Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting
and about good communication and creating strong bonds in the family relationships. In
this video I'm going to be talking about how to deal with a parent yelling at you.
In this video we're going to talk about what happens when the parent yells at you,
also I'm going to share with you some things that you can do to make sure that you don't have so
many negative experiences and that you're able to handle the situation like a champ. I know it's a
hard circumstance when somebody yells at you. It really feels like you're distant suddenly from
someone, like you're alone and that's a hard thing to take but we do have to remember that people
don't know what they don't know and nobody's perfect. So, if somebody has a bad habit, maybe
they learned it from their parents or maybe they are stressed out and they don't know how to handle
their stress or something like that. It could come out on you. We need to make sure that we don't take
these outbursts super personally. I know that the person seems like they're taking everything very
personally which is why they're yelling but one of your greatest protections in the moment when
somebody is yelling at you whether it's your parent or anybody else is to remember wait a
second. I do not need to take this personally. I do not need to power struggle with them because
it's not going to do any good. If you start yelling back then the distance becomes greater and greater.
The whole idea for family relationships to be healthy and strong is that people come together,
they unify. Now, I know some people don't possess the skills yet but even if one person has skills
and another person doesn't, you actually can create a pretty big effect. So, I definitely want to talk
to you about some of those skills that you can use. The first thing that we need to remember is that
our own mind gets to determine how we take the situation. If we have decided that we are going to
take it personally if somebody yells at us, then it's going to be a disaster every time.
But if we have decided that when somebody yells at us that they're having a moment that is not super
great and that maybe they don't possess a skill to handle their problem or maybe they need some sort
of help or something so that they can handle their problem, that's going to make us more charitable.
Now, I know sometimes that seems really hard. I know sometimes some parents even can be abusive
but usually parents aren't abusive so we're going to assume that that's not the case in your case.
Usually what's happening is they just are feeling an overwhelm of emotion and stress. They've gone to
a mid or a back part of their brain and now at that moment, there's chemicals directing
everything and it's firing out at you. In fact one thing you need to know is after that person
yells and probably you've recognized this for yourself if you've ever happened to yell before
but after that person yells, they will immediately feel this letdown. This chemical let down and then
they'll start analyzing what they said and they might recognize that what they said is actually
not what they really believe. But they may not tell you that at that time but just so you know
when people go completely out of control and they go all the way to back brain, they get irrational.
So they say things that even they don't believe are true so you've got to remember that too. All
the more reason not to take any of those outbursts personally but you should be able to try to stand
up for yourself if you can. So let's talk about how to do that. We're going to talk about how you
can stand up for yourself in a calm and effective manner but before we do, hit the subscribe button
now. There are so many videos on this channel that will help you improve your relationship with your
parents. Some of them might be parenting videos but those parenting videos are going to be giving
you skills that you could use that will make a drastic difference for good in your relationship
with your parents so subscribe now. The very best thing that you can do if you're trying to handle
the situation where somebody's yelling at you like your parent is yelling at you is to focus
on the relationship that you have. What is your relationship status like and can that relationship
improve at all? Usually if somebody is yelling at you your relationship has had a little bit of
strain at least in the moment. So if you can try to continually prepare the relationship for success,
hopefully those moments of yelling will not happen as often. One of the things that you do to prepare
your relationship for success is to acknowledge who each other is in the relationship. So in a
parent-child relationship, each person has a different role. Now if you're an adult
and your parents an adult, these roles that I'm going to be mentioning here are different but if
you're a child then the parent role is actually teacher and the child role is learner. I actually
wrote a book about roles. This book is called Roles: The Secret to Family, Business and Social Success
and in this book you learn a lot more about who you are to each other besides just parent
and teacher which we're talking about right now. It's important that you have a good understanding
about who each other is so that you can communicate more effectively. Now, I know it's
hard to teach that to the parent but if you go to the parent and say you know I've been thinking
about my role and I think I'm not living my role appropriately right now because I'm not allowing
myself to do as much learning which I need to do as a learner. Again, that's just one aspect of
who you are in that family dynamic but you might also want to say you know I noticed that you're
the teacher and you're supposed to be teaching me things and that that teaching is supposed to feel
like I want to take that learning. So, can we improve that. Having that type of open
communication with your parent could actually be just what they need. It's very mature, something
they haven't thought of maybe for a little while or maybe even at all. They're just existing in the
moment and there's the stress and everything else that's building. So bring truth to their
attention. After you talk about your roles and what type of roles you perceive that each other has,
it could be a good idea to have the second part of the conversations that are had in this book.
So, these family members parents and children in the story in this roles book
actually discuss what type of relationship they want to have for the future. So, they make a plan
on where they are headed in their relationship for the future. This is called a vision, a relationship
vision and it ends up becoming really powerful for that bond between parent and child. They then know
they're both headed in the same direction which makes all the corrections easier to take and oddly
enough, easier to give. When your parent is yelling at you, they're feeling very disconnected from you
so usually what happens is something doesn't go right, they get frustrated or discouraged and then
at that point they disconnect from you. But then it gets worse. If the frustration doesn't work, they
get grumpy. After the grumpiness comes impatience and then comes anger so they've been through quite
a cycle of change all because they're trying to force something to happen and they're doing it
without a connection. So, we can't force other people to do things of course but it's a lot
easier to persuade someone to make a change when you have a decent connection with them. When your
parent is angry, that's a pretty good indicator that they've actually been disconnected from you
for quite a few minutes at least, if not hours or days or more. You need to constantly be working on
the connection with your parents so that you don't have these disconnect moments as often.
This means you'll want to take a proactive step. At a time when nobody's angry, nobody's frustrated,
talk to them, open up, talk to them. If you're keeping your whole life to yourself and a secret
then guess what? You're not connected to them either and they feel a disconnection and it's so
much easier for them to disconnect from you. Have open communication with them, ask them for advice,
tell them things that are going on in your day, be a real person to your parents and then maybe
they will start treating you a little bit kinder too because they will feel like they have more
of an investment in your happiness and your success because they know what you're thinking
and what you're doing. We've got to bring them into it. When your parent
misbehaves by yelling at you or acting in a way that seems irrational to you, you've got to forgive
them. Don't hold on to it, that's probably one of the most important things that you could remember
is not to take it personally. Remember we talked about that but that means that you've got to let
it go. You have to drop the subject in your own mind and you've got to tell yourself truths. If
you keep entertaining thoughts about anger because they showed anger to you, then you're just power
struggling. Even if you don't say the words out loud, you're power struggling within your heart.
Your heart needs to be focused on truth which means that in your mind, you've got to tell
yourself true things. What's a truth right now? Oh mom might be stressed. What's another truth? Mom
does not know how to handle this problem. What's another truth that could be happening? Dad doesn't
understand some other part of the story. I will have to explain that to him when we get called.
These are all truths that you can tell yourself that will prepare you to take proactive, really
productive action instead of engaging in a power struggle which is not going to be good for you.
It's important to understand how people get to an emotional place. So if your parent has yelled
at you keep in mind that there was something that they felt at the very beginning. So before we get
emotional, we have a feeling. The feeling might be that frustration that we talked about or stress
or maybe they feel disrespected or not understood by you. Maybe they feel like you don't care. These
might be things that they haven't even told you but they could be feeling at the time. When they
get a feeling like that, they get the opportunity to make a choice about how they are going to
respond to that feeling. So do you. So, maybe you might feel attacked but you get the chance to make
a decision or a thought based upon that feeling then after that thought comes the emotion. This
is the important thing to recognize. So if you feel like you have been attacked by the parents anger,
what should you do? You should actually say wait. I don't feel understood right now. Maybe they don't
feel understood right now. Maybe we just need to have a calm conversation about this so maybe I
should just suggest we get calm right now and then we'll have a talk you can always say to someone
this is really important for us to talk about and I want to talk about this but I think we should
get calm first and then talk about it. Now maybe the parent could feel like that's impertinent
for you to say, that could be, that's probably just pride or frustration talking if that's the case
but usually that should ring true to somebody like oh yeah, that's true. We should get calm. A mature
person should know that the best communication happens when somebody is calm so don't try to
be understood, don't try to counter or talk back to your parent when they're angry. You will end
up going to midbrain or back brain which is the emotional part of the brain and you will not be
able to make good decisions. Get to calm, stay calm and then help your parent get to calm too
by just suggesting it as an option. There is a video that I created which is a full class on
how people go out of control and fall into what I call the expectation trap and then as part of
that class, I also talk about the cycle for success. So what you can do instead to help a person not
fall into this trap. That class is called the expectation trap versus the cycle for success.
If you feel like you need a little bit more help understanding what your parent might be
going through so that you can help coach them through it, that could be the thing for you.
Another option is if you feel like you really need help with your own calmness, I have a free
calm parenting toolkit that you can use to help maintain calmness so that you don't engage in a
power struggle. In the description below, this video there is a link to the calm parenting toolkit. The
link says teachselfgov.com/toolkit. If you click on that link now, you'll get the 10 lessons for how to
be calm when someone else isn't and how to help them get calm without losing your calmness at the
same time. So, either go to the expectation trap or the calm parenting toolkit, hey, or both now.