The More They Scream, The More It Shows Their Desperation to be Heard

When people yell in the middle of heated argument, it's actually them saying "Hey! Hear me out!"

I recently read a book titled 'The Courage to be Disliked' by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. I haven't finished it, but I must say it intrigued me as a psychology student.

The book starts off by pretty much saying that humans are actually in control of everything. There is no such thing as trauma bond, "I have no choice but to...", or even "I just snapped." Humans create their own excuses to do things that gives them advantages on a silver platter.

This is explained by a famous psychology theory by 'the' Alfred Adler, but I will not go deep on that today.

It may sound lunatic at first to say that everyone is apparently in control of their own happiness, but only choosing not to act in such a way. Why? Because it is easier to stay miserable and mad about everything, rather than start doing something in order to achieve the better state we always crave to have.

The exact same concept also explains why most people choose aggression or even violence, rather than peaceful banter and discussions. You know, just like how civilized human race actually do.

To ease things off, I will give you an example of this common phenomenon we often overlook.

The Case

A mother welcomes her sibling who comes unannounced. Her children who also live in that house feel like their territory is being trespassed. They haven't showered nor eaten dinner, so imagine how they must be feeling when their mom forced them to come downstairs and greet their uncle in pyjamas on a Sunday evening. Keep in mind that this uncle always visits unannounced and around lunch/dinner time.

The children decide to stay in their room, completely undisturbed, while watching some show on their own. It is not until past seven that the uncle go home, so they have late dinner. When the children go downstairs to finally have dinner in peace, without some stranger coming in late unannounced, their mom show up wearing this horrible mask of expression. Clearly showing that she is unhappy with how the kids behaved.

Those children go and have dinner on their own, away from their mother, because they know better than to sit next to an angry bear. Suddenly, the mother approaches them and starts yelling, telling them that they were acting like hermits and it was embarrassing. All were done while staring with wild and crazy pair of eyes.

She doesn't even want to listen to anything the kids have to say. When they force her to listen first before going crazy, she exactly goes crazy for it, saying that they're only making up excuses just to lie down and become impolite to their relative.

Right after that loud argument, the mother get in a phone call with her friend. She is grinning and laughing, not an inch of irritation on her face, nor a dab of anger in her voice. It was terrifying for the children to see how their mother can change in a blink of an eye, almost like switching on and off a power outlet.

Source: master1305 on Freepik

The Explanation

Now, I must say that anyone may hold different opinions regarding whether the children were really at fault. But I want to highlight their mother's reaction; how she expresses her disappointments towards her children.

It is quite too easy to find voices of screaming and yelling, or flying kitchen appliances during a heated argument. People can't contain themselves. Instead, they let anger and whatever other monster inside, get the best of them.

Oftentimes people admit that being angry is out of their control; that it is caused by external forces. Because who would suddenly become mad if there's nothing to be mad about, right? Maybe not.

Turns out, humans frequently utilize anger to assert dominance over other people in certain situations, such when they feel powerless and unheard. Probably too many times.

The same thing goes to the mother in the story above. She probably felt helpless and quite annoyed, too, that her sibling visits in what supposed to be peaceful Sunday evening. She would have gotten the chance to relax and spend some time eating fries with her kids. But too bad, because she couldn't confront her own older brother, who lives far away and god forbids if a little sister says no to her older brother (in most Asian culture).

She then felt oppressed by the situation and somehow found being angry towards her kids being the perfect outlet. She felt powerless in the presence of her older brother, but was given somewhat sense of control by blaming the kids. She then perfected the plan by also later yelling at them because according to her, they are embarrassing.

Now, that feeling might be valid. She might truly felt that way, or not. It doesn't really matter. The point is, she raised her voice to yell at the kids. She also turned her back when they say something in their defense. She wasn't being assertive at all. Instead, she blamed them for putting her in unbearable position. What she was really saying might be "Look, I was uncomfortable. I was annoyed as much as you were. But there's nothing I can do because my brother is always right, so now you're wrong, too. You're here to take the blame off me."

She used that, her anger, as a tool to help let her frustrations out; to turn something so unbearable into something else that is at least a bit more refreshing to her. The way she was being angry was not directed at her children's behavior, but rather to the situation itself and how she had felt helpless.

Then, we can also see how she changed instantly when she talked with her friend. I'm sure such attitude and behavior are easy to spot in our daily lives. That is not her being crazy, or even a bipolar (as some people might misunderstand). That was normal because anger is obviously something we can control. If we can't, just like how people always say ("They put me in that position"), the mother wouldn't be able to switch so quickly, at least not for another hour. She would also yell at her friend and then say "Well, don't ask me. I didn't want to be angry with you, but someone made me so." That would be straight out ridiculous.

The thing is, we can switch it on whenever we need it to help us in difficult situations, just like what the mother did. We can also switch it back off in other situations in which anger deems unnecessary. It would be useless for the mother to stay angry, even when talking to her friend, right? But it would give her somewhat a leverage from an annoying situation at home by yelling at her children.

What Now?

Right. It's stupid. No one is lashing out on purpose. Only madmen do.

You might be having those thought. Don't worry, you don't have to understand right away. Let it sink in and you can observe a bit more from now on. That way, you can have the answers to questions you have in your head all this time. Why that coworker is yelling at you in front of everyone. How that big guy is scared of the mysterious scrawny looking kid. It will all make perfect sense after you finally grasp the whole concept.

And now, after finding out the most solid reason of why people yell and shout in arguments on top of each other, we can step back a little, observe, watch how things roll. Most importantly, we won't get too worked up over someone yelling at us. Maybe we can contain ourselves better the next time we find ourselves in the middle of heating banter. We can even gather round peace within ourselves, knowing that another person's scream of frustration is actually them trying to get us understand, not yell back at them.

One important thing to remember is that even though we might understand this complex dynamic, it is NEVER right to let anyone trample over us. Just because you understand, doesn't mean you have to normalize and admit defeat.

To understand is to have empathy while still maintaining steady feet to the ground. Steady enough to not let anyone push you down, but also gentle enough to not be fire to kerosene.

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Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave comment down below on how you relate to this post and also how I can do better :)