5 Steps to De-escalating an argument with your loved one
Hey everybody, let's say you're a very mild -mannered person, but all of us get caught up in the moment sometimes and feel ourselves escalating into an area of angst or anger, and you just want to ramp up and get into it. So luckily, Preeti has five tips or five steps you could go through to bring it back down to center and take away the drama or the pain. So Preeti, if you find yourself getting caught up escalating, really just getting into that negative emotion,
What can someone do to put the brakes on? What would you recommend? Yeah, I think putting the brakes on is exactly what we're trying to do here. So what's happened is that you're triggered. You want to pick a fight. You see the fight. You want to escalate it. But there's a teeny tiny part of you that says, that may not be the right thing. It's going to make things worse. We don't listen to that part of us. We listen to the part of us that is louder and screaming, pick the fight. And so the very first line of defense against this primitive form of thinking which is really being in fight -or -flight mode is to pause. Just stop. Do not march into the room and talk to your husband. Do not call your kid and yell at them on their phone. Just pause and take a breath. It's okay. It doesn't need to be solved right this second. And recognize the fact that you're in distress and that you have feelings and your feelings are valid.
but they may not be true and they may actually be tripping you up. The next thing we do is to actually investigate the thought. Is this a feeling or is this a fact? If it's a feeling, it still means that your feelings are valid, but feelings aren't necessarily always things that you need to act on. You especially don't need to act on it in the moment where you're still feeling the thing very deeply. If it's a fact, then that's something different. That might be something that you want to continue to explore, but again, not in this heightened state, a little bit later when you've had some time to calm down. And then the third one is a series of questions that we recommend that you ask. And it is one, does it need to be said? If there's a beef that you have with somebody else and can't wait to tell them this thing.
Is it something that they need to hear? Do they need to hear this thing? Is it life threatening? Is it critical? Is it crucial? The answer is probably no. The second question is, does it need to be said by me? I ask myself this question all the time. Do I need to be the messenger? Am I the person responsible to deliver this information or am I self -employed judge and jury and possibly even executioner?
And the answer is that if I'm triggered and I'm in fight or flight mode, the answer is most likely no. I am not the person who needs to say all these things. And then the third one is, does it need to be said right now? Once again, the pause. It's the most important part of this. It's the part of it that you can actually train your brain to do. If you practice this, you will automatically pause. Instead of just going full throttle, you'll find yourself over time and it doesn't take that long.
You'll find yourself over time just stopping and taking that beat, taking that breath, re -centering yourself, and you'll feel really, really good about yourself. Because when you pursue the triggered feelings, when you pursue the primitive part of your brain and what it's telling you to do, which is to fight, fight, fight, you tend to bring a lot of shame onto yourself. And then the last thing is sleeping on it. We want to...
have people in our lives who are healthy and model healthy relationships and healthy behavior. So if you have a person like that in your life, I would sleep on it and I would wake up in the morning, maybe write down a couple of thoughts, call that person and say, hey, there's something I want to run by you. Two minds are always better than one. And the perspective of a trusted friend or family member that you have could be really valuable at this time. But I also suspect that
By the end of these five steps, your nervous system has calmed down. You're not as angry. You have not added fuel to your own fire and you're probably feeling a little bit more in control and the executive functioning can turn on. Pausing and breathing is a way for us to override our fight or flight response, which is the sympathetic nervous system. And it is overwritten by executive functioning. It's overwritten. We can actually do full system reset.
by doing all of this and not getting ourselves into more trouble. that's a great tip. So if you have a way that you like to calm down or take yourself out of that emotion or that moment, leave it in the comments below and share it with other people. It might help them. And if you like what you heard, head over to maya4life.com, maya4life.com. You can check out all our blog post videos and all of the courses. That's great. Oftentimes men will walk out of the room.
And if you've ever had a partner, a friend or a family member and you're a woman and it's, a male person has walked out of the room in the middle of the conversation, you know that that is deeply infuriating. But actually what they are doing is incredibly healthy. Not coming back to it ever and sweeping it under the rug is unhealthy, but walking out of the room and saying, I can't handle this now. And men often do this because they have different chemicals running through their systems. And sometimes. those chemicals make them want to have a physical reaction and they know that that is not appropriate. So a man who stops himself and says, I don't want to talk about this right now is not necessarily doing the wrong thing. They're not walking away from you. They are trying to self -regulate. I think if we had a little bit more compassionate understanding for that would go a lot better. Curt, has there ever been an instance where you've been in the heat of the moment with a friend or a loved one and you just said, I need a minute?
Yeah. So that's a really good distinction because that can be interpreted as you're turning your back, you're walking out of the room. So you're just ignoring the person, you're a coward. That's how you deal with your feelings could be one projection of that. But like you said, if someone needs to take a second, take a moment, and they need to just go on the porch, walk away, because things are escalating, that's a very smart thing to do. But you're right, if you don't come back to it and you never bring it up again and it just is dismissed, then the other person isn't getting heard.
And that issue just resonates underneath the surface as a fight down the road, or just as an irritant, or ramps up the negative resentment that builds over time that you don't deal with this, you don't talk to me, right? That's a common one you'll hear. Well, I had to walk away because I was getting upset. I didn't want to say something or do something, but then you never came back to discuss it calmly. And that's the part, maybe, where men aren't the greatest at, is coming back around and dealing with their feelings or emotions.
Not a strong point, Ahmed, we'll just go with that. And you know what, we are big admirers of the Gottman Institute (gottman.com). The work that the Gottmans have done on relationships has been great over time, and they actually have a guide how to fight healthy for couples, and it's one that we highly recommend. Absolutely. How do we find more information on all of these relationship techniques? We should go to maya4life.com, maya4life.com.
And check out the blogs, check out the courses we offer, not only for teens and tweens who are building up their self -esteem and self -confidence, but also for adults on how to talk to your teen and your child as well. And kind of maybe take those generational patterns and change them or generational traumas and try not to pass them on to your kids. So check out Maya4Life.com and get in touch with us.
DO YOU HAVE A FAMILY MEMBER ADDICTED TO DRAMA AND CHAOS?
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