What are some ineffective ways to communicate? Blame, judgment, sarcasm, giving the cold shoulder, interruption, name calling, “you always”/"you never”, and debating what is “normal” or “healthy”…..they have one thing in common: they don’t work.
Why do couples keep doing these things when, at some level, they know they are ineffective? It has to do with how our brains operate.
Actually, we have 3 brains in one. The part we think of as our brain (the part that consciously thinks) is the most recent in evolutionary terms. We can call it our human brain. We also have a mammalian brain. This part of the brain does not think beyond the principle of “avoid pain, repeat pleasure.” This part of the brain carries out that principle by constantly scanning the environment for clues about impending pain or pleasure. The last component is our reptilian brain. This handles automatic functions (like breathing and keeping your heart beating) and also the survival system of fight, flee, freeze, or submit.
Once danger is detected by the mammalian brain, the human brain has only seconds to call off the alarm before the reptilian brain survival system takes over the whole show. As we try to understand our behavior in relationships, it is important to recognize that the mammalian brain does not distinguish much between physical and emotional pain. In fact, the part of your brain that activates when you experience physical pain is the same part that activates when you feel rejected, criticized, shamed, embarrassed, put down or humiliated[1].
When these things happen to us, our brains store those memories in a special way and then use them as templates or patterns to try to recognize and avoid similar experiences. When memory is stored in this way, it is not recalled but re-experienced as if happening now. It feels like the prior pain could return at any time because it is still living in your brain as a present threat. This is why you can’t just force yourself to “get over it” (though you might suppress your conscious awareness of it).
The “painful pattern” recognition part of your brain functions without your conscious awareness or control. It’s like a reflex. Once the mammalian brain has become convinced of something (e.g., dog = danger) it does not like to take the risk of considering new ideas (e.g., some dogs ≠ danger). If you are afraid of flying or dogs or people yelling, someone pointing out the safety statistics about flying or the non-violent nature of a particular dog or yeller isn’t going to make you feel much better.
Even though the mammalian brain is not sophisticated at thinking, it is very sophisticated at scanning the environment for its perception of danger. This reflex can be set off by any of your senses and it reacts quickly…in about a quarter of a second. If the pattern is detected, it sends out a red alert. Your frontal cortex has about 6 seconds (less if you’ve been traumatized) to call off the alarm before your body begins to flood with adrenaline and cortisol as part of priming you to fight or flee.
This is what is happening when someone is “triggered.” Your human brain has gone off-line, your mammalian brain is sounding the alarm, and your reptilian brain is looking for the fastest possible method to escape pain. Unfortunately, our “go to” methods of getting relief are usually to try to dominate (fight) or disengage (flee), and these actions will likely trigger our partners. Almost always, under all the ineffective things that couples do are efforts to get relief from feelings of fear, pain, helplessness, hopelessness, inadequacy or insecurity. It helps to remember this: when it comes to humans, every form of attack is actually a defense.
[1] the anterior cingular cortex
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