The Most Important Tool I Teach My Intensive Retreat Couples.
You can’t reason with a lizard. You also can’t reason AS a lizard. And while it is a huge oversimplification – this concept is a REALLY one important to remember in your intimate relationships.
Before you start to think I’ve gone off the deep end – allow me to explain what I mean.
In very broad categories, our brain has 3 main areas: 1) our prefrontal cortex where we do our higher level thinking and processing – where we reason. Logic and rationality reside here. 2) Our emotional brain, which is called our limbic system, where we experience all feelings – where we relate. 3) our lower level brain where we are focused on survival and acting from impulse – this is our reptilian, or lizard brain – where we respond. Our reptilian brain operates in contrasts: “all or nothing” and “good or bad”and “safe or dangerous” – usually “I’m good, you’re bad; I’m right, you’re wrong.”
When we get really upset with our partner – the very person we love and are committed to — we start to lose our capacity for reason. Our prefrontal cortex is not available to us because of the intensity of the moment. This is a strictly biological process – not a choice – and it happens to all of us. Yes, even you, and even me.
Herein lies the fundamental error couples often make. In the heat of an argument, we continue to try to reason with the other person. “Can’t you understand?” “Why won’t you listen?” “That’s not what happened/ what you said/ what I said, what actually happened/ you said/ I said was….”
But you can’t reason with a lizard. Moreover, you can’t reason AS a lizard (though in the moment we’re usually pretty sure we can!). Trying to do so is a direct path to fights that go exactly nowhere.
Instead, once someone is very upset, we need to set aside reasoning with them until everyone is truly calm again. Instead, we need to offer reassurance – which means understanding, care and compassion. This helps your partner shift out of just automatically responding from a place of impulse (lizard brain) and into their more rational self.
(Note: Hearing someone out and offering understanding does NOT mean you have to agree with them, or with their version of events. Contrary to popular belief, agreement on what happened or why it happened is NOT a part of getting back to good. It just means you are willing to see things from your partners’ point of view, and hold it as valid as your own.)
You'll be amazed at how spending time hearing the other person out changes the dynamics of your arguments; because meeting their lizard brain when it’s scared and providing reassurance helps to bring back the part of their brain that can reason again.
In ADHD impacted relationships, the intense emotions that can come with having ADHD can mean that you shift quickly from ‘doing just fine’ to lizard brain. And for the Non ADHD partner, the build-up of long-term frustration and resentment can mean that regressing to a lizard state can be triggered easily. But it will make a huge difference once you’re aware of a) when each of you is in your lizard brain and b) what to do: work towards understanding the other person. (And what not do: using reason before both of you are calm).
One tool that is hugely helpful for couples in shifting away from reasoning and into relating is the Learning Conversation protocol designed by Melissa Orlov. This is because Learning Conversations are for learning, not convincing the other person of your perspective. If you want to learn more, feel free to reach out about my couples intensive retreats or the Intent to Action Membership Program.
I hope this lens shift gives you some breathing room in your next heated discussion.
