Relationships can bring out the best in us, and they can bring out the worst. I remember vividly a particularly vicious argument I had with my husband regarding the state and frequency of kitchen trash removal. On fire with righteous anger and flooded with emotion, I pleaded my case and he defended his. Hours of hot debate ensued, which finally escalated into the questioning of his love for me, his ability to “hear” to me (if he did he’d agree with me after all!), and the validity and workability of the whole relationship. All this over taking out the trash.

I cannot tell you how many times I hear in my coaching practice, “well it all started when he forgot the milk at the store”, or “I was fine until she looked at me that way”. The truth is, it is not about the trash, the milk, the look or the way someone is breathing (yep, that happened). Those are topics. If you want to really understand what is going on you need to get to the issues beneath the topics. (For more on that see my post on conscious conflict)

By how do we go from zero to sixty in under 3 seconds? To understand that, we need a bit of brain science. You see, we all have a lizard within us. That primitive and reptilian part of our brain that is automatic because its main job is to keep us safe. When we are” triggered”, or flooded with emotion, our brain sees it as a sign of threat and thus goes on defense. At that moment, we awaken the lizard, and we react. When we react, we then reenact old patterns of defense and aggression from our inner arsenal. My lizard then triggers your lizard and the next thing we know we have two lizards having a very intense argument. Because we are in protection mode, all kinds of deeper triggers are revealed and we deviate down the road of “you never____ “,and “you always_____”.  The argument then escalates as anger (which is old and not even about the topic at hand) and defenses rise. Rather than speaking assertively, we easily fall into aggressive behaviors and begin to accuse, criticize, or yell. Rather than listening actively, we interrupt, belittle, withdrawal and ignore. In this state of escalation, it is not uncommon to say or do things we later regret. Moreover, it is nearly impossible to have a productive conversation.

Lizards are great at being lizards, but they are terrible at communicating and equally as bad at problem solving.

So what do we do to tame the lizard? Among the most successful strategies, involve awareness, time and humor. First off, we need the ability to ascertain the lizard has entered the building. Thus, we need enough awareness to defuse from the trigger and find the deeper layers. Time outs are also incredibility beneficial as we quiet the reactive reptilian brain by engaging our thinking brain. We put some space between stimulus and reaction, so we can choose a response rather than be on automatic pilot. A time-out provides us an opportunity to cool down, identify the issues beneath the topics, and begin to think productively again about how to approach the issues at hand. Humor also has the ability to quell the reptile by calling out it’s ridiculousness, giving us the gift of levity and removing us from reaction. All these strategies are ways we turn towards one another rather than away, reminding us we are actually on the same team. And this team focus is a vital part of a healthy and lasting relationship.