Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / How Validation Calms the Brain: The Science of EAR Statements
Transcript
- Megan Hunter Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions — those involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Welcome again, listeners, and we thank you for joining us during your workout today. Well, today we're going to be talking about something that sounds simple but it actually is deeply neurological — validation. You've probably heard us say that when someone is escalated, you need to calm the right brain, which I have right here, and I'm sure Bill has his right brain right there. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see our brains. We need to calm the right brain first by using an EAR statement, something that shows empathy, attention, or respect. But what's really happening in the brain when you do that? And why does it work so quickly, even when logic and explanations completely fail, which are typically the go-to? It's the logical thought process to use logic. Recent neuroscience helps fill in that picture. When people feel invalidated, their brain treats it like a threat. The amygdala fires up and they shift into a fight, flight, or defend mode. But when you validate — when you accurately recognize and reflect their feelings — you actually help quiet that threat response and activate a part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions. In other words, you're not just being nice, you're helping their brain regain control. So today we're connecting the dots between what we teach at High Conflict Institute, what Bill developed over twenty years ago, and what the research is showing today. How EAR statements function as a fast, practical way to calm emotional reactivity, reduce defensiveness, and create just enough stability for real problem solving to begin. So Bill, let's talk about the article first. This was an article in Psychology Today called Circles of Enhancement, and it had a lot to do with our social circles and our close friendships and relationships and what works and why we need them. So let's start there. Bill Eddy Okay, well the March-April issue of Psychology Today, which I get because I've written about a hundred blogs for Psychology Today — it just had a fascinating article reinforcing that having friends give you statements that show empathy, attention, and respect. And that even though I developed that method in 2004, here's what it said. Neuroimaging studies show that acknowledging our feelings limits activation of the amygdala. Which, let me just mention, right underneath the corpus callosum here, right in there — about the size of a pecan nut. Almond. Never mind. I got it wrong. Almond nut. Get my terms right here. But what it says is quieting the amygdala's response to negative input, recognizing feelings also activates the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the brain region that regulates emotional responses and calms distress. So I actually looked it up. You'd be proud of me, Megan, to find where this is. And it's right over around here on the prefrontal cortex of the right hemisphere, which we're kind of looking at this way, but this is also the outside of it. Really, I want to connect a lot of dots here. So what we've been teaching — one of the things that I refer to in our New Ways for Families® online class and sometimes in the counseling method — is that managing your own distress is the second most important parenting skill. They looked at about 10,000 parenting skills and found the first is of course unconditional love and affection for your child. The second is managing your own distress. Because if you manage your own distress, you're doing two things. One is you're keeping yourself open and available emotionally to your child, but you're also teaching your child that stress can be managed. And so the earlier in life that people learn this, the more their brain gets used to how to self-manage. But everybody gets stressed, and the message in our EAR statements is how you can calm somebody else. And not only does it help them feel better because they're not as stressed, but it actually helps you work together and helps you open up the brain to creativity, to flexible thinking, which we also teach, as well as managed emotions. And the brain science is reinforcing that. And that's something — if you ask me about the polyvagal theory, I'll bring that in. Megan Hunter Well, do you want to talk about that right now, Bill? The polyvagal theory? It's not many bagels. It's not a food source. It's polyvagal — P-O-L-Y-V-A-G-A-L, I think, right? I know it's something that's been talked about maybe the last five or six years, a lot more than in the past. So what is the polyvagal theory and how does it apply here? Bill Eddy Well, it's mostly talked about amongst mental health professionals and how to do therapy, keeping in mind the vagus nerve. So let me just say a little about the vagus nerve. You've got a bunch of nerves in your brain that connect to your body and do different things, like your optic nerve — most people have heard of that. So it connects your eye to your brain. There are twelve different cranial nerves — that's brain nerves — and the longest one is the vagus nerve, and that connects a whole lot of stuff. It connects the lower part of the head, the throat, the neck, the chest, the abdomen, and plays a role in many functions including swallowing, breathing, and heartbeat and the development of stomach acid. So here's what's interesting — that's the physical stuff that's going on, but that nerve is involved with fight or flight. So you're ready to fight or flee. If you're in a situation and you suddenly realize I need to fight or I need to flee, your whole system is getting ready for that. Like you stop digesting and you get ready to run. Your brain says, don't waste time on food right now. Just get the heck out of here. And so when we feel things in our body — a lot of our emotions we feel in our chest, our stomach, even in our head — that nerve often has a lot to do with it. But not only is it the fight or flight — that's called the sympathetic nervous system, because it's sympathetic to protecting you — but the parasympathetic helps you calm down. So when you're in a stressful situation, both of those get activated because you don't know, am I going to have to run or can I calm down? And if you can help somebody calm down — and that's EAR statements, empathy, attention, and respect: I respect your efforts, I'll pay attention, I can empathize with what you're going through — that calms the vagus nerve, and that helps you have easier access to curiosity, eye contact, tone of voice, flexible thinking — which for those that have been around us for a while know that's one of our New Ways skills that we talk about — and connection, which is what EAR statements help with. So the vagus nerve and the part of your prefrontal cortex here — you're calming them, making it so much more possible to connect with people and have a positive interaction and have people feel good. So who knew in 2004 when I developed EAR statements, kind of accidentally in the middle of a mediation that wasn't going well, that we really were on target with the brain? Even the idea that this goes on a lot with the right brain, because we've said that. But people go, well, how do you know where it is, or the right, left — does that really matter? Well, it doesn't matter a lot, but it's validating to know that there's a part of the brain that can help calm you and that you can help calm somebody else. Megan Hunter Which, you know, we've been talking about this a long time, right? It's like the really the core of everything we teach at High Conflict Institute. However, it's not naturally what most people want to do or feel like doing, because we're not used to doing that. And we think that using logic on someone or just telling them to stop doing that is what's going to work. But if you really think about it, does it really work? It most typically will escalate things because if we're not talking to the right brain, then we're going to get a reaction. So why is it then, Bill, that with most people — I would say we can regulate ourselves, we can calm ourselves down even when our amygdala is hijacked. We all get mad, we all get scared sometimes, but we can regulate that. Why is it harder for others and why do they then need outside intervention? Bill Eddy Yeah, so the others that I think you're talking about are what we call high conflict people, which may be about ten percent of adult population. And it's basically that they, for some reason — perhaps genetic tendencies at birth, or abusive experiences growing up, or even being indulged and never practicing managing their own emotions — some people grow up with less skill at that. And they're part of society, we want them, and we want them to be happy too and to be contributing to society. And so we kind of have to do more of that to connect with them. Especially in the professions — like being a therapist, you're going to have to do more work at connecting with your upset client. As a lawyer, you're going to need to do more. As a mediator, as a nurse, as a human resource professional, all of that. Not just because a percent of people don't have as much skill at that, but also everybody gets upset sometimes. And when they're upset and their situation's upsetting, they're not able to think as clearly. So that's why professionals, friends, and family can really help — by being calm. Being calm is much more effective than saying calm down, which just doesn't seem to work. And by the way, did I mention tone of voice? I think I did with the polyvagal stuff — that they're saying that basically the vagus nerve is affected by tone of voice. So your ears and your eyes are absorbing information that tells you fight or flight, or you're safe, you can be calm. I might want to mention, they said there's a third thing that can happen here, and that is your whole system shuts down. And that's when someone is overwhelmed, so completely overwhelmed. And it's like your breathing may become really shallow and your stomach is uncomfortable. All that stuff's connected to these nerves, connected to the brain, and connected to other people's emotions. It's incredible how connected we are. Megan Hunter For sure. I thought you were going to say we breathe fire. Some people, yes, there's big, big anger that can come with this. Yeah, it's really fascinating how it all works together. And, you know, the ears and the eyes in polyvagal theory are so much sharper than moments before this event happened or before this upset. And it really also makes sense that — I know in myself when I am upset, like a big upset — I might have that feeling in my stomach first and it'll kind of come up through my chest, go up through my neck, and you feel your face beginning to flush. And it all really makes sense when we think about it this way. So if we get back to how do we intervene and why does this work, right? Validation — or as we call it, using an EAR statement — makes it very simple, right? Because validation is not a hard word to understand or even to remember. But an EAR statement gives you the exact words you need to say. You need to give something that shows empathy, attention, or respect. So I like to think of it as this right brain, when we're upset, craving what it needs. And it needs empathy or attention or respect, or maybe all three, right? And it just isn't able to get that on its own. Like, I can't summon up respect for my own reactive brain to calm down. So I need you to do it for me, but I can't tell you that I need that. You're just going to have to figure that out on your own. So how do you figure that out? It's when something comes out like blame, like big anger, all-or-nothing words, anger, f-bombs, all kinds of things. Those are the kind of clues and the little tells that, oh hey, I can just use an EAR statement here to help this person get calmer. And it just works. Bill Eddy One of the things that's important in what you're saying is for us to give an EAR statement, we have to be able to manage our own emotions. To help manage someone else's emotions, we have to be able to manage our own. And that's where we can actually give ourselves statements, give ourselves validation. Some people call it affirmations — we call it encouraging statements, because that's what it is, a statement to encourage yourself. And if you can tell yourself, I can get through this, or it's just a momentary thing, or what they're saying isn't really about me — like they're exaggerating, or maybe even they're projecting something about themselves onto me — these little phrases that are encouraging, you're calming your own amygdala and helping your own brain now be open and curious. And curiosity is one of the words that conflict resolvers talk about a lot — be curious, don't be judgmental, be curious and see what's going on for the other person. How can we solve this? But apparently the brain really needs to be calm before it can do that kind of work. So calming yourself is also very important and possible. When we teach encouraging statements, I've been doing a role play thing where the other person tells me the criticisms they get sometimes, and they tell me their encouraging statement. I say, okay, I'm going to tell myself your encouraging statement while you criticize me. Okay, go ahead. I'm just going to silently keep telling myself this. Then we switch roles. Now I know what the critic says, and they're going to tell themselves their encouraging statement. And I say, oh, you're terrible at this, you're a terrible parent, you're always late, you're not responsible, you don't communicate, whatever it is. And they're hearing their encouraging statement, which is I'm a good mom or I'm a good dad. And they say — and this we did not expect — but they say that they hear their own voice in their head louder than the criticism. They're calming themselves even in the face of criticism, predictable criticism at least. So we need to know we can do it ourselves as well as help other people do it if we're calm enough to give them an EAR statement. Megan Hunter The article talks about the power of validation and also the power of invalidation. So invalidation might be going into problem solving prematurely. The invalidation may mean being critical, judgmental, dismissive, ignoring. Now, on the flip side, does that mean we have to hop to it every time someone has an upset feeling or thought, or they get angry? In other words, do we spend our lives just giving EAR statements? Bill Eddy No, no, no. We really shouldn't. It may be in a discussion you need to give two or three EAR statements, but we don't want to teach people to rely on us alone for validation. The more they can learn that they can do this for themselves — validate themselves, give themselves encouraging statements — the more we're doing for them. If we just say, well, call me up whenever you're upset, you're going to never sleep. Megan Hunter And I know a lot of people that get in that role, right? They get kind of in that trap. Bill Eddy Yeah, and you're not teaching that you can manage your own emotions so that they can see that. You're not setting limits. See, this gets into the importance of setting limits. Megan Hunter And you become an unpaid therapist, basically. Bill Eddy Yeah. Megan Hunter Just giving the validation part of being a therapist and not getting to the real work. And that's really the goal of using EAR statements — if you're working with a client or a customer, a student, a patient, whomever, and you see them getting upset, well there's an end goal here. We want to have some good outcomes, meaning let's get through this thing together without a bunch of conflict, without someone running out of the room, saying hurtful things back, or just being stuck. Right? So if just an EAR statement — one little piece that you're able to just throw right at that person's right brain — and it helps them calm, now you've just opened the door to potential success, potentially successful outcomes that aren't going to be there without it. So we make our systems and what we have to offer more inclusive. This includes more people in the problem-solving process. Bill Eddy You need to have a few people that can give you that. I wanted to give a quick example. I was just thinking as you were talking, Megan, about a client I had as a lawyer who was in some pretty stressful situations. He was having false allegations made against him in public, which the court figured out and a psychologist evaluator figured out — no basis to them. So he was really upset about the allegations and that they weren't true, but had been said publicly. We worked together pretty well, and I remember at one point he left me a voicemail message and he says, Bill, you won't believe what she did yesterday. And he went, she did this, she did that, whatever. You've got to call me back right away, right away. And then as he's talking, he said, no, no, you don't have to call me back. Just call me back when you get a chance. In fact, you know what? You don't even have to call me back. I can handle this. I can cope. And I was so proud of him because it's like he had learned to validate himself and that he didn't have to have me do it for him all the time. And that more and more he was able to do it for himself, which is really the goal — to work ourselves out of a job in many ways. But this is part of the skill to learn, and that self-validation is what he was getting to. So I was very proud of him. Megan Hunter Yeah, that's a great story. And, you know, it ultimately ends up being less stressful if you're around a high conflict person or clients a lot. It's way less stressful on you if you just learn to use EAR statements, because it keeps both you and the other person calmer. And when people are calm, they're less resistant to help, they're less defensive, they're less argumentative. And look, you do have to use them again and again, like a rhythm in music, as they escalate to those high notes — you give a little EAR and bring them back down to the low notes, or midline notes, let's say. So we want to continue to use EAR statements, and it's really about the connection to that reactive brain. It just works. So Bill, in the article, there are a few really important points, and one was that when our friends validate our emotions — and of course this article was assessing friendships — when friends validate our emotions, they are showing us that we can accept our feelings. I thought that was pretty fascinating. And then we get to the next piece. Neuroimaging studies show that acknowledging our feelings limits activation of the amygdala, the brain's emotional processing center, the cluster of cells that signal threat and turn on the fight, flight, or fight response. In quieting the amygdala's response to negative input, recognizing feelings also activates the — now you just told me about this two days ago, and we've had a hard time saying it out loud because it's a lot of big words — it also activates the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the brain region that regulates emotional responses and calms distress, which is what we've been talking about this whole episode. They end it there with: we are in charge of ourselves. So let's talk about that, Bill. Bill Eddy Yeah, that we can be in charge of ourselves. If we understand how this works, we know we have to calm ourselves first. And then we have more flexible thinking, we have more curiosity, we have more ability to solve problems. And that's so helpful to know — but so helpful to know that we can be in charge of ourselves, that our emotions don't have to take over and that other people don't control our emotions. And I think sometimes you hear someone say, well, she made me do it. Well, what did she do? Well, she said something and I didn't like it, so I had to, you know, do whatever it was. Megan Hunter Still in the blame. Bill Eddy Yeah. Megan Hunter Right. Bill Eddy And we're not puppets on a string. Our emotions are inside of us and they're influenced by a lot of things, especially how we think and what we tell ourselves. There are times when you start feeling yourself getting upset and you can say, I don't have to get angry now. I don't have to defend myself here. I'm doing fine. They just don't understand what's going on, or maybe they're having a bad day, something like that. So I think these encouraging statements for ourselves are really good. Some of the ones that I like — my favorite of course is it's not about me. Usually if someone's like screaming at me, it's not even about me. It's something going on for them. A lot of times people, high conflict people especially, project what's going on for them onto other people — as if they can't see it in themselves but see it in another person — except it doesn't fit that other person. And so being able to not absorb that and go, that's not about me. But also for professionals — lawyers, therapists, mediators, human resources, judges, all of that — to be able to tell yourself, I'm not responsible for their outcome. I'm only responsible for my part, for assisting them in my professional way. And with high conflict people, we often feel the burden of solving their problems, and we can't. We can't do it for them. We can help with them, but we can't do it for them. And that adds a lot of stress. There's a lot of professionals that lose sleep over high conflict cases because they're trying to make something happen that they can't make happen, but they can still be helpful in assisting. And anyone in business in any way — an upset customer — this is some skills you can use, but also know and tell yourself you're not responsible for it going really well, that they have a responsibility too. Megan Hunter So when wouldn't — or why would an EAR statement not work? Are there times when EAR statements don't work on someone to help them regulate? If so, why is that? Bill Eddy Well, the thing I think of automatically is a domestic violence situation where someone is so angry they're now being physically violent. And if you're the target of that violence, the victim survivor of that — don't waste time on an EAR statement. They're like already over the hill. And so the goal in that case is to get safe, get out of the situation. Now with that said, during early COVID — the first year — I was asked what can people, especially women, do when they can't leave, when they're trapped and their partner is becoming violent. And I said, well, they could try EAR statements. And one — especially with men who had lost their jobs and had a tendency towards violence — losing their job made them feel lower self-esteem. And I said, sometimes you can say something like, honey, we need you to fix the Wi-Fi, or we need you to fix the oven, or you're good at fixing things, so that it just directs their attention towards something that they're good at. So giving them a statement that shows respect actually may have protected from a violent moment, even though the woman isn't responsible to calm the man. If there's nothing else to do, that works. Let me quickly mention another example. Years ago — and I wrote about this in one of my books — was the example of a woman who was taken hostage by a prisoner who was in court for a trial, I guess, and somehow he shot and killed one of the security officers, escaped the court, and ran away and got a truck or something. Anyway, he shows up at this woman's house right after dark. She's moving in. And he takes her hostage at gunpoint. And it's in the news. She's heard the news. It's like this is the guy that's armed and dangerous, and he's got you by the arm with a gun to your head. What can you do? She was apparently amazingly good at staying calm, and she started really empathizing with him. And she'd spent a night in jail once because of a driving situation. And so she used that to really relate to him and say, you know, I've been there, just one night. And they also each had like three-year-olds in common. And so she found everything she could to empathize with him about, to respect him about, pay attention to. Megan Hunter Connect with him. Bill Eddy To connect — you're absolutely right. That's the word. That's what happened. And so he grabbed her right after dark. He ended up spending the night at her house. He asked if he could take a shower, and she helped set him up to do that. She ended up trying to tell him to turn himself in, because it was in the news. In the morning she made him, I don't know, pancakes or something for breakfast. She made him breakfast and then said, I have to leave to get my daughter from my mother's house and take her to school. Please let me go. And he did. She told the police — you know, a couple blocks from her house — and she told him that she was going to do that, that he needed to turn himself in peacefully. And he did. I just think it's an amazing example of showing someone empathy, attention, and respect in the absolute worst situation — when it's absolutely not her fault, the burden shouldn't be on her, but it was a tool that was helpful to her. Megan Hunter Absolutely. And I go back to the Bible — I think there's a verse that says, a soft answer turneth away wrath, right? So it's been there a long time, but we've tended to forget. And so in high conflict situations, this approach of using EAR statements is really immediately usable because it establishes relational safety, right? And helps the other person calm down. And they just aren't ready yet to get into problem solving and flexible thinking. So it's almost like you're preparing the pathway for problem solving if possible. And sometimes no problem solving is needed. Sometimes the person just is upset, you give a little EAR statement, and they're on their way. No problem. We see that happen a lot, but other times it does enable us to then have that difficult conversation or just a problem-solving conversation. It's a way to communicate peacefully and safely. And it really — once you understand this is in the brain — it increases our empathy. And when we have that increase, it makes it easier and more natural to use EAR statements. Bill Eddy So the right brain — this one's looking at me — is calm. So the person may have their left brain offline and their right brain is very activated. And you're making some calming statements — you know, sounds like this is a very frustrating situation, I can understand this is difficult — all that kind of connecting with their feelings, but not opening up feelings. Then you calm them. Then pretty soon you want to get your problem solving going. Use your left brain, which likes to focus on choices and details and use of language and all of that. So not just calming people, but then being with them to help solve problems. Megan Hunter Right. Yep. Helping them down that path. So great conversation, Bill, and I know very validating for you to see this research. Bill Eddy You did a good job. Megan Hunter Yeah, and to have it validate what we've been teaching for a long time and what you've been writing about for a long time. So thank you, listeners, for being along with us today. You'll find a link to Bill's book, Calming Upset People with EAR, in the show notes, along with some classes like our Conflict Influencer® Class and New Ways for Families® that Bill mentioned. So if you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation in your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, visit ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at trustory.fm or HighConflictInstitute.com/podcast. 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