Like my brain goes completely numb when I’m being yelled at
I have the same issue with freezing (or apologising on repeat even when it’s not my fault), especially in situations where I’m tired, low on spoons or (annoyingly!) in the workplace. However as far as I’m concerned, once someone is communicating with you by yelling, that’s their problem, not yours. They’re the ones who have caused the communications channels to break down & they’re being abusive.
My advice is to explain that you’re walking away from the situation & do exactly that (similar to a customer service rep hanging up on an abusive caller). You may need to develop & practice your explainer until you’ve got it flowing smoothly so you can just deliver it even with your mind frozen. If you can’t deliver it in that state, don’t worry, just walk away.
Keep your explainer short, a sentence or two at most (e.g. I’m walking away now as you’re yelling at me. Please calm yourself down if you want to talk to me again.). Do not attempt to engage them further & keep away from them until they’ve got control over themselves.
Then make sure you get somewhere safe with other people around as social protection if the person yelling tries to follow you or escalate.Please calm yourself down
I’d drop this. This reaches into therapizing, tone policing, telling a person their job on their selves and their feelings, making demands that is exclusively tailoring the interaction for your own comfort and convenience. Maybe it makes sense to you at the time but it is self serving and that person might have a lot of struggles you are not considering to get there and this can come off as ‘just pull yourself up by your bootstraps’. Their journey might be different than your’s on what it takes to manage their emotions. They might not even know how to. This tends to be the gas on the fire in fights for that reason as it is dismissive of their entire experience. Keep it to what you will accept (which you are perfectly in your right to maintain) and maybe your perspective on why it’s so hard to interact with them eg:’I find it very hard to know what I should expect about your behaviour/emotional state/I’m feeling overwhelmed when you do <this action> so I need to be away from you for a while’.
TLDR: own your feelings about the situation but stay out of their business of how they should manage their feelings.
An interesting take I hadn’t considered.
From my perspective, “please calm yourself down” isn’t designed to tell the other person how to feel but how to present themselves when they interact with me. But yeah, I see how it could be viewed from that perspective.
Part of my reasoning is be who I’ve had yell at me in the past when I haven’t done anything to deserve it (family, colleagues). In those cases, I expect them to maintain a civil tone, which isn’t yelling imo. Honestly I don’t really care if they’re boiling with rage underneath but I expect them not to abuse me if they want to continue interacting with me.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Your brain chooses freeze.
I don’t know if practice (being yelled at?) would help or entering situations knowing you’ll be yelled at or what.
Silly question: does freezing cause you problems? I could see it defusing the hypothetical situation a bit, I could also see it making the situation worse.
