Written by Robert Daylin Brown, Ed.D.
Photo by Johannes Plenio
Many years ago, my first wife got upset at me because I smiled while she was arguing with me. She was offended that I was smirking at her while she was angrily talking at me. My current wife once said the same thing years ago. It was condescending that I smiled during an argument.
I didn’t realize I was smiling during an argument until after it was brought to my awareness, and then I immediately stopped. I understand the confusion that may come from the person with whom I’m arguing. My smile may look like a smirk that could be interpreted as condescending or minimizing or invalidating the other person’s words. And I don’t mean it that way, and I don’t even realize that I am doing it until later.
It wasn’t until a year or so ago when I came across an article by a therapist trainer named Mark Tyrrell that I realized my smile was a trauma response I developed when my mother would get mad at me or yell at me as a kid. The way it was explained in the article really resonated with me. The anxiety I would feel during a tense situation would build and I would quietly shake. I would smile (or breathe deeply or do something physical) to dissipate that anxious energy.
In his article, Tyrrell wrote that “anxiety is a survival response, not an illness…Because anxiety takes its lead from what clients do, as well as simple emotional pattern matching, then if the client acts in ways they wouldn’t in a real emergency, the anxiety will fade away.” He goes on to encourage clients to talk softly and calmly, smile, salivate, breathe deeply, or have an open body posture. I realize that during arguments, I do most of those things, and it calms me down. Tyrrell continued: “If we adopt some of these behaviours, even just one of these behaviours, when we begin to feel stressed, then we alter the feedback to our fear response system.”
We usually become tense and heated during an argument or fight, and we usually become calm and relaxed after the fight is over. But the key point here is that, as a kid, I developed the habit of doing it the other way around. I smiled during the fight to bring the future calmness into the present heated confrontation.
For trauma informed training and support, please visit the Therapist Directory, TILA Trainings and the Speakers Bureau.