You're in the right place if you want to learn how to stop yelling so much at your family.
Let's jump right in. I've got three steps for you that can be done in five minutes or less every day.
This really starts with self-awareness. I'm a professional psychologist and I work with
people on this all the time. There's a powerful little trick that you can do called metacognition.
Metacognition is a fancy psychological word but all it means is thinking about thinking.
This is an important skill to develop because it allows us to become more self-aware and
start to track and monitor our own thinking. In doing so, it puts us in a position of choice
that's pretty important. What if you could be more in control of the very thoughts that you're having?
Let's think about our thinking for a moment and see what's happening when we start yelling at our
family. Why are we yelling? because we're upset. Why are we upset? Because something did not meet our
expectations or our preferences. Think about your thinking that's what's going on. You can't really
control the things that are going on outside of you. Like what other people are doing or what
the situations are that have you upset. What you can change is your expectations related to that
and that requires some metacognition. That's why this first step is all about becoming more
self-aware through metacognition. Notice what it is that's upsetting you and notice that it's your own
thoughts. The next step is to deactivate your own fight-or-flight response. In neuropsychology
we've learned about the mechanisms in our brain that actually take care of us.
They keep us safe. There's a part of your brain that has the main job of keeping you alive,
and it handles things like breathing and digestion and circulation. All of those
important survival functions that are going on in your body. That part of your brain is
also in charge of watching out for threat. What happens when you experience a threat?
Your brain triggers different glands in your body to secrete chemicals into your bloodstream.
I know, it sounds all fancy and medical but really all you need to understand is your brain loves you.
It doesn't want you to be dead. So if it picks up on a threat it's going to kick you into what
we call the fight-or-flight response. This is simply a chemical response that your body has
to threat. Understand that it's a natural normal process. Understand that there are chemicals
involved and that there are some things that you can do to calm that fight or flight response or
to deactivate it. One of the fastest ways I know to do that is breathing. Slow deep breathing, I suggest
in through the nose. Stretch the lungs hold out through the mouth. Nice and slow,
take about twice as long to exhale as you did to inhale. What does that do? It reverses a process
that's going on in the limbic system of your brain that's causing these chemicals to flood
through your body. Now, it takes a little while for your body to metabolize those chemicals and to
flush them out of the system. So give it a moment do some breathing and notice that you start to
calm down. That's really important because it activates a whole different part of our brain
that we're going to need for the other parts of this. The other parts of this involve other parts
of your brain. The cognitive part the thinking part. The part that is asking and answering questions.
So notice this, once you get your fight or flight response calm down a little bit. Let's notice
what's going on in our mind. Go to that level of metacognition think about your thinking. You're
probably thinking this is not okay or I'm really in danger here or this isn't the way it should be.
Notice those thoughts happening and let's see if another thought might be able to replace that one.
A thought that might serve you better. For example, practice saying this, "I'm good",
or, "We're good here", or, "Things are exactly as they should be", or, "I'm right on schedule."
Sometimes my clients resist this because they say, "Well, I feel like I'm lying to myself."
Yeah, you probably are. Check it out, you don't know if you're right on schedule or not,
do you? You don't know if things are exactly the way they should be or not. They may not be
the way you prefer them to be but do you know if that's the way that they should be or not.
No, not really. It's not like you've got some access to the cosmic grand scheme and plan of all things.
So you really don't know and notice when you do the metacognition that you're taking a position
about that. You might be thinking, "Oh, I'm not where I should be. This is not how it should be." I've got
one more point that I want to share with you. But before we get to that, would you like to have more
support taking care of your own mind? Click on that subscribe button and make sure you hit the
notification bell too. We'll get you more videos like this. The last step has to do with more of
the ongoing maintenance and notice something. You brush your teeth every day that's dental hygiene.
What are you doing for your mental hygiene? Our brain is so much more important than our teeth.
Apologies to any dentists who are watching today. But you'd probably agree, your brain
is the most vital important organ of your body and we've got to take good care of it. That means, we
get to establish routines of self-care and mental hygiene and daily maintenance of the equipment
that we're operating. I recommend a couple of different things that will help you to feel more
in control and you won't be yelling so much at your family. I've labeled it brain maintenance.
So, what do we do to maintain the equipment? Get enough sleep that is extremely important
the research backs that up. Let's see what we can do to get you on a better sleep schedule.
Number two, eat a balanced diet. Nutrition, highly important. Remember your brain is part of your
body. People ask me all the time, "Doc, is this my brain or is this just a physical
chemical thing?". Well hello, your brain is a physical chemical thing. So you've got to put the right fuel
into it in order for it to function properly. That shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. Next,
exercise, physical exercise. You can see how that's important to the rest of your body. The brain
is the most metabolically greedy organ of your body. It is a total energy hog.
Your exercise benefits your brain first and you've probably felt that as you've done it in the past.
It's a physical organ that requires physical fitness. Your exercise is for your brain as
well as the rest of your body and then the final thing, is regular periods of
meditation, mindfulness, prayer. Whatever your practice is to quiet the noise around you
and get centered in who you are what your purpose is. That mindfulness is really powerful
in putting you into a position where you're not going to be yelling so much. This video has been
all about self-care and we've got more resources available for you. In fact, click on that next
video about, who takes care of the parents. This is especially important for parents. Click that video.