another intervention tool to consider: monitoring arousal

This may seem a little out of left field, but what the heck.

Our approach to this kind of problem tends to get limited by the story we tell ourselves about what is going on. I'd like to add one story from behavioral science that people often don't think of, even many psychologists, but my experience is that it can make a big difference.

The escalation of defensiveness and withdrawal, regardless of the _content_ of the discussion, follows a certain pattern of escalation of physiological arousal, especially heart rate. The (very typically male) response of stonewalling and withdrawal is commonly a response to intense negative emotion, the result of the escalating cycle of arousal.

One very powerful tool in your kit for intervening in this distressing and frustrating pattern is to each of you learn to recognize when your arousal is getting to this point, and then signal the other person that you are losing it, and either break off for 20 minutes and then come back and return to the discussion, or establish some ritual for self-soothing or mutual soothing.

It may seem a little silly or even irrelevant at first, but it can be incredibly powerful when you can't figure out why you are reacting to each other by escalating tension and stonewalling. Behavior depends on state more strongly than we normally realize, because we only notice it when it gets really extreme. Negative emotion is absorbing, we become locked in it and our thinking becomes locked up in narrow ways. If the pattern happens enough we start to think of each other as impossible to reach, and we can't figure out why.

We often don't think of men as being in severe distress when they ignore their wives, we think of it as contempt or male coldness or unfeelingness, or so on, but understanding that it can be a protective response to real perceived stress helps intervene in it. I find that sometimes women don't realize the degree that their mate is responding emotionally to them, because they aren't showing the expected response in expected ways. Rather than becoming more animated as expected, they may be shutting down, but it is still a strong emotional response.

The point is of course to be able to get to the other stories about what the marriage is about and shared goals and feelings and problem solving, not just to prevent the escalation of negative emotion. However I think recognizing this first step can make a huge difference in a relationship, much more than might at first seem possible, by making the more meaningful communication possible without the distraction of defensiveness and stonewalling.

kind regards,

Todd

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