The Scream: A Form Of Communication In Many Families

The scream irritates our brain, puts us on alert, and attacks the subtle balance of our emotions. Unfortunately, this detrimental form of communication based on an altered tone of voice is very common in many families. Thus, indisposition and invisible aggression affect people, causing very deep sequelae.

The brilliant Jardel Poncela used to say that whoever has nothing to say, screams. However, as curious as it may seem, there are people who do not understand another form of communication: they scream to ask for the clothes in front of them, to get the attention of the child next to them or even to comment on the television program that is seeing with the family. There are people who don’t know how to communicate without anxiety, theirs or those who project.

“I can’t help it”, they justify themselves. Can’t help it; raising your voice is out of your control because it’s the timbre and tone you’ve heard since childhood, because through the scream they managed to get noticed, marked territory to show authority and also, why not, to channel anger, frustration and contained egos looking for exhaust valves.

We know it’s no use screaming to be heard. But it is often necessary to shout because it is the only frequency we know to communicate. If you scream, the other person will most likely respond in the same way, giving rise to a disorderly and coercive relationship dynamic.

Something that unfortunately happens in many families…

The scream silently destroys our relationships

The scream, far beyond what it may seem, has a very specific purpose in the very nature of both human beings and other animals: to defend our survival and that of the group in the face of danger. Let’s take a simple example: we are in the middle of the jungle walking, enjoying a natural balance, and suddenly we hear a scream. It is a capuchin monkey that emits a high-pitched scream that reaches our brain.

Now, that scream doesn’t just serve as an “alarm” to your own pack. Most jungle animals, like us, react with fear, with anticipation. It is a defense mechanism that controls a very specific structure in our brain: the amygdala. Just hearing a high-pitched sound or voice and that small area of ​​the brain instantly interprets it as a threat and activates our sympathetic nervous system to activate escape.

Knowing this and understanding this biological and instinctual basis, we can deduce that when a person grows up in an environment where screaming is constant and where communication always takes place with a high tone of voice, their brain is in a state of constant alarm. The adrenaline is always high, the feeling that we must defend ourselves from “something” puts us in a state of chronic stress, of permanent and disturbing anguish.

On the other hand, what intensifies this reality even more is that an aggressive communication style usually generates defensive responses with the same emotional charge, with the same offensive component. In this way, we consciously or unconsciously fall into a vicious circle and a destructive dynamic where everyone accumulates sequels in this complex jungle of human relationships where the quality of communication is fundamental.

Families that communicate with screams

Laura is 18 years old and has just realized something she hadn’t noticed before: she speaks in a very loud voice. Your college classmates always say that your voice is the most heard in the classroom and that when you are in a group, your way of communicating seems threatening.

Laura wants to control this aspect of her personality. She knows it won’t be easy, because in her house her parents and siblings always communicate in this way: with screams. There’s no need for any discussion, it’s just the tone of voice she’s grown used to listening to. She also knows that at home, the one who screams is the one who makes himself heard, and that it is necessary to raise your voice because the television is always on, because everyone is distracted with their tasks and because there is no harmony.

In this case, Laura needs to understand that she cannot change a family dynamic overnight. She cannot change others, neither her parents nor her siblings, but she can change herself. What she can and should do is cognitively control her own verbal style in order to understand that whoever yells hurts the other. No one needs to raise their voice to be heard, and often a calm, calm tone of voice produces better results.

With this simple example, we want to make something very clear: sometimes we can’t change who raised us, we can’t change our past or erase those family dynamics where the scream was always present, even if it was just to ask us the time or how we had out on the test.

We cannot change the past, but we can avoid that this style of communication characterizes us in our present, in our friendship or couple relationships, in our own homes. Remember that the one who screams is not always the right one. It is often smarter who knows how to shut up and listen, and wiser is who knows how and in what way to communicate.