communicating on an emotional level. Because of this, they, in general, do it slower than women. Think about learning a foreign language, let's say Spanish. After much study and practice, we finally decide to go on a vacation to Spain. What's the first thing we do when we get there and someone starts rattling off things in Spanish? We ask them to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. If they are able to speak Spanish slowly, our brains have enough time to process the information. If they speak rapidly, we are lost.

So, one thing you can do differently with your partner, is slow things down. Have some spaces in what you are saying so he has time to process it. Take breaks in the discussion. Put it on hold a bit. Sometimes my husband will say to me, “Even though you could continue to talk about this for hours if need be, I cannot. I am full and I have to take a break now. I can't hear anything else you are saying from this point on.” I have come to believe him - and learned to stop talking.

The second thing you can do is change your volume. Screaming overwhelms and frustrates your partner, and, on some level, scares him. Think of it this way, verbal bludgeoning probably doesn't make you go towards a person. It makes you say to yourself, “This person is not safe. Run!” That's what happens to your partner, too. To change this pattern, you must actively work on making your communication SAFE.

Always, my goal in working with a couple is to teach them to create win/wins in their relationship. That the woman can get her needs met - which includes being heard - and the man can get his needs met - which includes being heard as well. This can only happen if the screaming - what I call the hurricane - stops.

With best regards to you and your partner,
Patti
June 1, 2005