10 steps to stop yelling
Yelling feels good. You know when you go by a playground, and you hear the kids screaming. SCREAMING. And you wonder how they can be so dang loud. But later you get frustrated and you yell and it releases your tension.
Yeah, that tension release feels good. In the moment. And their little faces fall or they cry or hide, and you feel gross. Bad. Shameful. And you beat yourself up..
How could you lose control? How could you be such a terrible parent? You swore last time was the last time, and you’d never do it again.
It’s so fucking hard to stop, though.
How do people just NOT yell?
Let me go through my ten steps. (It’s 10 because I follow James Altucher’s 10 ideas rule, so I wrote 10 things that helped me stop yelling).
Calm yourself. There are several ideas that go under calming yourself, keeping calm, and responding calmly.
I wrote an entire article on this, but it bears repeating. Calm is learned, like anything else. Yelling to relieve tension is also learned. The message often starts with our own parents and then is reinforced when we become parents and yell ourselves.
Calm is best practiced, like any other skill, prior to it being needed. We train for a race; we train our muscles before we need them; we practice for tests. It’s rare that we think about how we can train our brains: to be calm, to focus on the positive.
We can train for calm with self-care.
Meditation, movement, connection, and sleep are the basics of self-care. A daily meditation practice, some form of movement, having someone in your life you can connect with for support and empathy, and prioritizing sleep sometimes. Doing small things that make you happy every day.
Small steps are the best way forward.
We often believe explosions of anger come out of nowhere or from some minor upset. Over time, tensions build in our body and mind, building until a minor upset sets us off.
Depending on your level of anger and anxiety, check in with yourself regularly. At least once a day, but more often if you are finding yourself struggling to keep your emotions in check. Sit for a few minutes and do a body scan, notice areas that are tense or swirling, notice where you are calm and still.
Peter Levine has a technique called pendulation. You focus on the upset part of your body, then focus on the calm, then pendulate between the two and bring the calm into the swirling part.
3. Notice your thoughts as well.
Having you been speaking negatively to yourself? Are you shaming yourself? What story are you telling yourself about the world around you? Have you done anything nice for yourself in the last few hours?
If you find you are very tense, take a few minutes and do a short meditation to center and calm yourself.
Knowing your triggers.
Triggers is one of those buzzwords that has a bad rap. Many people believe it’s anything that causes minor upset. In mental health terms, it’s something that causes extreme overwhelm or upset.
I’ve written about using solution seeking with our kids to prevent upset, but we can also use it with ourselves to prevent ourselves from being upset. And that starts with noticing what situations we are most likely to get upset in and having a proactive plan.
I am most likely to yell when I am worried I am going to be late for work. Knowing that, I now am mindful of the time and how much time I need to get ready and try to avoid distractions that may cause me to feel rushed. Less yelling.
Often our biggest triggers are moments from our past.
You may notice certain stages of your kid’s development or situations cause extreme upset for reasons you don’t really understand. Often that’s a sign that something in your past is being triggered. With some thought or sometimes asking your parents if you have a relationship where you can ask and discuss your childhood, you may find what situations are causing the upset.
Gentle parenting can be very healing. It allows us to give ourselves empathy, and we can find healing in changing how we react to our children when faced with situations that mirror our history.
I want to write an article about the stories we tell ourselves. Whenever there is tension, I know there is a story in my head. I don’t always have time in the moment to unravel it, but later I try to take time to see what story I am telling myself.
Going back to my worries of being late. I have a story in my head that if I am late, my boss will be disappointed and eventually they will fire me and… on and on the story goes until I’ve imagined being evicted because I was late once.
You don’t have to believe every story your mind tells you. Questioning the story, changing the story, and using the story to take action are three ways to stop it from taking over your mind.
Questioning: is the story true? Do I have evidence?
Changing the story: It’s okay to be late. Everyone is late sometimes. My boss is a kind person who understands that sometimes this happens.
Taking action: Being late makes me worried, so tonight I'll go to bed early so I can get up ten minutes earlier, and I won’t look at Facebook while I’m getting ready. I’ll put on some music and make sure my child gets dressed five minutes earlier than usual in case there’s an issue with socks.
Another story we often have isn’t about ourselves, it’s about what our child’s behaviour means. We create a story about a defiant child, a misbehaving child. Those are all stories we have that make us respond negatively. Those are stories we get from society about our children’s behavior.
If instead, we see a child who is struggling to meet our expectations, who doesn’t have the same agenda as us, then we can respond with connection and collaboration.
When kids are acting out or not being obedient, I always remind parents to see the behavior as communication of emotion and need. As parents, we want to respond to those with empathy and validation, then later we can find a solution together.
The last part is how to respond in the moment.
Calm yourself first.
Take a few deep breaths, call in your calm, remind yourself that your child is struggling as much as you are. You cannot teach your child to be calm, if you cannot model calm.
Have alternatives
When it comes to yelling, sometimes the stress overwhelms us. Sometimes we can’t calm ourselves. Sometimes we need to take action to release the pent up energy before we can respond calmly.
I like Orange Rhino’s 100 things to do instead of yelling list. But some general things might be taking a few deep breaths, or doing physical activity.
Some people like punching something to get that energy out. There was one study that showed that punching something doesn’t help, but I’m super suspect of that study. It was like giving people a few minutes to get their anger out. What if it takes me longer than a few minutes to release my anger?
Empathy first. Empathy, always.
I say empathy a lot. Empathy empathy empathy. It’s so important, and so easy, but also so difficult. No one told me how to use empathy. I struggle with it still. EVERY DAY.
“I see you're having a hard time. I don’t like when that happens either.”
Don’t forget to give yourself empathy.
There we go, 10 methods I used when I was working on not yelling. I haven’t yelled in a few weeks. I’ll check with my kids on that number. But yelling isn't frequent anymore in my house. Not because my children are more compliant, or less argumentative, but because I changed how I move about in the world.