Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can\'t Stop Talking pdfdrive com

Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion
, Carol Tavris recounts a
story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a
swami—a man who has achieved self-mastery—convinces the snake that
biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before
long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him.
Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is
what came of keeping his promise.
“I told you not to bite,” said the swami, “but I did not tell you not to
hiss.”
“Many people, like the swami’s cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite,”
writes Tavris.
Many people—like Greg and Emily. Both have much to learn from the
swami’s story: Greg to stop biting, Emily that it’s OK for him—and for
her—to hiss.
Greg can start by changing his assumptions about anger. He believes,
as most of us do, that venting anger lets off steam. The “catharsis
hypothesis”—that aggression builds up inside us until it’s healthily
released—dates back to the Greeks, was revived by Freud, and gained
steam during the “let it all hang out” 1960s of punching bags and primal
screams. But the catharsis hypothesis is a myth—a plausible one, an
elegant one, but a myth nonetheless. Scores of studies have shown that
venting doesn’t soothe anger; 
it fuels it
.

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We’re best off when we don’t allow ourselves to go to our angry place.
Amazingly, neuroscientists have even found that people who use Botox,
which prevents them from making angry faces, seem to be less anger-
prone than those who don’t, because the very act of frowning triggers
the amygdala to process negative emotions. And anger is not just
damaging in the moment; for days afterward, venters have repair work
to do with their partners. Despite the popular fantasy of fabulous sex
after fighting, many couples say that it takes time to feel loving again.
What can Greg do to calm down when he feels his fury mounting? He
can take a deep breath. He can take a ten-minute break. And he can ask
himself whether the thing that’s making him so angry is really that
important. If not, he might let it go. But if it is, then he’ll want to phrase
his needs not as personal attacks but as neutral discussion items. “You’re
so antisocial!” can become “Can we figure out a way to organize our
weekends that works for us both?”
This advice would hold even if Emily weren’t a sensitive introvert (no
one likes to feel dominated or disrespected), but it so happens that
Greg’s married to a woman who is 
especially
put off by anger. So he
needs to respond to the conflict-avoidant wife he has, not the
confrontational one that he wishes, at least in the heat of the moment,
he were married to.
Now let’s look at Emily’s side of the equation. What could she be
doing differently? She’s right to protest when Greg bites—when he
attacks unfairly—but what about when he hisses? Emily might address
her own counterproductive reactions to anger, among them her tendency
to slip into a cycle of guilt and defensiveness. We know from 
chapter 6
that many introverts are prone from earliest childhood to strong guilt
feelings; we also know that we all tend to project our own reactions onto
others. Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never “bite” or even hiss
unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she
processes 
his
bite to mean that she’s terribly guilty—of something,
anything, who knows what? Emily’s guilt feels so intolerable that she
tends to deny the validity of all of Greg’s claims—the legitimate ones
along with those exaggerated by anger. This, of course, leads to a vicious
cycle in which she shuts down her natural empathy and Greg feels
unheard.
So Emily needs to accept that it’s OK to be in the wrong. At first she

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may have trouble puzzling out when she is and when she isn’t; the fact
that Greg expresses his grievances with such passion makes it hard to
sort this out. But Emily must try not to get dragged into this morass.
When Greg makes legitimate points, she should acknowledge them, not
only to be a good partner to her husband, but also to teach herself that
it’s OK to have transgressed. This will make it easier for her not to feel
hurt—and to fight back—when Greg’s claims 
are
unjustified.
Fight back? But Emily hates fighting.
That’s OK. She needs to become more comfortable with the sound of
her own hiss. Introverts may be hesitant to cause disharmony, but, like
the passive snake, they should be equally worried about encouraging
vitriol from their partners. And fighting back may not invite retaliation,
as Emily fears; instead it may encourage Greg to back off. She need not
put on a huge display. Often, a firm “that’s not OK with me” will do.
Every once in a while, Emily might also want to step outside her usual
comfort zone and let her own anger fly. Remember, for Greg, heat means
connection. In the same way that the extroverted players in the football
game study felt warmly toward their fellow competitors, so Greg may
feel closer to Emily if she can take on just a little of the coloration of a
pumped-up player, ready to take the field.
Emily can also overcome her own distaste for Greg’s behavior by
reminding herself that he’s not really as aggressive as he seems. John, an
introvert I interviewed who has a great relationship with his fiery wife,
describes how he learned to do this after twenty-five years of marriage:
When Jennifer’s after me about something, she’s really after me. If I went to bed
without tidying the kitchen, the next morning she’ll shout at me, “This kitchen is
filthy!” I come in and look around the kitchen. There are three or four cups out; it’s
not filthy. But the drama with which she imbues such moments is natural to her.
That’s her way of saying,