The Steve Nam Podcast

All the way up until high school, I had a really, really, really bad temper, but I still can have flashes of it. And so, you know, they always say that there's a turtle and a, is it the porcupine in a relationship? A skunk. There you go.

There's one person in the relationship who tends to retreat, get in their own head and just brood, right? And that's their way of dealing with conflict. The turtle. And that's the turtle.

And then the other side would be the skunk who just is happy to make it stink everywhere and just I'll let all the smells out. And so for me, because I know that my temper, I would get very angry and I would have a tough time controlling it because I've tried to work on that. My default though, goes to the other side.

My default now is to just totally retreat back. And because I've seen myself lose all control of my emotions and get angry, I never want that to happen. And so what I do is I actually get super quiet.

And I think that there is a value in that. I would rather speak very quietly than it's hard for me. Once I start speaking loudly, I know that I can get to a bad place.

We've had yelling matches, right? And it's not pretty. And so thankfully it hasn't happened that much. But if you are someone who is the one who generally loses all control of temper or who is the yeller or likes to raise their voice a lot, I had to get to a place where I said, that can't happen between us.

I don't want to do that to Michelle. I don't want her to see that side of me. And so right away, I just go, I have the tendency to get loud, to yell, to lose control.

And so just stop, be quiet. It's almost better to say nothing. So I would say, if that's you, try to practice saying nothing and being quiet and just listening.

And when you start speaking, try and even just speak very quietly. And you can let your partner know, when I'm speaking very quietly, that's me really trying to control myself. I'm really trying to control myself.

And even slow down your speech. Honey, right now, I feel very angry and I'm going to choose my words carefully because the five things you just told me right now, I feel are so inaccurate. This totally happens.

This totally happens. That's a very real reenactment. Yeah.

But it's better than me going off and saying everything I feel and letting you have it, right? It's not productive. And so err on the side of being quiet, speaking slowly, be aware of your volume and even of your speed and intensity.