How Does Knowing Your Stress Language Help?
Every parent knows what their love language is. But what about their stress language?
We express our love, according to Dr. Gary Chapman (1992), in five different ways: words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, quality time, and acts of service. From there, we look for a person who thrives and appreciates our love language. However, we also have a behavior called Stress Language (a term coined by Chantal Donnelly), which is how we express ourselves when we’re distressed, frustrated, angry, or overwhelmed. But we’re not usually aware of what it is until people (usually our partners or our kids) point it out!
Like love languages, there are five official kinds of stress languages. Here they are:
Imploding
Ever wonder about the “quiet ones” and why they’re more dangerous? It’s because, to cope with stress, they choose to implode instead. Their fury isn’t outward but instead inward and towards themselves.
It’s as Chantal describes in a podcast with Dr. Jessica Higgins, “We’re like a turtle tucked away in our safe little shell mode.”
Instead of talking about the problem, the feelings overwhelm those who implode into silence. We feel depressed, hopeless, distraught, and run ourselves through the mental wringer with all sorts of possible situations.
“I screwed up. They’re never going to forgive me.”
“I’m supposed to be the mom/dad. Why can’t I do it right?”
“Everything sucks.”
Sound familiar? These are the usual thoughts of those who implode when they’re stressed. On the outside, they don’t look like they’re freaking out. But it’s actually a world war inside. Some of us resort to imploding when we’re stressed because we grew up in a home or in an environment that praises being stoic. Or, where being emotional was seen as a bad thing. So, we implode to protect ourselves.
It may sound counterproductive, but for us, we’d rather hurt ourselves than air out our grievances only to be invalidated.
Exploding
The opposite of imploding, we instead blame others. We verbally lash out, insult, assault, and threaten because it’s a survival mechanism in our DNA, and we see others blaming others. Especially in the Philippines, where “saving face” is extremely important, exploding is the usual stress language. We even have a term for using explosive behaviors as a means to escape accountability — gulpe de gulat, or crudely translated in English, “sudden fright.”
Our explosion is meant to frighten or intimidate the source of stress. While it works on most who have been traumatized by a yelling parent, it doesn’t always work on soldiers, psychopaths, and health practitioners because they are usually more equipped to deal with the problem.
Fixing
When we grew up in an environment that praises logic above all else, we often resort to “fixing” to address the stress. In our minds, it’s “if we know the root of the problem, all issues – feelings and the problem itself – will go away.” It’s most common in women, too; Chantal Donnelly reveals that women do this by going for the “tend and befriend” strategy.
“It’s particularly great if you’re dealing with children or the elderly, to tend and befriend. That can help you in emergency situations,” Chantal explains. “But when we try to fix our intimate partners, that can look like parenting your partner, which isn’t really a pretty sight.”
Numbing
Numbing doesn’t mean just detaching ourselves from our emotions. It can also be via distracting ourselves from other things. The most obvious sign that a person numbs, Chantal points out, is that they “overdo” things. Alcohol and drugs may be one thing but even the more socially acceptable ones like exercising, using social media, shopping, and work can be a form of numbing. These are distractions and they’re quite big when left unmonitored.
“As somebody who notices that in your partner, it can be very easy to assume that they are making a choice, that they are to blame, you want to nag them. Those are the things that are not going to be supportive, versus taking a step back and going: Oh, they’re speaking their stress language, I need to support them more right now,” Chantal explains.
Denying
Especially in the Philippines, where being positive or at least unbothered by the things around them is highly celebrated, many of us resort to denying. “I’m fine,” “Oh, it’s nothing! (Wala lang iyan),” and the many ways we’ve denied feeling weird or uncomfortable in a situation are probably the most common, especially among women. It’s why men have the running joke: “If she says she’s fine, she’s not. And you probably screwed up. Just apologize for whatever, whenever, and maybe even for breathing.”
Denying is when we choose not to accept there’s a problem. Or, as Chantal Donelly says, “we’re pushing down those bad feelings.” And as we all know, the more we push down, the more it will eventually rise and freak everybody out.
Knowing your stress language helps marriages and kids
While it’s easy to talk about love languages, it’s not easy to talk about the things we do when we’re stressed. Doing so makes us feel vulnerable, and we fear the judgment from others. But if we don’t talk about it, how else will we find the help we need when we’re overwhelmed and stressed?
Most of our stress languages are learnt from our parents. We either mimic them or complement them. If our parents are explosive, then we may choose to explode so they’ll stop. Or, we might choose to implode because of the fear we feel while trying to settle them down.
However, like Chantal Donnelly says, we don’t choose one or another. Stress languages are capable of blending. She also shares her moment as both an exploder and a fixer, describing it as a moment where she looks like she’s “frantically fixing something.” The stresses were not even related to one another!
“When I was writing my book and the deadline was approaching, I would start worrying about my child’s college applications, or my husband’s health, or my husband’s business, or whatever.” She shares. “But then I realized: wait, I’m trying to fix things that don’t need fixing! The important part is, we catch ourselves.”
Once we recognize our stress language, we’ll also have a happier marriage and a safer home. The safer the home, the happier and healthier our kids and family will be.
More about managing the self and wellness?
Experiencing Mom Rage Doesn’t Make You a Bad Mother
How We Develop Stress Responses: A Family Perspective
April as National Stress Awareness Month: Raising More Resilient and Compassionate Families
