Raising your voice is the last thing you would want to do to send your point home as it will never get there. It is a basic and a cheap way of wanting to assert dominance and handle a perceived threat. Things do not always go smoothly in life when you encounter a bump. The temptation to yell at others can explode. A raised voice is one of the biggest swords you can drive into the stomach of another person, yet your general goal with the message will never be achieved. Yelling is destructive to both the recipient and the sender. It is self-sabotaging.

A raised voice is an unrealistic survival instinct that is destructive to all.  People yell all the time at things that are threatening or freak them out. When a threatening situation arise, your fight or flight stress response engage adrenalin rush through your body as a protective mechanism to get you through.

Yelling simple means that you have not given yourself time to reason with the situation and defined your intended goal. Instead, you rush to protect yourself from either a perceived or real threat. The trouble is that you can rarely attain your intended goal through yelling.

Once engulfed in fear of the real or imagined threat, your executive functions like decision making and planning shut down. You miss to reason and engage positively. Instead of thinking critically and rationally, you are driven by what you feel. It makes it difficult to really process what the other person is saying in an objective way. You cease to process appropriate response and the charge only gets worse. The worst is that the hurt that comes with the yelling sticks deep and becomes a significant memory that carries itself along with you always.

You end up developing fear and anxiety whenever there is an unpleasant issue to be handled. Over time you get to be a wreck out of control and feared by others as incompetent and unable to handle your emotions, compromising your opportunity to sharpen your intra/interpersonal skills.

APPLYING THE BRAKES.

Yelling does not accomplish much and is ineffective as a form of discipline whatsoever. To avoid falling into the yelling trap, consider the following.

• Always acknowledge how you are feeling mentally and ask yourself, why?
• Acknowledge and validate with empathy how the other person is feeling.
• Clarify your needs and help the other person understand you.
• Be alert of your emotional needs every time you feel threatened and anxious.
• Intentionally lower your voice so that your listener can focus on your words.
• Come up with a mantra or phrase to keep yourself from going a path of negative, defensive thoughts. (What do I fear/what is the threat.)?
• Deliberately acknowledge your emotions before you engage in a discussion or keep silent.
• We are all wired to react differently to situations. We are thus exposed to different levels/rate of growth in life. If you can consciously keep this concept at the fore even when you disagree, it is much easier to stay respectful and make sure your mouth builds more than it breaks.