4 Steps to Transform Communication with Your Partner

You get home after a long day of work. Once again the house is a mess, the kids haven’t done homework, dinner hasn’t been started and your partner is sitting on the couch watching the ballgame.Suddenly your muscles tense up, your heart starts pounding, your hands get cold and clammy, and your breathing becomes more rapid. You know if you say anything it is going to come out the wrong way. You have just entered the “fight or flight” zone.To understand why our bodies react this way to anger, we must return to caveman and cavewoman days. Imagine having to hunt for food and protect your family from wild beasts. Our species survived because we developed an adaptive coping response called the “fight or flight mechanism,” so when danger approached, we were physically able to meet the threat. Our survival depended on either fighting off the beast or fleeing to escape.When we experience the fight or flight response, the body automatically becomes physiologically aroused; the nervous system responds to engage the perceived threat. Heart rate accelerates. Blood pressure rises. Adrenaline pumps. Blood flows away from the extremities to the heart. Breathing grows shallow and rapid to take in more oxygen. Pupils dilate to sharpen our focus. Hearing becomes more acute. All this happens in preparation to kill the beast or run away.It is actually the body’s alarm system that lets you know danger is approaching and you have to defend and protect yourself. It primes you to fight. When two people are in their “fight or flight,” watch out.The amygdala, the part of our brain responsible for our feelings, is so efficient at this process that it responds immediately; before the pre-frontal lobe, where we house thought, judgment and conscience, has a chance to logically check on the reasonableness of our response. In other words, it emotionally “hijacks” us.This worked for us in olden times, but we live in the present. When we become angry with our spouse today, and experience our fight or flight response, we may react before we think. We say things we don’t mean that hurt our partner. We become critical, defensive, mean, and/or withdraw. Studies show if these responses are chronic they will lead to the death of a relationship.Research has shown that it takes at least 20 minutes and often longer for our arousal to calm down. During this period our tolerance for frustration is lower, so if our partner says something that irritates us, we may snap more quickly than we usual. The brain is primed to get angry again.Once our nervous system returns to its resting state, we can move from the amygdala, the emotional part of the brain, back to the pre-frontal lobe, the thinking part. Only then can we have a rational conversation.I hear you thinking, “Thanks for the science lesson, but what can I do?” Here are the four steps that will transform your communication:

1. When you are angry with your partner STOP talking. Resume the conversation only when your fight or flight response is calmed.
2. Manage your part of the conflict. Study your fight or flight response to increase your awareness of your physiology, find ways to interrupt your habitual ways of responding and use self-soothing techniques to calm your arousal.
3. Learn and practice ways to lower your general anger threshold. Manage your overall stress level by exploring stress management techniques and finding what works for you.
4. Use what Gottman calls “a gentle start-up” when you have difficult conversations. Start conversations about difficult topics more gently than harshly. The way you say things really does matter.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week...How to Manage Your Part of the ConflictWe would love to hear your thoughts about how to manage the fight or flight response on Facebook or email us at info@RelationshipsWork.com.Image Copyright Wavebreak Media Ltd