Explaining and Managing Yelling

Yelling is such a bad idea –  but we are designed to yell & we are designed to manage yelling.

Yelling is part of our fight or flight response – it is an integral part of the ancient reptilian back brain asserting itself reflexive dominance, momentarily, over the more recently evolved hyper-logical & reasoning prefrontal cortex that sits quietly nestled behind your forehead.

That is what the forehead is designed to do – to protect the prefrontal cortex – the engine room of our brain. That prefrontal cortex knows how to manage the reflexive characteristics of the ancient reptilian back brain, most of the time – but occasionally the back brain gets the better of it.

The positive explanation for this is that there are hormonal characteristics to anger, sadness, disappointment, etc. and that these particular hormones overwhelm the particular sites, pin-point locations, in the back brain, on the amygdala in particular, on which these emotions are located, and once overwhelmed by these hormones, anger, sadness, and disappointment can all get out of hand.

The alternative explanation is that social context, and in particular our interaction with particular people or groups of people, either contains and constrains the production of those hormones, or allows those hormones to be released. It is interesting to note how we as humans contain our anger and other emotions with some people and not with others. So, it is distinctly possible that we will yell at our children whereas we will not yell at our next door neighbours.

The distinction here is primarily in the nature of the social and attachment relationship, and inequality. We are more likely to yell at somebody who we perceive to be less than equal to us. And we are more likely to yell at somebody who is attached to us, and we attached to them, who is also less than or equal to us for example a parent-child relationship. This can also be replicated in the workplace in the employer-employee relationship.