Category: social intelligence

NELSON MANDELA AND THE ART OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date December 8, 2013
7 Comments on NELSON MANDELA AND THE ART OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

“Great anger and violence can never build a nation. We are striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.” (From Nelson Mandela’s speech to European Parliament, 1990.)

As I write this post, we are in the middle of South Africa’s 10-day mourning period for Nelson Mandela. Although I myself have never set foot in South Africa, I, along with millions of Americans, and millions more around the world, find our hearts merging with those of his country’s citizens. It is, of course, a period of remembrance of a man who learned to forgive his oppressors; a man who in his later years developed a smile full of wisdom and kindness; a man who could fill up Yankee Stadium with thrilling cheers; a man deeply respected.

For me, Nelson Mandela provided us an enduring inspirational lesson on conflict resolution.

Nelson Mandela and Conflict

When we attempt to come up with a brief description of a conflict, it helps to have a good definition of “conflict” at hand. On this blog, we have been using a definition derived from the DIG Conflict Model.

A conflict exists whenever the following three conditions exist:

Party A desires an act will occur.
Party A perceives that another party is likely to act in a manner that interferes with the desire.
Party A perceives that the other party would be guilty of doing something wrong if he or she carries out the interfering act.

Notice that each of the three conditions has a key word italicized—desire for the first condition, interferes for the second, and guilty for the third. If we take the first letter of each of these key words and put them together, they spell DIG; hence the DIG Conflict Model’s name.

Party A, in the above definition, indicates the individual who is theoretically engaged in a conflict and from whose perspective the conflict will first be described.

For most of Mandela’s life, the major conflict that existed in his country can be briefly described as follows:

The large majority of people living in South Africa desired to have basic civil rights but interfering with this was the government’s apartheid laws and policies. The majority of the people felt that those supporting the laws and policies of apartheid were, and would continue to be, guilty of doing a terrible wrong.

Many of the people who participated in the conflict experienced its guilt condition as so large that their attention was focused mostly on that particular condition, and it became hard to focus their attention on solving the desire-interfering problem. To understand this better, we have to take a couple of minutes to see how each of the three conditions of a conflict can vary in size and how that affects efforts to resolve a conflict.

The Three Conflict Conditions Can Vary in Size

The three conditions of a conflict (desire, interference and guilt) are not just present. Each of these conditions, like the sides of a triangle, can vary in size.

The Variability of Desires. People have different desires, some not as strong as others. We can get a feel for this by considering the following scenarios:

Over the course of a few months, Juliet meets four young suitors at different times. First she meets Tom, spends an hour with him at a nice café, and the next day she has no desire to ever see him again. A few weeks later she meets Dick at a play, and the next day she has a small but not overwhelming desire to see him. The following week, during a stroll through a lush park, she is introduced to Harry. The next day she finds that she wants to see him even more then she wants to see Dick. And then she meets Romeo. Juliet’s passion leads her to follow Romeo through the gates of death.

Let’s say twenty-four hours after each of these four meetings, Juliet is asked to rate on a zero to ten-point scale how much she wants to see each. Zero indicates she has no desire to see the guy, and ten indicates the greatest desire she can imagine. For Tom, she provides a rating of zero; for Dick, a three; for Harry, a six; and for Romeo, a ten.

Once a person desires something a certain amount, over time it can change. We all know cases in which both the bride and groom swear at their wedding that they desire to be together for the rest of their lives, and then after a few years, they have no desire to be with one another for another minute, let alone for the rest of their lives.

The process of asking people to rate from one to ten how much they desire something allows us to measure this kind of variability. A similar process can be used to measure the other two conditions for a conflict—interfering and guilt.

The Variability of Interfering Acts. Recall that in a conflict an interfering act refers to a party doing something that gets in the way of Party A’s desire. With that in mind, consider the following scenarios:

Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father gives his blessing and says, “Marry him whenever you want.” Juliet is asked to rate on a zero to ten- point scale the degree she perceives that her father will act in a manner that is interfering with what she wants. Zero indicates “not at all interfering.” Ten indicates “completely interfering.” With a delightful smile, she indicates a zero.

Let’s change the scenario a bit. Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father says she can see him as much as she wants six days a week. He goes on to say that on Fridays she can also see Romeo as much as she wants, but only during the day. From suppertime to bedtime on Fridays she will meet some other eligible men in the city. If after three months of this plan, Juliet still wants to marry Romeo, her father tells her he will give his blessing. Although Juliet wants to marry Romeo right away, she indicates that it appears to her that her father’s plan will not be completely interfering with what she wants by giving it a rating of three.

How about this scenario? Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father forbids her from ever seeing Romeo and has hired some thugs to kidnap and transport him to Australia, thousands of miles away. Juliet indicates that it appears to her that her father’s interfering act is a ten.

These three scenarios illustrate that, like desires, interfering activities can be perceived as varying on a scale from zero to ten. So too can the guilt condition.

The Variability of Guilt. Like the desires and incompatibility conditions of conflicts, people don’t perceive guilt as just present or absent, but rather they perceive varying degrees of it. For example, let’s say Juliet passionately desires to marry Romeo, but discovers that the prince has ordered that anyone marrying Romeo will be beheaded, along with all of her family. Under this set of circumstances, Juliet may not blame her father at all if he refuses to give her his permission.

What about a different set of circumstances? Juliet passionately wants to marry Romeo. In this case, the prince is not involved. Juliet’s father earns a meager living running a grocery store in town. Many of his customers hate Romeo. If they were to hear that Juliet’s father gave his permission for her to marry Romeo, they would stop shopping at his store.

The whole family depends on the income from the store. Juliet believes her family would somehow survive, but they would lose the house that they love and have to make other major sacrifices. In this case, Juliet may blame her father for refusing to give his permission for her to get married, but perhaps just a little bit.

In our final example, Juliet’s father refuses to give her his permission to marry even though everyone in town likes Romeo and thinks he would make a great husband for her. When Juliet asks her father for an explanation for his refusal, he replies, “Because I said so!”

Under this set of circumstances, Juliet may believe her father is completely to blame for his interfering act. In the case of so large a guilt condition, Juliet may begin to focus on doing something terrible to make him “pay” for his guilt. Her angry emotions can make it difficult to think rationally and creatively.

Back to the Mandela Conflict

In 1980, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison, I spoke for over an hour to a person of color about his views on South Africa’s apartheid policies. The entire time he was very angry and he spoke about all of the awful things that those supporting apartheid were guilty of doing. Each time I tried to get him to discuss what the country can do to move forward in order to achieve his desire to obtain civil rights for all of the people of South Africa, he would begin to answer me, but before he could finish his first sentence, he switched back to talking about another set of actions that supporters of South Africa were guilty of.

I believe this type of discussion was typical of many of those embroiled in this conflict until Mandela was finally released after 27 years in prison. Mandela spoke with authority when he modeled for his people a very different form of discussion, a form of discussion that was less angry, less blaming of who did what, and more on how to achieve the desire for civil rights and how to end the interfering acts of apartheid supporters. He spoke with authority in part because the people knew that if Mandela could forgive after how he suffered in prison for so long, perhaps they could find a way to do so as well.

Oh, there were those who wanted revenge despite hearing Mandela’s approach. Would have more violence bred even more violence?

In the end, the South African people decided overwhelmingly that Mandela’s approach was the wiser of the two paths that laid before them. Yes, there remains many serious problems that remain for the South African people to solve. But the people have spoken, and there are many signs that exist to say they were right. Today, according to a recent Gallup poll:

In closing, I want to leave you with the words of former President Bill Clinton. Upon being interviewed about the death of Mandela, Clinton said:

“His enduring power is that he showed us that there is truth and freedom in forgiveness and in the mental and emotional discipline to live in the present and think of the future.”

———————————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, apartheid, conflict resolution, dig for the conflict, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, Nelson Mandela, psychological maturity, respect, South Africa, violence, wisdom

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GIVING SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER: WISE OR FOOLISH?

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date December 1, 2013
11 Comments on GIVING SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER: WISE OR FOOLISH?

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we begin with a Blondie comic:

In the above scenario, as Dagwood gets into bed, rather than greet him with warm, open arms, Blondie has turned her back to him. Because she has become angry with him, all that Dagwood is going to get from Blondie on this night is Blondie’s cold shoulder.

What Does it Mean to Give Someone the Cold Shoulder?

When we are in a relationship, if someone does something that results in arousing our anger, we often seek to punish the person whom we believe to be the source of our anger. One way to do this is to act in a manner that is typically referred to as “giving him the cold shoulder.” Of course it is not just women who give guys the cold shoulder; guys do it to their spouse perhaps just as much as women.

Although when I think of someone giving the cold shoulder to someone, the image that typically comes to my mind is two people in a marriage relationship, but the fact is that a friend can do it to a friend as well.

According to Wikipedia, “the phrase “cold shoulder” has been used as a description of aloofness and disdain,^[1] a contemptuous look over one’s shoulder,^[4] and even in the context of a woman attempting to decline the advances of an aggressive man.^[6] Overall, it remains widely popular as a phrase for describing the act of ignoring someone or something, or giving an unfriendly response.^{[5] “}

Is the “Cold Shoulder” Technique Good or Bad?

I have had discussions with people who use this type of punishment and many of them are just fine with it. They report that whenever they use this approach, almost always, after awhile, the argument somehow gets worked out and their relationship, overall, has been wonderful. And they say that they know people who have had a valued relationship lasting a lifetime despite one or both parties in the relationship using the cold shoulder from time to time.

Although I agree that there are certainly worse ways to deal with disagreements than giving the person you are angry with the cold shoulder, nevertheless, I believe there is a much better alternative.

Notice that in the above comic when Dagwood becomes angry with Blondie, instead of giving her the cold shoulder, he lovingly says, “Please, Honey, I need a moment…”

Regular readers of this blog know that I have long advocated that when you see yourself becoming angry, it is wise to provide the other person in your relationship a time out signal that you have worked out when both of you were in a pleasant mood (see ANGER, STRESS AND THE SIGNALING TO BACK OFF TECHNIQUE). This postpones any deep problem solving until you give yourself some time to calm down.

In the Blondie comic that we just looked at, Dagwood’s signal is “Please, Honey, I need a moment…” Notice that he includes in his signal a sweet nickname for her. This can be very helpful. By learning to express your signal in a loving way, it decreases the likelihood that the problem will turn into a more heated problem that will be harder to solve in the future.

Also notice that Dagwood, in this example, says he needs a moment. Sometimes we need more than a moment. There is nothing wrong with taking even a week to calm down and to figure out how to best handle the problem you are experiencing. However, if you do think that it will take you more than 24 hours, I agree with the position that Thich Nhat Hanh takes in his beautiful book, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. Before the 24 hours are up, do your best to tell the other person why you think you are angry in a loving manner if it is a family member, or a friendly manner with others. Hanh writes, “Try your best to say it peacefully. There may be some sadness in your voice, that’s fine. Just don’t say something to punish or to blame.”

At the beginning of this post I presented a comic in which Blondie makes it clear to Dagwood that she has no intention of telling him why she is angry. I think that keeping it a secret about why you are angry is simply not fair. And when you do something that strikes the other party as unfair, you now have created an extra reason to fuel the anger in the relationship.

If you agree with me that within 24 hours it is only fair to share in a loving or friendly way a little description of what you are experiencing, at the point that you provide your description there is no need to try to solve the problem. But Hanh and I both agree that you owe it to the person who is in a relationship with you to at least give him or her some explanation for what is going on within you. If you find that you don’t think you can say the words of this communication using a loving or friendly tone, at least try to write a brief note indicating a little of what you have been experiencing.

To help you to make the best use of the time that you are seeking to calm down and to problem solve, I hope you will read the two of the posts in which I discuss this process–Being a Wise Friend to Your Angry Self, Part 1 and Being a Wise Friend to Your Angry Self, Part 2.

Hanh aptly summarizes this process when he wrote:

When we are angry, we have to go back to ourselves and take good care of our anger. We cannot say, “Go away anger, you have to go away. I don’t want you.” When you have a stomachache, you don’t say, “I don’t want you, stomach, go away.” No, you take care of it. In the same way, we have to embrace and take good care of our anger. We recognize it as it is, embrace it, and smile…

Our practice is based on the insight of non-duality. Both our negative feelings and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality. So there is no need to fight; we only need to embrace and take care…. You may think that you have to combat evil and chase it out of your heart and mind. But this is wrong. The practice is to transform yourself. If you don’t have garbage, you have nothing to use in order to make compost. And if you don’t have compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the affliction in you. Since they are organic, you know that you can transform them and make good use of them.

Well, that’s my post for today. I hope you find within it some food for thought. And please feel free to provide comments or ask questions by typing in the Leave a Reply box at the very bottom of this page.

Have a wonderful week!

Jeff

Tags anger, arguments, Blondie, cold shoulder, conflict, conflict management, conflict resolution, disagreement, dispute management, disrespectful, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, negative criticism, psychological maturity, respect, silent treatment, wisdom

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RESPONDING TO INSULTS WITH QUIET SADNESS

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date November 17, 2013
3 Comments on RESPONDING TO INSULTS WITH QUIET SADNESS

A couple of weeks ago, I provided readers of this blog a post titled, “How I Met Cool Steve.” There, I told a story from one of my novels about a teenager, Jeff Star. At one point, Jeff is in an angry mood because his teacher gave him so much homework, and perhaps he is also having some jealous feelings about how much respect the other students have for Cool Steve. Jeff Star tells us what happens next:

Suddenly I hear, “Hey, Jeff Star!”

I turn to my left and spot Cliff calling after me. “Jeff, that guy Steve you were asking about,” Cliff calls out, “well, here he is.”

There, standing by Cliff is Cool Steve with a smile on his face. As I walk over, I’m feeling a completely unfamiliar nervousness. What’s he smiling about? I think to myself. Cool Steve! Cool Idiot if you ask me. And then, when I open my mouth, I find myself saying in a loud tough voice, “So you’re Steve. I’ve been hearing about you. The word is you’re a Jerk!”

As I glare at Steve, with his Mack Truck shoulders, my heart pounds furiously. From the corner of my eye I notice Steve’s friend, Cliff, watching on, his mouth closed so tight he seems to have no lips. His words from yesterday come to mind—“Steve’s the best athlete I’ve ever personally known.”

Big deal! I’m ready to go at him.

I’m waiting for an angry come on, or a quick jab from his right. My muscles are as tight as a hangman’s noose.

I notice several students who were walking home from school have put on their brakes, and their eyes are flashing back and forth between me and Steve.

Steve’s eyes lower, his forehead creases. Then his eyes look into mine and I see, instead of fury, sadness. “I guess,” he begins to say haltingly, “well… I was hoping… you know… starting a new school here… well, I was hoping the guys would like me.”

Those dark, glimmering eyes of his….

“Jeff,” says Cliff, “why did you say that?”

My eyes dart to him and back to Steve. Cold perspiration beads up on my forehead. The students looking on are almost drooling. What should I do?

Uncomfortably, I find myself shifting my stance as I look into Steve’s eyes…the sadness there…eyebrows down. They look like they are on the verge of becoming watery as he looks directly into my eyes, then down, and then back up into mine. My fury begins to turn into a feeling of downright stupidity. “Listen Steve, I… I don’t know why I said that… everyone I talked wit’ said you were okay.” I take a quick glance at Cliff and the other students watching on…and then hurry away.

A few minutes later, I’m pushing the elevator button in my apartment lobby. Jeez, I just made a great impression, I think to myself, a wonderful great impression. Steve’s eyes… man, who is this guy?

In junior high, whenever I started to put someone down, I got returned insults and fistfights. Such reactions would turn me into a raving lunatic. Now, with the way Steve acted, I don’t know how to respond to his quiet sadness.

In contrast to the beliefs of many people, the story, “How I Met Cool Steve” puts forth the theory that someone can be respected even if they respond to an insult in a different way than to return the insult or to physically attack the insulter. As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, I became pretty acquainted with the typical way to respond to insults. Most often, voices would get loud, and the exchange led to a very uncomfortable feeling between the two parties. When the two parties came back together, there were often more uncomfortable verbal exchanges. From time to time physical fights would break out, school pants got ripped at the knees as one guy tried to pin down the other on the cement ground, and I saw more then one guy end up with a broken nose. Parents had to take time off from work to meet with the principal, and sometimes the insults led to larger groups ganging up on other groups to defend the honor of someone.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his fine book, Outliers, discusses regions where people are willing to fight in response to even the slightest insult. He refers to these regions as having a “culture of honor.” One of the clearest consequences of having an above average “culture of honor” is that the murder rate is quite a bit higher than average.

In the Cool Steve story, there is something about how Cool Steve uses his eyes to negotiate through his challenging experience with Jeff Star.

How we use our eyes can dramatically influence an experience. To illustrate this, consider this example. When I first began to drive in New York, I was astounded that there were times when I was trying to ease over to the left toward my exit, when I would encounter some aggressive drivers. They would lean forward and the expression on their faces seemed to say that they would kill me if I dared to move in front of them.

As I reflected upon this, I recognized that there were times that I too acted like one of these aggressive drivers. But then one day, someone began to indicate that he wanted to move in front of me, and as I started to get into my angry, aggressive mode, the person seeking to move in front of me deliberately caught my eye with his friendly gaze and indicated with his hand that he wanted to move over. There was something in his eyes that seemed to be just asking me if I minded if he moved over, rather than like he was trying to bully his way over. Instantly, I found my whole self dramatically change. I quickly eased off the gas peddle and waved him over. I felt a reduction in my anger. His eyes somehow let me know that he was not merely an it–but rather, a fellow human being.

Afterwards, I began trying this approach whenever I wanted to move over in heavy traffic, and it has been an enormous help.

How we use our eyes can have similarly helpful effects when someone throws an insult at you. By looking gently into the insulter’s eyes and softly letting the insulter know you are sorry to hear whatever the insult is about often eases tensions. Then, if you look sadly down toward the ground for a couple of seconds, and then gently back into the insulter’s eye, this has a way of making a personal connection.

As I began to try this in my teenage years, I was amazed at how well it worked. At first, I had a little fear that my friends would think less of me, but this proved unfounded. Occasionally, a friend would say to me, “You should have slugged that guy who insulted you right in the kisser.” I’d shrug my shoulders, and that put an end to it. All of my old friends stuck with me, and I ended up often becoming friends with the insulters.

Now, some people in my conflict resolution classes over the years have asked, “What’s wrong with standing up for yourself?”

My answer is, “Nothing is wrong with it. I encourage people to stand up for themselves. But there are smart ways to do it and not so smart ways to do it.”

Consider the following Luann comic:

Here we see Luann preparing to stick up for herself so that as soon as Tiffany throws an insult at her, Luann will be ready to return the insult. If you are a follower of the delightful Luann comic strip, you know that this back and forth insult pattern has been going on and on for years. And if two people are fine with continuing to act this way toward one another, they are free to do so.

But let’s say Luann is getting tired of this old game. If she really wanted to effectively stand up for herself, she would first try to figure out why Tiffany is insulting her. It has long been my impression that Tiffany is jealous of Luann because some boys prefer Luann to her. Returning insults at Tiffany won’t resolve that issue. Gently looking sadly into Tiffany’s eyes and asking her in a concerned voice why she is throwing insults at her might lead to a more lasting solution to this type of problem.

Now, of course this quiet sadness approach is just one tool to have in your conflict resolution toolbox. It is not quite right for every situation. In the past, I recommended a few others (see for example, INSULTING CRITICISM: WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?). We’ll also be looking at other effective ways to stand up for yourself in future posts, ways that oftentimes work far better than returning insults.

Have a great week!

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, conflict management, conflict resolution, criticism, dispute management, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, jealousy, Luann comics, Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, violence

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How I Met Cool Steve

Regular readers of this blog know that to illustrate an idea, I usually utilize a comic strip or a brief parable. To fully integrate all of the ideas that appear in the blog, I’ve created a coming of age trilogy of novels that is set in Brooklyn that my students over the years have coined The Cool Steve Stories, because one of the main characters is “Cool Steve.”

Novels are perfect for illustrating subtle ideas but the vast majority of blog readers have no desire to read a post that long. And so, to deal with this challenge, from time to time I post a short story based on a chapter from one of my novels.

Today’s short story is an abbreviated version of a chapter from the second novel in the trilogy, Fights in the Streets, Tears in the Sand.

How I Met Cool Steve

When I graduated from Boody Junior High back in the sizzling summer of 1965, I had one major problem—every time I tried to get the kids to respect me I ended up making more and more enemies. If you would have asked me back then why respect was important to me, well, I guess I would have muttered a few of my choicest Brooklyn curses and then, well, I guess I would have said, “All I know is that when people treat me with respect it feels good, and when people treat me disrespectfully it feels like I ate something rotten. So there! Ya wanna make somethin’ out of it?!”

* * *

That summer, I moved to a new neighborhood and I was going to start a new school—Lincoln High. I figured no one knows me there, so this is my big chance to turn myself around.

My new neighborhood was pretty cool. It was just a few blocks from the beach and Coney Island. In ten minutes I could walk to the Cyclone, far and away the greatest roller coaster ever.

And so, I began summer vacation feeling hopeful, but as the new school year began to close in on me, I started getting pretty nervous. And when the day before school arrived I’m sitting in my room strumming my guitar while thinking about getting real sick for a few years. I wonder how long I could play up that angle to avoid school altogether. My stomach’s been out of whack for the past few days anyway, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to take it up another level.

Each lick of my guitar is a pounding of my old enemies, and then, all of a sudden, notions of respect get thrown in as well, creating a wild, pounding drum beat in sync with my wild, pounding heart. My strumming gets louder.

Hey, maybe I can get some respect for my musical talent.

“Jeff, quiet down in there!” Mom screams. “For crying out loud, you’re giving me a headache!”

“You’re giving me a headache!” I scream back while throwing my guitar down on my bed. I storm out of my apartment and pound the elevator call button. When it arrives, I punch the lobby button and then start kicking the walls.

* * *

Once in the street, I walk aimlessly as steam hisses out of my ears. Along Ocean Parkway I pass Lincoln High and shudder. Under the Belt Parkway overpass I notice pigeons up in the beams hiding in crevices. As I continued on with my walk, slowly I begin to settle down.

* * *

Well, you can kiss that summer vacation goodbye, I say to myself while setting my alarm clock so I won’t be late for my first day at Lincoln. Within minutes of shutting my light, worries begin to invade my mind, buzzing about like flies. Man, school’s gonna suck!

Sleepless minutes go by like hours, and hours stretch out into eternities. I check my alarm clock at midnight, again at one and two.

And then, suddenly, an idea explodes upon me, followed by madly rushing thoughts. That’s it! That’s it! At Lincoln I’ll first play a real quiet type and not reveal anything about myself. And while I do that, I’ll secretly carry out a careful investigation to determine who the kids at Lincoln already respect. By keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut, I bet I can learn something useful before the kids get to know me.

But moments after this plan has rolled in with its initial high hopes, a dark cloud of doubt begins to cast its dismal shadow. Yeah, well if I carry out that stupid plan everyone’s gonna think I’m just copying the guy everyone respects. I’ll be nothing but a rotten copycat.

More tossing and turning. Three o’clock comes and goes.

And then, suddenly I sit up in bed fully awake, and my mind cries out, Wait! There was this director I worked with in a play once and I remember him saying how a great actor takes what he learns from other actors and then brings something of himself to a role, something that makes it fresh and unique. Maybe I can create something new based on someone else. Maybe.

* * *

I arrive on my first day at Lincoln at seven-twenty a.m., with a pencil, a loose-leaf notebook, and a sensationally queasy stomach. Out front students are gathered together in clusters. So far I don’t see anyone I know. Good.

Most students are dressed in outfits that appear more freshly bought than what is seen by mid-school year. The stores offering back to school sales must have had a banner year.

The first bell rings and resonates deep in my unsettled bowels. In unison, students head for their homeroom. I look down at my class schedule that I received in the mail a few weeks ago. It indicates in distinct black typewriter letters that I have to go first to HOMEROOM 324. Okay, I guess that means I better find a stairway up to the third floor. Man, I thought my junior high had big crowded hallways. They were minor league compared to this!

Here’s an up-stairway. As I traipse along, I try to listen to the conversations going on around me to see if I can find some clue about who the kids respect. There are a couple of cute girls in front of me.

“Did you see the Beatles last night on the Ed Sullivan show?” asks one.

“Definitely!”

“Who do you like better, John Lennon or Mick Jagger?”

“Oh, John’s my dreamboat!”

“Don’t you think Mick’s cuter?”

It looks like the ladies go for rockers, I think to myself. Maybe I ought to start practicing guitar more.

* * *

A couple of periods later, I’m heading to biology and some guy behind me says to someone next to him, “Hey, Cool Steve’s in my health class!”

“Cool Steve! Really?!

“Yeah! He sat right next to me.”

“Damn! Hey, tell him I say hi.”

There’s an excitement that accompanies this dialogue that somehow has me going, hmmm.

* * *

Lunchtime. I’m not really hungry, but my schedule says that’s where me and hoards of others are supposed to go so we find the down stairwell and dutifully march along.

Harsh smells of recently mopped floors, day old tuna, sour milk, low grade cheeseburgers, and the like kick my appetite for a loop.

Where should I sit? Remember to keep a quiet profile. There are some cool looking kids at this table. I start to sit down.

“Sorry, we’re saving these seats for some friends,” says one of the guys.

I nod and move on. Man, I hate school.

A few tables away, I spot an open seat next to a kid reading a story in Sports Illustrated with a great shot of Mickey Mantle. The Mick’s neck and forearms are bulging as he’s clobbering a monster home run.

“Anybody got this seat?” I ask while preparing myself for another rejection.

Looking up from his magazine, the guy looks me over for a couple of seconds, and then replies, “Sit down. I’m Cliff Schweitzer.”

“Hi Cliff, thanks. I’m Jeff Star.”

“Hi, Jeff. Say, who do you have for history?”

After checking my schedule card, I answer, “Mr. Lofton.”

“Is he any good?”

“I don’t know. I have him for the first time in a couple of periods from now.”

“I got stuck with Mr. Putzmeister,” Cliff says mournfully.

“Putzmeister!” I reply with a smile. “That his real name?”

“Yeah, and never was there a more fitting name for a teacher. I got to get out of there. He is so boring!”

“Well, it’s history, Cliff. How interesting can it be?”

“History is my favorite class, Jeff. My dad’s a history professor at New York University so that’s what we both love. And now to get stuck with Mr. Putzmeister!” This kid, Cliff, is digging his fingernails into his forehead like he’s getting ready to commit suicide.

“Try talking ta someone in the office. All you’re interested in is history?”

“Well, to me, a branch of history is ‘The world of sports,’ and I love sports. In fact, I’m writing a column for the school newspaper. It’s called the ‘Sports Scene.’ The first issue comes out on Friday. Check it out. Let me know what you think.”

While we’re talking, we hear a kid from a nearby table, yelling, “Ya wouldn’t dare do this ta Cool Steve! Why ya doing it ta me?”

I turn to Cliff. “That’s the second time I heard this name, Cool Steve. You wouldn’t happen ta know him?”

“Yeah, from Cunningham,” he answers, referring to one of the junior high schools that feed into Lincoln. “I guess most of the kids who know him, know him from there.”

“There seems to be some kind of respect thing connected to him.”

“Respect? Steve? Well, yeah.”

“You respect him?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“How come?”

“Well, I guess for me it’s got something to do with the fact that he’s the best athlete I’ve ever personally known. In baseball he’s got explosive power and a rocket arm, and in football he’s got lightning speed and incredible hands. He’s… he’s history in the making. He’s just incredible, I mean incredible! But, um… I got a feeling people would respect Steve even if he wasn’t so great in sports.” Then Cliff’s voice kind of trails off and he looks like he’s searching for a more complete answer, but before he gets to it, a guy sitting beside him asks to borrow his Sports Illustrated.

“Let me just finish this story,” Cliff responds, and he quickly buries his nose in his magazine.

* * *

After school lets out, I walk to Rocco’s Pizzeria over on Brighton Beach Avenue. Rocco is fixing up a new pie. I take in deeply the familiar aroma of baking dough, oregano, cheese, and Rocco’s underarms.

With two slices in hand, I discover none of the tables are empty. At one of them is this guy Brainy George sitting by himself with his blond hair looking like it hasn’t been combed in months. I had met him earlier in the day in my gym class and noticed he sat at the same lunch table as Cliff Schweitzer, the sports writer. “How come they call him Brainy George?” I had asked one of the guys in gym.

“Da guy’s a freakin’ genius,” came the reply.

With nowhere else to sit, I ask if he’d mind if I sat across from him.

He looks up with these large thick glasses and nods his okay. “You were in gym today,” he says as I sit down.

“Yeah.”

“I hate gym.”

“You do?”

“Can’t stand it—all the idiots trying to prove they’re Mr. Atlas.”

“Hmmmm.” Personally, to me gym is a whole lot better than the rest of the garbage we gotta take at school. Rather than saying this I maintain my quiet portrayal. The pizza is still a bit hot so I blow on it and take my first bite. Mmmmm! “What junior high did you go to?” I ask.

“Cunningham.”

“That’s the same junior high as this kid Cool Steve. I guess ya think he’s an idiot since he’s into sports.”

“Steve? Naaa. Steve’s different than the guys I’m talking about.”

“Izzat so?”

“Yeah. I like Steve because, well first of all, he’s not one of those idiots who pick on me because I can’t run as fast as the other guys. And I like the way Steve’s gutsy. He’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in. And it’s the way he carries himself… the way he moves. I don’t know… I… I just have a lot of respect for Steve.”

There’s that word again—‘respect.’ Well, being gutsy shouldn’t be too hard, I think to myself. Hell, I was gutsy enough to get into lots of fights in my old school. But I don’t quite know what to make of this stuff about the way Steve moves.

* * *

My second day at Lincoln—the wide-eyed exuberance of students on day one has turned into a ‘Do I really have to be here?’ look.

After finishing my lunch, I go sit on the steps of Lincoln’s main entrance. It’s warm and the sun is shining. Several students including Cliff Schweitzer, the sports writer, and Brainy George, the genius, come by and sit down next to me. With them are these two attractive girls.

I find myself magnetically pulled toward the girls. How can I get introduced? Be careful. You don’t want to blow the quiet image.

I nudge George and conspicuously look at each of the girls.

First, he points to the one closest to him, “She’s Sandy.” Sandy’s cute, with apricot-tan shoulders, a peachy complexion, and long, wavy, sandy-blond hair. She glances at me and smiles.

Then George, he points to the girl sitting next to Sandy. “That’s Mysterious Jane.”

“Mysterious Jane?” I ask.

“Well, they call Mysterious Jane, Mysterious Jane, because she’s strange,” George explains.

She might be strange, I think to myself, but she’s gorgeous. She has long, straight, glossy black hair that slightly covers her prominent cheekbones, and falls freely upon her voluptuous shoulders and breasts. Her green, almond shaped eyes have a thin line of black mascara and perhaps within these glimmering eyes there is a hint of some sort of mysteriousness.

Jane looks at me, gives me a slight nod, and resumes a conversation that she is having with George.

All of a sudden something catches Sandy’s attention and she cries, “Who’s that gorgeous guy?”

Mysterious Jane turns with her large green eyes in the direction that Sandy is looking—down the steps and off to the right. She lets out a long sigh. “Oh, that’s Cool Steve.”

“Ain’t he built!” Sandy squeals. “You know him?”

“Yeah, from Cunningham,” Jane replies. “All the girls were nuts about him because, well, a lot of the girls say it’s because he’s so cute. And he is cute, especially his eyes. I l-o-o-v-e his eyes.” This is followed by a moan and she then drifts off into another dimension.

Sandy pokes Mysterious Jane, returning her back to Earth. Jane looks over to Sandy, lowers her voice to an eerie whisper and says, “If you want to know the truth, the real reason all the girls are crazy about Steve is because he moves with the grace and power of a large panther, but he has far more power than any panther you’ve ever seen.”

I think to myself, that Mysterious Jane, she’s strange!

Watching Steve down the steps, I can’t notice him moving in any special way. I do notice that he’s tall with dark eyes and hair, like me. But compared to me, Steve is broader and has more of a Paul Newman nose.

Well, I refuse to get my nose fixed, but if I put on a few pounds and start lifting weights, I bet it might help. I’m way too skinny.

“Aaaaa, he’s nothing special,” I declare, feeling a little jealous of the way the girls are looking at him.

“All of the students sitting on the steps turn to me. “Nothing special,” says Mysterious Jane with a smile, and with that, everyone around me laughs.

* * *

A couple of hours later I’m walking out the south side exit of Lincoln heading home for the day. Man, I’m pissed! I can’t believe how much homework that stupid biology teacher gave me! Suddenly I hear, “Hey, Jeff Star!”

I turn to my left and spot Cliff calling after me. “Jeff, that guy Steve you were asking about,” Cliff calls out, “well, here he is.”

Big deal! I’m ready to go at him.

I’m waiting for an angry come on, or a quick jab from his right. My muscles are as tight as a hangman’s noose.

I notice several students who were walking home from school have put on their brakes, and their eyes are flashing back and forth between me and Steve.

Those dark, glimmering eyes of his….

“Jeff,” says Cliff, “why did you say that?”

My eyes dart to him and back to Steve. Cold perspiration beads up on my forehead. The students looking on are almost drooling. What should I do?

* * *

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Tags anger, bully, conflict, conflict management, conflict resolution, Cool Steve, criticism, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Mickey Mantle, psychological maturity, respect, The Beatles, violence, wisdom

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CONFESSION OF A FORMER BULLY

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date October 27, 2013
12 Comments on CONFESSION OF A FORMER BULLY

A while ago, my wife and I went to Ithaca to see the emotionally charged play, “From White Plains.” The title is meant to suggest plain white kids from a suburb. As the lights first brighten the stage, thirty-year old Dennis hears that he has won the Oscar for his film based on the bullying he and his friend faced in childhood. When Dennis reveals in front of a worldwide audience during his acceptance speech the name of the worst of the bullies whose actions led to his friend’s suicide, the drama begins.

Ethan, the former bully, sees the telecast, as does almost everyone in his life, and his smartphone lights up. Although Ethan quickly and publicly issues a heartfelt apology for his actions as a child, the fiercely outspoken Dennis is not in the least ready for forgiveness.

“Why should a two-minute apology be enough to forgive someone that caused the death of my friend and years of my own tormenting anguish?” he cries.

But Dennis’s friend, Gregory, challenges him to think about his campaign for vengeance. Increasingly sympathetic to Ethan’s pain from the unrelenting public humiliation that Dennis is leading against Ethan, at one point Gregory emotionally declares to Dennis, “It is you who have now turned into a bully!”

The plot is further complicated by the dilemma faced by Ethan’s closest buddy, John. With so much anger being directed toward Ethan, John fears that if he continues to be Ethan’s friend, those who now hate Ethan will also turn against him. Viewers of these scenes, as they watch John, an adult, struggle with this dilemma, get a vivid sense of how much more difficult it must be for kids facing the same type of dilemma whenever they see a friend begin to be targeted by others. Should they stick with their friend through thick and thin, or join with the larger, more powerful group?

I won’t reveal the rest of the play other than to say it’s very well done.

As I left the theater, I found myself thinking about my own past. At first, I vividly recalled the times that I was bullied and how I fantasized that I was Superman and used my powers to violently put all of the bullies into the hospital with broken arms and legs. And then, with angst in the pit of my stomach, I suddenly recalled an incident that occurred when I was in junior high in which I participated in bullying a classmate.

A student in my class, let’s call him Ralph, had a head that was a bit bigger than my other classmates. Another student began to pass around a sheet of paper with a drawing of a caricature of Ralph with an enormous head standing at a microphone stand giving a speech. The sheet of paper asked for signatures to nominate Ralph to be “Head of the Class.” Although I knew Ralph was watching me, I found myself laughing when the paper arrived in my hands. Not only did I laugh, I ended up signing the petition and passed it on to the student next to me, who proceeded to crack up at the site of the caricature.

After class, while walking beside Ralph on our way to our next class, I saw from his eyes and forehead that he was feeling pretty miserable. “Ralph,” I said, “we all get crap from the other kids from time to time. It’s just the stuff that goes on at school.”

“Yeah, well it doesn’t feel too good,” he replied in a choked-up voice.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “well, I like you.”

With that, I felt that I had done my good deed for the day and the incident was over. The next morning, however, when Ralph showed up in the schoolyard just before the line-up bell, the kids in my class began to once again put him down. I noticed there was a girl that I knew Ralph liked standing near by. Although this time I didn’t join in on the teasing, I wanted to speak up and ask the kids to cut it out, but I didn’t have the courage. I found myself afraid that if I said anything to defend Ralph, the bullying would be turned on me. And so, feeling like a coward, I kept my mouth shut.

Fifty years have gone by, and I still feel that I hadn’t done quite enough at times for all the Ralphs out there.

As an adult, I now believe that the best hope to deal effectively with the bullying problem is to have programs at school that change the culture so that the actions of bullies signify ineptitude rather than manliness; and that sticking up for a kid who is being bullied is a sign of a real hero (see my post “Bully and Beyond”).

But for those of us who went to schools that had no such programs, how are we to deal with the ruminating memories that continue to plague us years after we graduated? Can we ever forgive ourselves for the actions we committed in our youth? Can we ever forgive the kids who humiliated us? Why do some people, having been bullied as kids, turn into bullies themselves the first chance that they get? And finally, why do some people who had bullying experiences as kids instead of converting them into hate somehow manage to convert them into acts of kindness?

Over the next few weeks, I hope readers will help me to make sense of all of this.

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Tags anger, bullied, bullies, bullying, conflict management, disrespectful, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, From White Plains, insults, suicide, violence, wisdom

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TOUCHING WHILE TRYING TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS: IS THERE A PLACE FOR IT?

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date October 20, 2013
12 Comments on TOUCHING WHILE TRYING TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS: IS THERE A PLACE FOR IT?

The chief executive officer (CEO) in the Dilbert comic strip is the bald-headed guy. He has been having quite a few conflicts with his workers. After trying some new approaches to resolve these conflicts, he decides to see if touching might help:

Apparently, one of the CEO’s workers likes the way it feels when he is patted on his head. I don’t think I would like my boss to pat me on my head. Nevertheless, I do wonder if touching someone in certain ways during a conflict may be helpful at times.

When I was growing up, my mother and some of my male acquaintances would use physical contact during a conflict with me in the form of hitting. They did this to try to force me to do whatever they wanted me to do. But in this post, I’m not going to discuss that type of physical contact.

I also received some forms of physical contact in a few non-conflict situations. Affectionate close relatives would hug me when saying hello. In my early days my friends and male cousins would roughhouse in a fun manner. These occurred without any real conflict. Today, I have something very different in mind.

One of the ways I recall someone touching me during a conflict occurred when I was sixteen years old. I was on the Lincoln High baseball team and I happened to show up a little late for practice.

Soon after I arrived, my coach took me off to the side so we could talk in semi-privacy. The other players could still see us, but they were far enough away so that what my coach had to say was just for my ears.

He first looked down at the ground for a long 30 seconds or so, and then he looked squarely into my eyes while putting his hand softly on the back of my shoulder. In a soft voice, he said, “Jeff, I see you as one of the leaders on this team. I’m hoping this is the last time you come late for practice. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Coach,” I replied. “I’m real sorry about being late.”

He then patted me on my back and said, “OK, Jeff, now go take some fielding practice, and I want to see you hustling out there.”

“You bet, Coach!”

Now, at the time, it never even crossed my mind that my coach had done anything that anyone could possibly think of as wrong. When I was growing up, in sports touching occurred all the time. A coach might put his arm around you while he gave you some instructions.

If you made a nice play, the coach and your team mates might pat you on the arm or back, or even on your rear end.

And both male and female athletes and coaches would give each other enthusiastic hugs.

My baseball coach had done something a little different when he touched me. Usually touching in sports occurred during the rough and tumble of a game or as a sign that you did something good. My baseball coach had touched me, not for any of those two reasons, but because he was trying to work out a conflict he was having with me. And it worked. I never came late again, and not only did I not think he did anything wrong, I found that I had an increased amount of respect for him because of the way he handled the situation.

Soon after, I found myself reflecting upon what he did. He spoke to me in relative privacy. When he began, he looked down in a way that I could tell that what I did led to him feeling unhappy. And then, when he looked into my eyes and said that he felt that I was viewed as one of the team leaders, there was something about what he said and how he said it that led me to feel that he genuinely liked me. At the same time, he told me what he wanted me to do in the future in very clear terms–to be on time for practice.

After that incident, I found myself often using a similar approach, and I found it very helpful. As a result, I didn’t think there could be any problem with it. But as the years went on, from time to time I have heard individuals complain about someone touching them in similar situations and not liking it. And so, I began to ask some questions to see if I could come to understand the reasons for our experiences being so very different.

One teenager whom we will call Judy told me that a guy at school made a suggestion to her that made her very angry.

“Then what happened,” I asked.

“How did you feel about the way the guy handled the situation?” I asked.

“I didn’t like the way he touched me,” Judy replied. “He squeezed my shoulder and it felt threatening.”

“Hmmm,” I replied. “Something about the way he squeezed your shoulder felt uncomfortable. I see. What if he just touched you gently in the back of your shoulder while saying what he said? Would you have felt more comfortable with that?”

Judy thought about this for a few seconds and then looked up at me and smiled. “That would have been okay,” she replied. “There was something about the way he actually touched me that felt creepy, and I didn’t like it at all.”

Although Judy said that if the boy would have touched her gently on the back, she would have felt okay about that, I have heard some other folks say that they don’t like to be touched at all.

So what do we do about this? Do we stop touching everyone in these types of situations because some people feel uncomfortable with being touched? Do we begin to think about what kinds of touching might be okay, and what types of touching is not okay?

I really can’t answer this type of question for everyone. It would be very helpful if readers over the next few weeks share with us their thoughts about this, so we have more information to judge. In the meantime, I will say this. If you do try the touching approach with someone, I think you would be wise to watch carefully how the other person is reacting. If the person begins to appear tense, with a crinkling of the forehead, a stiffening of the body or by pulling away from the touch, I encourage you to back off and offer an apology. Perhaps saying something like this might be helpful, “I sense that you don’t like me to touch you. I’ll keep that in mind in the future and respect your feelings. I’m sorry I made you feel uncomfortable.” Then, a gentle smile might ease some of the tension.

Well, I hope this post gives you some ideas to think about, and, as always, I hope to be reading your comments real soon.

Have a great week,

Jeff

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Tags coach, conflict management, conflict resolution, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, psychological maturity, respect, touching, wisdom

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THE MOST MATURE LEVEL OF RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: ADVANCE LESSON

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date August 11, 2013
2 Comments on THE MOST MATURE LEVEL OF RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: ADVANCE LESSON

Are there different levels of maturity for responding to criticism? If so, what is the most mature level?

Over recent weeks we have been pursuing an answer to these questions (see for example, Responding to Criticism: Four Levels of Maturity and Responding to Criticism: The Most Mature Level). During this pursuit, I put forth a tentative proposal for a most mature level because I think that’s a good way to get into these types of questions. Not only have I described what I think is the most mature level, I have presented arguments against this most mature level and arguments for it.

When I have taught these types of lessons in a classroom setting, despite all that I have already said on this topic, many of my students continue to raise some additional questions. And so, in this post I will try to clarify some points of confusion that have been brought to my attention by my students over the years.

Clarifying the Difference Between a Pawn and an Origin.

Responding to criticism at the most mature level requires that we seek to lead the criticizer to feel more like an origin than a pawn.

Many of my students have asked me to talk more about this point.

When people feel like pawns, they feel pushed around, and they feel that they are like puppets with someone else pulling the strings. Somewhere in our hearts and minds we realize that bossy people create a revolt against perceived illegitimate power. Calvin’s father, in the following comic, begins to realize this.

Feeling like a pawn may be contrasted with feeling like I have an influence over what I do—that I have played at least a part in originating my behavior.

When you respond to criticism at the most mature level, you seek to come across as “not being bossy.” By trying to come up with some way to steer in the direction of the criticism, you come across as showing that you can be influenced by the person who is criticizing you.

Providing More Examples of Steering

After explaining a little more about the difference between feeling like a pawn and feeling like an origin, many of my students ask me to provide some more examples of people using steering.

In the DeCharms study I discussed earlier (Pawns in The Classroom), teachers who had learned to steer put fifteen minutes aside once a week to ask students to criticize how things are going during the week. The teachers in the study didn’t actually use the word “criticize.” The students were asked to provide “suggestions.” Suggestions, as we have discussed are, in a sense, criticism because people only make suggestions when they first make some sort of evaluation of what they perceive. Based on the evaluation, they then declare what they think might be an improvement.

The teachers were taught to listen to the student suggestions in a manner very similar to the description of level four on the five levels rating system. However, when teachers who use steering feel a suggestion does not make sense they do not merely attempt to disagree without being disagreeable. Instead, they try to use some aspect of the suggestion so the student feels the suggestion has been taken seriously.

For example, let’s say a student suggests that if the class works hard all day, the last hour should be free time. Suppose the teacher, let’s call her Mrs. Jones, feels that a daily hour of free time would waste too much learning time. Mrs. Jones can still steer in the direction of the suggestion. That is, she can explain her concern about wasting too much time; then she can propose that if by the end of the week the students had done a spectacular job all week long, the last hour on Fridays they will be given the freedom to choose either to get a head start on homework, write in their journal, or read a library book; then, after proposing this, Mrs. Jones asks the class if they want to give this a try. Notice that she is using the student’s suggestion of free time to influence where she steers the activities for the week.

Steering frequently ends up with the criticized person offering some type of choice to the criticizer. But there is a difference between providing a choice using a steering model and offering a choice in general. Consider a teacher who offers a choice to a student by saying, “Either you do the assignment or fail the course. Those are your choices.” This is not an example of steering. Nor is this—a teacher says, “I’m giving you a choice between playing ‘Math Blaster’ or ‘Race to the Moon.’ Hurry up and pick one, I don’t have all day!”

A teacher who is using steering would be more likely to say something like, “Here are two games that teach some math skills. Which one do you think would be best for you?” Notice the difference in attitude between the approaches. In the first two examples, the choice may not be perceived as a genuine choice but more of a demand to pick either one or the other. In the Peanuts comic below, we get a sense of how strong a reaction can occur when a child comes to believe the choice he or she is given is not really genuine.

Steering by teachers demonstrates a degree of respect in that the teacher is genuinely interested in the student’s opinion and is willing to have that opinion count in deciding what will be done.

Here’s an example involving a father and his son.

In the For better or for Worse comic, Michael criticizes his father’s decision that it’s time to go to bed. The father, no doubt, disagrees with his son’s criticism. Yet, rather than just saying his son is wrong, he seeks instead to come up with a way that utilizes some aspect of his son’s criticism to come up with a new alternative.

I think that the father, by asking his son to ask EVERY kid in town about bedtimes was unreasonable, but I trust that you get the point I’m trying to make in this example.

In the Luann comic below, Knute’s effort to work out what to do on his upcoming date with Crystal is evident.

Knute’s effort to find something to do that they will both like probably will be far more helpful in establishing a relationship with Crystal than if he insists on taking her to a monster truck rally.

Now, some people confuse steering with compromise. Steering can involve a compromise, but oftentimes it leads to something better than a compromise. The classic example of a compromise occurs when someone wants to buy something, let’s say a used car. The car dealership wants ten thousand dollars for the car, but the buyer wants to pay only five thousand dollars for it. In the end, they settle on $7,500. Both parties don’t end up getting quite what they had hoped, but they settle so they can close the deal. Both parties may walk away a little disappointed.

Oftentimes, when steering occurs, neither party is disappointed.

Steering envisions that the person criticized makes an effort to see if there is some way out of the conflict, a way where two opposing views can be reframed into an original and larger context that provides new values to both parties. This may be difficult and at times not always possible or desirable, but as we move along, I hope to show that it is possible far more often than commonly believed.

Rudyard Kipling’s Poem, If

Back in 1897, Rudyard Kipling wrote one of his most famous poems—If. Relevant to our discussion is the part that says:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise…

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

When someone is blaming, doubting, hating, or lying about you, they very likely are criticizing you and in a rather unflattering manner. How would it be best to respond to this?

Among the things Mr. Kipling encourages you to do is to keep your head even when others are losing theirs—admittedly, not always an easy thing to do. He urges you to trust yourself when all doubt you and make allowance for their doubting too. I’m not sure I completely agree with this, for spending some time in doubt seems to prod me, at times, to consider some important alternatives—but I think I have some sense of what he was trying to get at here.

Although I’m tempted to analyze Kipling’s poetry with a fine tooth comb, the thing about poetry is that the poet seeks to capture more than what can be analyzed. With just the right mixture of words and phrasing, Kipling strove to capture a certain subtle emotion and attitude.

I present the poem for your consideration in hopes that you will see that there is something in it that captures the emotion and attitude of the two highest levels of the five levels rating system. If you read the poem a couple of times and then the description of the two highest levels, you may find, when taken together, that they share a truth beyond words.

Well, that’s today’s lesson. I hope you enjoyed it.

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Tags conflict, conflict management, criticism, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, maturity levels, negative criticism, psychological maturity, wisdom

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ANGER, STRESS AND UTILIZING THE CHRONIC STRESSORS SCALE

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 28, 2013
4 Comments on ANGER, STRESS AND UTILIZING THE CHRONIC STRESSORS SCALE

Last week I began to answer the following question from one of my students:

“I have been finding many of my new conflict resolution skills very helpful. However, to my dismay, sometimes I’m feeling stressed out and then if I become angry I find my skills fly right out the window. Why do you think that this occurs, and is there anything I can do about this?”

I began to answer this question by first explaining how mounting stress can lower the threshold for triggering an emotion blow-up.

I then explained that when we notice that we are at the edge of exploding, we would be wise to use THE SIGNALING TO BACK-OFF TECHNIQUE. We now begin to look at another approach that can help people who find themselves dealing with overwhelming stress.

UTILIZING THE CHRONIC

STRESSORS SCALE

Some forms of stress may be so minor that they don’t give us much reason to think that they can have a serious negative effect on our functioning. In the stress literature, these minor stressful events are called hassles. If several are occurring during a relatively short period of time and are occurring day after day, minor hassles can become major stressors. And even major stressful experiences, when they begin to occur regularly, begin to seem “normal.” In time we may not connect the stress that has begun to feel “normal” with our irritability. Rather, we may come to believe we have a hostile temperament.

Here’s a strategy to help you find out if chronic stressors are a problem for you. Just below this paragraph is a scale that provides a list of chronic stressors and a space for you to rate on a 0 to 5 scale how stressful you find each, with 5 indicating the highest level of stress. You may notice that I have not included on the list stressors that are transitory, such as the death of a loved one or moving to a new home. Transitory stressors can be quite severe but time and warm friendly support throughout these rough periods will typically put them to rest.

CHRONIC STRESSORS SCALE

Stressor Zero to 5

Stressful commuting
Lack of quality sleep
Lack of regular exercise
Noisy environment
Stressful eating pattern
Lack of supportive relationships
Being provided too much negative criticism
Boring job
Chronic health condition
Feeling worthless
Worries about financial problems
Use of alcohol
Use of cigarettes
Use of other drugs
Recurring angry memories
Other stressors

a. ________________ b._________________ c. _________________

Once you fill out the Chronic Stressors Rating Scale, you may notice that you can eliminate one or more of the stressors rather easily. But for many of us, this is too difficult at first. As an alternative approach, get your total Chronic Stressors score by adding up all of the ratings that you made on the right side of the scale. Then have a problem solving session, perhaps with a friend you trust. Your goal might be to find a set of strategies that lead to a lower total score of just 5 points.

Completely eliminating a stressor or two is only one approach to reducing your total score. Another approach is to find a way to just reduce the intensity of a few of the stressors. For example, say that you rated “Lack of regular exercise” a five because you get practically no exercise and you are really feeling very, very stressed about that. Perhaps you will be unable to figure out right away how to get all of the exercise you need. Nevertheless, you may still think of a way to begin to get a little more exercise each day so that you can reduce your rating for this stressor from a five to a three. This will lower your total score by two points. Now you only have to find a way to reduce two or three other stressors a point or two in order to lower your total score by five points.

Here’s a parable that will better illustrate someone utilizing the Chronic Stressors Scale.

The Parable of Jenny

While Jenny is having a sandwich in the lunchroom working on her Chronic Stressors Rating Scale, her friend, Trish, comes over.

“Jenny, what are you up to?” she asks.

“I’m trying to figure out how I can reduce the amount of stress in my life so I won’t get so angry all the time.”

“Well, let’s see here,” says Trish looking over at Jenny’s ratings. I see you gave yourself a five for stressful commuting, a four for lack of quality sleep, a five for lack of exercise, a four for a noisy environment, and a five for worries about financial problems. Oh, look, I see under other stressors you wrote in ‘feelings of loneliness.’ You gave yourself a four on that one. Then you wrote in, ‘price at the gas station going up.’ You gave yourself a five for that one.”

“Yeah, each time the price for gas goes up a few cents more it really ticks me off. I already have financial problems and, man, when I fill up and see what it’s now going to cost me every week, it really gets to me and I see myself getting angry all day long for the stupidest stuff!”

“So, what have you come up with to lower your stress levels?”

“I just began to think about it, Trish. I’ve been thinking about maybe buying some earplugs. I have a wonderful family living next door to me, but there’s a newborn baby in the family that starts to wail quite a bit. He’s darling, but I have to admit that it sometimes starts to get to me. And there’s a two-year old there that can scream to high-heaven quite a bit also. Still, putting earplugs in my ears, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with doing that. Do you have any ideas of what I can do? I’m feeling a little stuck.”

“Hmmm, I see the first item that you gave yourself a five on is ‘stressful commuting.’ Tell me about that, Jenny.”

“Oh, it’s driving me crazy! It takes me usually an hour to drive to work, but I have to figure on an hour and fifteen minutes in case the traffic gets really backed up. Even then I end up being late a couple of times a month, which ends up putting me in a bad way with the boss. When that happens, I end up really, really, in a bad mood. During the commute there are people cutting me off, people honking, and a couple of months ago I got into an accident. With my $500 deductible insurance policy, wow, I got backed-up on my credit card payments. I’m scared to death that if I get into another accident I’ll be really unable to pay my bills!”

“I see,” says Trish sympathetically. “The commute sure is causing you a whole pile of stress. You know, I drive by Elm Street every morning, and I notice that the apartment buildings over there regularly have some rentals available. It’s less than a mile from work. You could walk through the park to get here in twenty minutes less than the drive. Then you can get your exercise in every day and save some money on gas.”

“I don’t know,” Jenny replies, “I’d come into work all sweaty.”

“A lot of people in our offices somehow make it work. They drive bikes or walk, carry a backpack, and change when they get in. Or, if you want, I can pick you up on my way in to work, and you can walk home. That way, you could sleep an hour later every morning and come to work more rested.”

“Aren’t those apartments off of Elm awfully expensive, Trish?”

“It would cost you an extra one fifty a month, but you pay for gas and upkeep on the car more than that. If you live by Elm, you could give up your car altogether for a year and really save some money. In fact, if you really wanted to save quite a bit of money for a year we could…” Trish suddenly pauses here.

“What were you going to say, Trish?” asks Jenny.

“Well, I’m also having some financial problems and I was thinking of finding someone to share an apartment with me. I looked at a two-bedroom place over by Elm. If we went in together, each of us would save a couple of hundred dollars a month and we’d still have our own rooms. Still, I sure like living alone. On the other hand, I’m really struggling to pay the bills.”

“Sharing an apartment,” says Jenny softly to herself. “I don’t know. But it would just be a one-year commitment. If it turns out awful, I would have made the sacrifice just so I can pay off all of those credit card bills. I might even end up liking it. I’d have someone to eat supper with…”

In the end, Jenny and Trish did get an apartment together. It turned out to be much quieter than Jenny’s last one. She is less lonely, her commute to work permits her to sleep an extra hour a day, and her commute home—a walk mostly through a park—is one of her favorite parts of her day.

On her walk home, Jenny passes a gas station and she always notices when the price at the pump goes up. At such times, instead of ruining her day, she finds herself smiling.

Jenny feels physically better since beginning her daily walks and sleeps more soundly. Her anger is far less likely to interfere with her conflict resolution skills.

This parable illustrates that with a little problem solving it may be possible to figure out ways to reduce your overall stress level which may then reduce your difficulty with anger. We’ll be practicing using the Chronic Stressors Rating Scale from time to time in the near future.

Well, that’s our lesson for today. I hope you all have a great week.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, conflict management, dispute management, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, frustration, stress, stressors, stressors rating scale, threats

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ANGER, STRESS AND THE SIGNALING TO BACK-OFF TECHNIQUE

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 21, 2013
4 Comments on ANGER, STRESS AND THE SIGNALING TO BACK-OFF TECHNIQUE

While taking my conflict resolution class, Sara, a young woman around thirty, asked the following: “I have been finding many of my new conflict resolution skills very helpful. However, to my dismay, sometimes I’m feeling stressed out and then if I become angry I find my skills fly right out the window. Why do you think that this occurs, and is there anything I can do about this?”

To answer Sara’s question, I first reminded her about what a conflict is according to the DIG Conflict Model we discussed earlier on this blog (see for example, DIG FOR THE CONFLICT):

A conflict exists whenever the following three conditions exist:

Party A desires an act will occur.
Party A perceives that another party is likely to act in a manner that interferes with the desire.
Party A perceives that the other party would be guilty of doing something wrong if he or she carries out the interfering act.

Consider, as an example, the following For Better or for Worse comic strip.

Let’s say that we are looking at this situation from Elly’s perspective. Thus, she is party A. And let’s say the comic strip portrays a situation in which Elly desires that John will be so appreciative of her own unique beauty that he would have no interest in looking at other women, but interfering with this desire, Elly sees John turning his attention away from her and toward another woman. And, finally, let’s say Elly’s shouting occurs because she thinks John is guilty of doing something wrong. If this was indeed how Elly perceived this situation, then all three of the DIG conflict conditions are present (a desire, an interfering act, and the perception of guilt). We would therefore be justified to conclude that Elly has a conflict with John.

When Elly perceives that John is interfering with her desire, we can also say that John’s action is threatening her desire to be appreciated. That is, Elly might think that if John finds the woman that he is ogling attractive, perhaps he finds many other women attractive and at some point he’ll decide to leave me and our kids so he can have affairs with these women? Such threatening concerns are experienced as frustrating or stressful.

The concept of stress is designed to account for the fact that the degree of threat necessary to trigger an emotional reaction can change depending on other threats one has encountered in a relatively short period of time. These other threats, even if relatively minor by themselves, can build up.

The concept of stress is used to describe situations in which it appears that threats can build up to a point that exhausts a person’s ability to cope. As threats build up, they can cause stress which tends to lower the threshold for the triggering of an emotion even when the threats have occurred in a setting that has nothing to do with the threat currently being dealt with. A relatively minor incident that would not result in an angry emotional reaction by itself, may nevertheless lead to a blow-up if it occurs too close in time to other threatening experiences.

Phillip Zimbardo refers to certain situations that build up stress as creating the “Lucifer effect.”[1]

Professor Zimbardo discovered this effect when he utilized a group of Stanford University students to engage voluntarily in an experiment. These students were first selected because they were identified through an extensive battery of tests as being particularly healthy, both physically and emotionally. They were then randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week many of these healthy students were transformed into explosively angry individuals.

What led to this transformation? Those playing the inmates were placed in cramped cells. There were shrieking whistles in the middle of the night disturbing sound sleep. Those who were acting as guards repeatedly yelled insults. When ‘inmates’ expressed anger at how they were being treated, ‘guards’ barked back more insults. Failure to follow rules resulted in degrading punishment.

Before long, inmates furiously resisted and guards became more and more insensitive in shouting insults and instituting punishments. Once physical shoving began to occur, based on humane considerations and legal ones, the experiment was halted well before the researchers had originally planned.

So, I explained to Sara, the woman who asked the question in my conflict resolution class, when you feel stressed out and then find that you can no longer control your anger, this is a pattern most human beings will experience under certain conditions. We all have limited resources to deal with threats and as the threats heat up we begin to lose our cool. When we lose our cool, all that we have left to cope with a challenging situation is our most primitive instincts. Fortunately, there are a few things that we can do to deal effectively with these types of situations. Today, we’ll just focus on one of them—the Signaling to Back-Off Technique. To introduce this idea, let’s begin with a parable.

PARABLE OF MARTY AND LENA

Marty got stuck at work and so he called his girlfriend, Lena, to let her know he was going to be late for their date.

When he finally arrived, he was already irritated about how his boss had treated him and he found himself becoming a little annoyed when Lena started to raise her voice about how late he had been. He took a deep breath, and then replied, “I understand why you are upset. I was really very late and naturally you are very frustrated.”

Lena then looked at his clothes and complained that he was not wearing a tie.

“I didn’t think a tie was necessary for the party we’re going to,” Marty replied. “Next time we go to a party, I’ll check with you before I pick out my outfit.”

As they left the house to go to the party, before getting into his car, Lena paused. “You didn’t have your car washed and you knew we were going to a party!” she complained. “It’s filthy.”

“Lena, I had a rough day at work, and now, in the last five minutes you criticized me three times—first, about my being late, then about not wearing a tie, and now, about not washing the car. Usually I’m very interested in your criticisms. It helps me to become a better person. But for the rest of the evening I’d like you to hold off on any more.”

“Don’t give me that!” Lena hollered. “You didn’t wash the lousy car! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Lena, I know you’re going to be disappointed, but I’ve decided to spend the evening alone. I’ll call you in a few days and if you’re up to discussing what happened this evening, we’ll do it then. I’m sorry.” Then Marty got into his car and drove away with Lena still yelling.

Parable Discussion

Notice that in this Marty and Lena parable, Marty, after being criticized three times in a short period of time attempts to sail away from the Region of Anger by gently asking Lena to hold off on any more criticism for the rest of the evening. We will call this the “Signaling to Back-Off Technique.” Although this fails to work for Marty in this parable, the Signaling to Back-Off Technique has the potential to be highly effective. It works best in an ongoing relationship, although I have seen it work well with people who hardly know each other. The best way to set this up is to discuss this technique with the other person at a time when both of you are not in an angry mood. You might say to the other party something like:

Sometimes I begin to get really upset about something you are saying. I know that it’s important for me to hear your point of view and I do want to hear what you have to say. But there are times when I’m in no condition to give you a fair hearing on a particular topic. At such times, it would help me a great deal if I could give you a simple signal for you to back off for a while. I’ll make sure you’ll get your opportunity to have your full say on a topic before too long—almost always within a week. But I sometimes require a little time to get my act together first. Would you mind helping me out in this way?

If the other party agrees to the Signaling to Back-Off Technique, and I have found that most people do, together you can decide on a signal. A friend might say something to another friend like, “Please give me a little time to think about this.” A wife might wish to use with her husband the phrase, “Darling, let’s discuss this later.” I know one couple who just uses the phrase, “Back off, please.” This strikes me as a bit abrupt, but it seems to work for them.

In the Marty and Lena parable, when Lena refuses to hold off on anymore negative criticism for a while, Marty decides to leave rather than listening to any more insults. I know some couples who disagree with Marty’s approach. “He should have stayed there and had it out with her!” some say. “After a few more minutes of shouting back and forth, the whole thing would have been over and they could have ended up having a good time at the party.”

There are couples who do successfully use the quick shouting argument approach.

I know one couple who has been using it for over forty years and it seems to have worked well enough. True, it’s a little embarrassing for their friends who sometimes happen to be around when the couple starts going at each other, but the whole bout is usually over in less than five minutes and then all seems to be fine. If this indeed has been working for you, I certainly won’t be calling the Anger Management Police to have you arrested.

Whereas the quick shouting approach may work well for some people all of the time, others find that they sometimes reach a point at which they determine that it would be best to indeed call a time out. We do it in many sports for four reasons. We want to take some time to catch our breath, to avoid an incident exploding into violence, to think about what has just been happening, and to formulate a plan to go forward. It is for the same reasons why we call time outs in an anger arousing situation.

[1] P. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, New York, Random House, 2007.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags anger, criticism, despute resolution, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, frustration, lucifer effect, Phillip Zimbardo, signaling to back-off technique, stress

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CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A LESSON FROM BLONDIE

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 14, 2013
No Comments on CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A LESSON FROM BLONDIE

Over the course of the last few weeks I presented some lessons that aim to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see CRITICIZING YOURSELF: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY and CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE). As I’ve pointed out on many occasions, becoming a master at utilizing the higher levels of maturity takes more than just thinking about them on a single day. It requires some practice utilizing the concepts over several occasions. And so, from time to time, I insert a little practice session to remind you of the previously presented ideas and to give you a little practice utilizing them. Today, we will take a look at a Blondie comic example. There, you will find that after Dagwood gives Blondie a statue she sees as ugly, she criticizes herself. Please take a look at her response to her self-criticism, and see if you think she handled it maturely.

As you think about how maturely Blondie criticizes herself in this comic, perhaps it would be of help to look at the five levels of providing criticism that we discussed earlier:

This level requires displaying one or more of the following:

Cries without stating what the crying is about
Physically attacks themselves
Damages property

2. This level requires displaying one or both of the following:

They do not explain what the offending behavior is, but instead express displeasure with glares, insults, shouting, silence, or threats that do not involve bodily harm. (For example, calling themselves a jerk”)
Threatens bodily harm regardless of what else is said.

3. The criticizer clearly states the criticism with enough detail so the criticized person, if he or she wills, can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couples it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.

4. The criticizer states the criticism without bodily attacks, damaging property, glares, insults, threats, or shouts, and with enough details so that the criticized person, if he or she wills, can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance. If the person becomes defensive or angry, the criticizer empathizes without returning, glares, insults, threats, or shouts.

5. When the criticizer provides criticism, he or she does so in a manner very similar to a level four response, but beforehand, the criticizer considers the situation that he or she is in. As a result of such considerations, the criticizer may decide to alter the criticism.

Now that you refreshed your memory of the five levels, does any one of them seem to match how Blondie criticized herself? Think about this, if you will, and then you can have some fun comparing your thoughts with mine.

My answer: Obviously, what we see is not meant to display Blondie’s whole response, but there is enough here to hazard a guess for our educational goal of familiarizing readers with the maturity rating system.

Blondie frames her feeling as “terrible.” It would be a sign of higher maturity if she conceptualized her experience instead as “sad” and “a valuable emotion that will lead to her thinking more deeply about something very important to her—her relationship with her husband.”

We know from what we see here and from observing her behavior over the years that Blondie is a very caring person. So, perhaps she is the type to be compassionate toward her own limitations. She doesn’t hit herself, so she may not be at level 1. In the last box, she may be crying and this would indicate her response deserves a level 1 rating unless she also displays some set of responses that deserves a higher rating.

When Blondie calls herself insensitive, it comes pretty close to matching level 2. Admittedly, this is a tricky call. One reason for the difficulty is that she might not be really insulting herself at this point. Instead, she might be displaying the process of thinking through the best course of action for herself. That is, she might be laying out for her consideration the value of being considerate.

If she had obviously put herself down by calling herself a rat for example, this response would be easier to rate as a level 2. But the descriptor, “insensitive,” is very relevant to what concerns her about her actions. I like her concern for her husband. I view empathy as a sign of higher levels of maturity.

In the last frame, she is taking some time to deal with her challenging experience. Maybe she is actually using the “sensory focus” technique we recently discussed (see DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN). “Sensory focus” involves turning your attention to the physical qualities of the pain and observing the sensations you are experiencing. This can convert challenging feelings into a search that leads to ever higher levels of truth.

I think this is where we leave Blondie in the comic we are analyzing. Without being able to discuss this episode with her or to observe further how the events continue to unfold, I’m going to just take a very tentative guess that she is indeed trying to figure out how to respond in a sensitive way toward Dagwood, and that she will not really insult herself. In time, she probably would have displayed a response very close to a level 4 or 5.

Thanks for visiting today. I hope to see you soon.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Blondie, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, maturity, maturity levels, negative criticism, self-criticism, types of criticism, wisdom