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GIVING SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER: WISE OR FOOLISH?

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

Blondie cold shoulder 3

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.

man with cold shoulderAlthough 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.

cold shoulder with 2 womenAccording 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.

dagwood needs a momentNotice 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.

dagwood needs a momentIn 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.”

Blondie cold shoulder 3At 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

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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.

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N.F.L. Bullying: The Real Reason for it

N.F.L.Yesterday, my post discussed a New York Times article titled “In Bullying Case, Questions on N.F.L. Culture.”  There we learned that what are being called pranks by some and humiliating behavior by others is ubiquitous in the N.F.L.  What is the reason for it?

The Times article tried to throw some  light on this when it stated that “Most incidents come with tacit, unsupervised approval of coaches and executives, who see the pranks as a rite of passage, a worthy bit of team building and character strengthening.”  Hmmm.  If the coaches and executives really believe this, what is the reason for their “tacit” approval.  Why not openly encourage this type of behavior?  I think it’s because they realize that there is something not quite right with this explanation.  And if this explanation is not quite right, what is a better one?

We get a clue from the Times’s report when it indicates that the behavior designed to humiliate the rookies is viewed by the veterans as being done “in all good fun” is “entertaining” and leads to “a room full of laughing teammates.”  What would account for the veterans enjoying humiliating the rookies so much?

Here’s what I think.  Veterans recognize that the rookies are after their jobs.  When Joe Quarterback sees a fresh new quarterback on  the team, he says to himself, After all my hard work and effort and all of the damaging blows that I’ve taken for the team, now this young son-of-a bitch wants to take my job.

It seems to me that there is an undercurrent of resentment that comes to most players in this type of situation.  Couple this with the fact that there are always far fewer guys on the team who are rookies, thus making the youngest players a clear minority.  With this combination, we end up with the very same motivation of why so many southerners persecuted blacks for so many years.  Many southerners realized that if blacks were to be treated equally, they would end up competing for the limited jobs in their area.  When blacks were humiliated, those who were doing the persecution found it funny.

In psychology, there is a theory called the “downward comparison theory.” It posits that persons experiencing negative affect can enhance their subjective well-being through comparison with a less fortunate other, the process occurring on either a passive or active basis.  When it is on an active basis, people actively try to create the conditions for others to be less fortunate.  This explains why people persecute others, and it is the real reason why the majority of players are persecuting the younger ones.

To claim, however tacitly, that the humiliating treatment of some in the N.F.L. is to help those being humiliated to develop their character is no different than if white racists claimed they were persecuting blacks out of the goodness of their hearts because they were really seeking to benefit blacks.

selma marchIt is high time that all of us come to understand that to persecute anyone is wrong, period!  Whether we are rookies, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, rich or poor, we can all be harmed by prejudice.  It is only by standing strong together as true Americans, that we can transform irrational hatred to wise understanding.

——————————-

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.

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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.”

hero coverLove cover

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

boody jr highWhen 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.

cycloneMy 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.  guitar blackAnd 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.

*                                  *                                  *

Ocean ParkwayOnce 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.

ideaAnd 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.

dark cloudsBut 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.

*                                  *                                  *

linclon high2I 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.

lincoln hallwayThe 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.

beatles“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.

lunchroomHarsh 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.

Mickey Home runA 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.”

talking2While 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?”

runner“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.

*                                  *                                  *

pizzaAfter 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.

pizza2With 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.

cunnigham“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.

lincoln high1After 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 shouldegreen eyesrs 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, panther“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.”

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.

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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.

Categories
anger Bullied bullying conflict management conflict resolution criticism free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum grieving insults interpersonal conflicts Name calling psychological maturity sensory focus suicide taunting teasing

Teenage Suicide and Cyberbullying: A Case Study

One morning I was getting ready to write my weekly blog post when I decided to first glance over at the New York Times‘ front page.  A wave of sadness washed over me as I spotted the following headline:

Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies

Rebecca Sedwick
Rebecca Sedwick

According to the Times, 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick leaped to her death after more than a year of being cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children who urged her to kill herself.

Rebecca's mother, Tricia Norman
Rebecca’s mother, Tricia Norman

Rebecca’s mother, Tricia Norman, said the texts her daughter was receiving were full of hate: “Why are you still alive?” “You’re ugly.”

Ms. Norman complained to school officials for several months about the bullying, and when little changed, she pulled Rebecca out of school.  But because Rebecca used the phone apps ask.fm, and Kik and Voxer — the bullying continued.

TextingA number of suicides by young people have been linked to ask.fm, and online petitions have been started to make the site more responsive to bullying. The company ultimately responded this year by introducing an easy-to-see button to report bullying and saying it would hire more moderators.

school 1Questions have been raised about whether Rebecca’s old school, Crystal Lake Middle School, did enough last year to help stop the bullying; some of it, including pushing and hitting, took place on school grounds. The same students also appear to be involved in sending out the hate-filled online messages away from school.

school 3Nancy Woolcock, the assistant superintendent in charge of antibullying programs for Polk County Schools, said the school received one bullying complaint from Rebecca and her mother in December about traditional bullying, not cyberbullying. After law enforcement investigated, Rebecca’s class schedule was changed. Ms. Woolcock said the school also has an extensive antibullying campaign and takes reports seriously.

But Ms. Norman said the school should have done more. Officials told her that Rebecca would receive an escort as she switched classes, but that did not happen, she said.

Given the outcome, I too wish that more had been done.  It is my sincere hope that all of my readers will take a minute to pause to experience this sad loss of Rebecca.

A few months ago I published a review of the movie, “Bully.”  Today, some of what I wrote back then bears repeating.

The movie’s emotional impact has been an important part of the emergence of a coalition working toward altering intolerable conditions too often regarded as “just kids being kids.”

bully4The movie has spawned The Bully Project, an online site where people can learn more about dealing with bullying.  There, kids who are bullied can learn that they are not alone.  And educators can learn about how to set up a viewing of the movie for their entire school and to follow up the viewing with classroom discussions.

In one video that we can access at the site, we see an entire school going to the movie and then getting the reactions from students.  One kid reports that there was not a dry eye in the auditorium.  Others admitted that they had bullied, but now realized it was wrong.

bully6As my regular readers know, also available online is this blog, From Insults to Respect.  The blog can be used as a free curriculum that teaches the social skills to deal with these challenging experiences.  For schools that already have an extensive antibullying program, the blog can be used to further reinforce its lessons.  For schools that don’t have such a program, or has one that uses a mere one or two lessons per year, the blog can serve as an ongoing forum to promote peaceful conflict resolution techniques.

Illustration by Eric Sailer

A particularly powerful way to teach skills that deal with bullying is through narratives that are designed to change the valuation of bullying to make it signify ineptitude rather than manliness. The movie, “Bully,” is one such narrative.   The Cool Steve Stories, a trilogy of novels, offers another.

hero coverLove cover

There we become friends with a hero that rejects bullying and yet still manages to achieve respect.

The gut-wrenching story about 12-year-old Rebecca’s suicide cries out to us that for too long we have not done enough to address the awful injustice we find in and around our schools.  May her story spur us on to do better.

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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.

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THE MOST MATURE LEVEL OF RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: ADVANCE LESSON

criticismAre 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.

pawnMany 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.

Calvin and Hobbes steeringFeeling 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.

teacher3In 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.

teacher2For 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.  teacher4Consider 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.

Peanuts AUGH!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.

For Better, steeringIn 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.

Luann steeringKnute’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

kipling

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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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.

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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.

blondie intra 1blondie intra 2blondie intra 3blondie intra 4blondie intra 5blondie intra 6blondie intra 7 blondie intra 8blondie intra 9

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:

  1. 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 intra 6Blondie 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.

blondie intra 9In 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.

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CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Recently I presented a post that aims to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see Criticizing Yourself: Five Levels of Maturity). In that post there is a fun practice section to help people to get familiar with the different levels. 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. So today, I’ll once again describe the five levels of maturity, and then let’s practice some more with the help of some of our favorite friends.

PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM:  FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY

Below you will find preliminary descriptions of how people at five developmental levels of maturity provide negative criticism to themselves, that is, criticism that points out what we don’t like about our actions, beliefs, or appearance.  Level one is the most immature and uses observations of babies as its starting point.  Each successive level is more mature:

    1.This level requires displaying one or more of the following:

  • Cries without stating what the crying is about.
  • Physically harms you,
  • Damages property.

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

  • You 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. 
  • Threatens bodily harm regardless of what else is said.     

    3.  You clearly state the criticism with enough detail so you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couple it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.         

    4.  You state the criticism without bodily attacks, damaging property, glares, insults, threats, or shouts, and with enough details so that you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance.  

   5.  When you provide criticism, you do so in a manner very similar to a level four response, but beforehand, you consider the situation that you are in.  As a result of such considerations, you may decide to alter the criticism.

A PEANUTS EXAMPLE

Below, in the Peanuts comic, Lucy provides negative criticism to herself while Charlie Brown listens.  Take a shot, if you will, at rating how mature you think her criticism is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most mature.  Think about why you gave her your rating, and then compare your answer to mine.

Self-criticism 3.pngMy answer:  I think Lucy’s actions best match the level 3 description— You clearly state the criticism with enough detail so you can, if you so choose, improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couple it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.  The main reason I have for this is that she is shouting at herself. Lucy’s actions indicate to me that she knows what her negative criticism is about; instead of becoming discouraged, she wants her life to move from one “up” to an “upper-up,” without any “downs.”  I believe her actions should be reduced by .5 because she doesn’t make it clear to herself what she should do about her expressed concern. I would have felt she at least tried to come up with a plan of action if she had said something to herself like the following:  “For the next few weeks, each time I feel discouraged, I’m going to write in a journal how I feel, what led up to how I feel, and then see if I can come up with something that leads to my feeling better.” In the end, I gave Lucy a 2.5 rating.

ANOTHER PEANUTS EXAMPLE

In this next one, Lucy again provides negative criticism to herself, and again we get the sense that she knows what the criticism is about, but she doesn’t come up with some plan to address her concern.  What rating do you think she deserves?  Also, see if you can come up with a statement that Lucy can make to herself that would indicate she has come up with a plan to address her concern.

Self-criticism 4.png

My answer:  This time Lucy doesn’t shout at herself.  She does shout at Linus about the negative criticism he provides, but our job here is not to rate that, but rather her negative criticism of her own actions.  That occurs in the last box where she says to herself, “How humiliating!”

I don’t view her comment as an insult, although in real life she would have to decide that for herself.  It seems to me that people, when they are dissatisfied with “a failure to accomplish a task,” can feel a sense of humiliation, not as an insult, but as a humbling experience that has the potential to motivate them to seek to make some improvement.  As far as I am concerned, a person can feel humiliated and still respond at level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.  If Lucy had insulted herself or shouted at herself, I would have felt that level three was the best match for what she does.  I’m giving Lucy, instead, a question mark because sometimes criticism is provided that is clear about what is not liked but useful information about improving is not provided.  If this is done in a supportive manner that does not use any insults, shouts, or threats, a question mark can be used instead of a rating.  This indicates that sometimes mature people will provide this type of feedback to gently encourage themselves to come up with a solution to the problem of how to improve. The criticizer is in essence merely asking the question, “Can I come up with a way to make some improvement in this area?”  Because asking such a question using a supportive tone of voice is not necessarily a sign of immaturity, no rating is immediately assigned, but as time goes on, some rating may become earned.

A FUNKY WINKERBEAN EXAMPLE

Let’s try rating Les in this Funky Winkerbean comic.  Below, we see that Les, the guy with the glasses, has been invited to his thirtieth high school reunion.  When he looks in the mirror he begins to evaluate how he now looks and recalls how he looked thirty years ago.  As he does so, apparently he is providing some negative criticism to himself.  Please rate how mature you think his response is.

Self-criticism 5.png.gif

My answer:  The thought of going to his thirtieth high school reunion has put Les in a deep funk.  He is saddened to see how he has aged.  He doesn’t seem to be insulting himself in any way or threatening to harm himself.  He’s also not hitting himself.  Hmmm.

Some who view themselves as “healthy-minded” say that by letting himself feel sad about something he can’t do anything about, Les is actually acting in an unhealthy manner.  These so called “healthy-minded” folks argue that Les would be far wiser to avert his attention from what is bothering him and live in the light of what is good in his life.

Admittedly, this method does seem to work for many people, and if it works for you, feel free to continue with it for as long as you like.  I promise that I won’t send the mental health police after you.

There are those of us, however, who have tried this “healthy-minded” approach and find that, when melancholy comes, the whole system quickly breaks down.  If that is your experience, perhaps the words of the brilliant psychologist, William James, might be more to your liking.  “[T]here is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”

Clearly, people confront events that create feelings of sadness, horror, and dread.  To James, the feelings that accompany such events can lead toward truth.  Many of the most creative people have come to believe that periods of melancholy are an essential part of their creative process.

sally forth intrapersonal

My readings of the research and my own personal experiences have led me to several tentative conclusions.  First of all, if you can learn to avoid insulting and threatening yourself during these periods of melancholy, that’s a good thing.  Some special types of insults can be especially harmful.  “I’ll never be happy again,” is one of these.  “I’ll always be a terrible person,” is another.  “All is hopeless,” may be the worst .

Practice saying at such times, “Melancholy is part of the creative process; it is a tool that most creative people have experienced, and this mood can spur me to come to a useful understanding of my life.”   “Creative” in this context means more than artistic creativity.  It encompasses all aspects of a person’s work, and interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

The melancholy that Les is experiencing will not be his whole response to his dissatisfaction with his current appearance.  He will perhaps come to realize that he has some time to still live and the years he has already lived have given him a unique perspective that can enrich the time he has left to fulfill the desires that only come about from our deepest searching.  For Les, I am going to put off any rating.  As far as I’m concerned, he has just begun to provide to himself negative criticism and some more time will be necessary to evaluate what his rating should be.

Okay, that’s our lesson for this week.  I would love to get some comments about the ideas I’ve presented.  Do you think that there are more mature ways to respond to criticism than the ideas that I’ve put forth?  Has there ever been a time when you criticize yourself in a manner that you would like to discuss?

My Best, Jeff

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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.

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CRITICIZING YOURSELF: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY

Earlier, I wrote a post titled “Providing Negative Criticism: Five Levels of Maturity.”  When I gave examples of people using the five levels, they typically involved someone providing criticism to someone else.  And yet, if you think about it, you probably criticize yourself at least as much as you criticize others.

Charlie13

So, it is time that we begin to take a good hard look to see if the five levels of maturity apply equally well when we think about providing negative criticism to ourselves? To do so, please take another look at the five levels that have now been rewritten so they can be used to rate the way you criticize yourself.. As you do, imagine a recent time that you criticized yourself and see which of the levels best matches your style of criticizing yourself.

PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM TO YOURSELF: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY

Below you will find preliminary descriptions of how people at five developmental levels of maturity provide negative criticism to themselves.  Level one is the most immature and uses observations of babies as its starting point.  Each successive level is more mature.     

   1.This level requires displaying one or more of the following:

  • Cries without stating what the crying is about.
  • Physically harms you,
  • Damages property.

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

  • You 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. 
  • Threatens bodily harm regardless of what else is said.     

    3.  You clearly state the criticism with enough detail so you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couple it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.         

    4.  You state the criticism without bodily attacks, damaging property, glares, insults, threats, or shouts, and with enough details so that you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance.  

   5.  When you provide criticism, you do so in a manner very similar to a level four response, but beforehand, you consider the situation that you are in.  As a result of such considerations, you may decide to alter the criticism.

APPLYING THE FIVE LEVELS TO SELF-CRITICISM

One of the last times I criticized myself, I was playing golf, and when I swung at the ball, I missed it.

Golf insult 2

I found myself crying out, “Man, that was stupid!” As I saw myself doing this, I quickly realized that such a response was not very helpful.  I moved away from any more insults and just took a moment to experience the frustration within me.  After about five seconds of this, I then realized that I was with other golfers, and they had just seen me calling myself stupid.  I looked each of them in their eyes and smiled. Then, I reviewed in my mind what a perfect swing in that situation is suppose to look like.  Finally, I stepped into position and took another swing.

How Did I Do?

Well, at least I didn’t break my club slamming it to the ground, as I had done a few times when I first began to learn the game. A couple of times when I did slam the clubs down, I broke the club and had to go buy a new one–thus, it was a costly mistake.  If I had acted that way–that is, by breaking my club–I would have acted at level 2. It has been years since the last time I slammed a club down, a clear sign that I matured in this domain.

The way I acted the last time was a little more mature than a level two.

You might have noticed as I was describing my recent incident of self-criticism that my criticism and my response to the criticism seems to have merged together, and it is not easy to tell at what point “providing criticism” and “responding to criticism” is actually taking place.  Therefore, it is a good idea, as we think about these issues to spend some time reviewing the lesson I presented earlier about responding to criticism (see HERE).

As I recall what happened the last time I was out on the golf course, I’m going to say that I initially responded at level 3, but then quickly recovered and then responded at level 5.

Another Example

Our next example of self-criticism is from the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes by the brilliant Bill Watterson.  Calvin’s stuffed tiger, Hobbes, is criticizing Calvin’s remark about his summer vacation coming to an end.  We understand, of course, that what Hobbes says to Calvin is, in actuality, what Calvin is saying to himself.  After Hobbes criticizes Calvin’s remark (“Oh come on, you spent half the summer complaining how bored you were.”) Calvin responds.  Please study his response, and then see if you can rate what level of maturity it is at.           

Calvin intrapersonal
My answer: Hobbes has criticized Calvin for exaggerating about how awful life will be now that summer vacation is over since he often complained of being bored.  “I did?” he responds.  It seems to me that Calvin is really asking this of himself.  He then curls his pointer finger and puts it on his lip.  This is a classic pose indicating deep thought.  While he is doing this, he says to himself, “How strange.  I must have been delirious from having so much fun.”  In the next scene, we see Calvin imagining the type of fun he had had over the summer.  It depicts Calvin and Hobbes watching TV with the sound blasting, eating Sugar Bombs, with Calvin’s eyes in a delirious, hypnotized stare.

I’m leaning toward giving Calvin a level 4 rating because he is showing me that he is giving some real thought to the criticism, and I like his apparent sense of humor as he imagines in an almost burlesque type of way his wasting all of his time over the summer.

Now, I understand that some might look at this image of Calvin wasting his summer in front of a TV and think he is mocking his choice of summer activities, thus insulting himself.  When people use humor while responding to criticism, it can be taken as an insult, or as a good-natured way to smooth over some rough parts of the processing that goes along with criticism.  Only Calvin, in this scenario, would be able to say if he felt it as an insult, or as something comical.

Let’s Try Another One

Here’s a young teenager who provides self-criticism at a pretty obvious level 2.

basketball player 1Here, the young lady kinda tells herself what her criticism is about–She recalls missing an important basketball shot and she declares that she let her team down.  But she doesn’t say how she can begin to improve the situation.  Instead, she begins to insult herself.

What if she had handled the situation a little differently:

basketball player 2Notice I blackened out what level I think this self-criticism is at.  That’s because I would like you to decide if this is a more mature level or not.

There’s Some Controversy About this Example

Some of my students argue that the example in which the girl insults herself should be given a higher rating then the second example.  Here’s their reason. If you insult yourself, they claim, it will more likely prod you into doing something constructive than if you ignore it.  Therefore it should be viewed as at least as high a level as the example in which the girl decides to take some time to calm down before deciding what next steps she might take.

Here are two quick explanations for why insulting yourself deserves a lower rating than the taking some time to calm down approach.  First, just because someone takes some time out to calm down doesn’t mean they will forget what happened. It is possible that their efforts to take some time to calm down will lead to calming down sooner than throwing insults at themselves, and within that calmness a more reasoned approach may come about.

Second, theoretically those people who get into the habit of insulting themselves when they criticize themselves are at an increased risk of insulting someone else who criticizes them.  This is oftentimes not a good thing because when people are insulted it increases the likelihood they will do something that is harmful to the insulter.  It is, therefore, a good idea to practice not insulting yourself when you criticize yourself because that practice will make it easier to avoid criticizing others when they criticize you.

Well, there’s your lesson for today.  It was designed to begin the process of thinking about the most mature way to criticize yourself.  I will have a lot more to say about this in future posts.

For those of you who seek to become masters at dealing with name calling, insults and teasing, here’s an important exercise to do over the next week.  Put aside three five-minute periods to do the following:

Think about the last time you criticized yourself.  Recall what led to the criticism and how you felt.  Spend a full minute just observing the feelings that come up as you recall the incident.  Then write down what you said to yourself as you provided the criticism.  Finally, write down what you think would have been a maturer way to handle that situation.

Thanks for visiting this week, and I hope you come back  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.

Categories
anger Bullied conflict management conflict resolution insults interpersonal conflicts narratives social intelligence teasing The Cool Steve Stories wisdom

THE CREATION OF THE COOL STEVE STORIES

Coney Island HospitalIt was way back in 1972 on a pleasant autumn day.  As I stepped out of the sparkling sunshine into the shadowy confines of the Coney Island Child Psychiatric Clinic, I was greeted by three people who could have been movie actors.  One was a beautiful social worker in her late twenties, with flowing brunette hair; another, a tall, handsome psychologist in his early thirties; and the third, a psychiatrist who looked like he was trying out for a part as Sigmund Freud, with his long, graying beard and pipe.   Initially they were warm and friendly but, within a few minutes, switched to more earnest expressions.  The psychiatrist took charge at this point, informing me that I would be working with eight very troubled male teenagers—two individually, and six in a group.  My first job teaching conflict resolution under the auspices of a real life professional organization had begun.

It was a period of time before the current practice of converting the psychological concerns of all children brought to a psychiatric clinic into a language of illness believed to be due to chemical imbalances.  The prescribing of pills as the main—oftentimes only—action offered was something I had never dreamed of.  Instead, a staff of professionals and several advanced psychology students from Brooklyn College sought to provide empathic emotional support, understand the conflicts the children were experiencing, and guide them toward more mature coping.  I was one of the Brooklyn College students.

Achieving the first two goals proved to be a breeze.  The kids’ hunger for attention made it easy to develop genuinely enjoyable relationships.  And the way the boys spoke and interacted readily revealed volumes on the topic of conflicts with which they struggled on a daily basis.  Guiding the boys toward more mature coping, however, tripped me up.

Counseling boy 1I remember one of my first attempts.  A burly thirteen-year old boy with wild, unkempt hair began to express his anger about a kid at school who had called him a jerk.

“Called you a jerk!?” I replied. “Yikes!  What did you do about it?”

“I shoved him.”

“How’d that work out?”

“I got sent to the principal.”

“Do you like to get sent to the principal?”

“NO!”

“Hmm, if you don’t like it, maybe we can figure out how to respond to a name caller in a better way.”

“If someone puts me down, I ain’t gonna let him get away with it.”

“I can understand that.  Let’s discuss a few ways to deal with name calling that doesn’t let the other guy get away with anything and yet won’t get you sent to the principal’s office.”

“Na.  If that guy calls me a name again, I’m really gonna let him have it!  He better not start with me again!”

“I can see just thinking about this is really making you angry.”

“Yeah, it is!”

“Well, I have good news for you.  I think I can help you to come up with some ways that you can handle name calling that you would respect but won’t get you in trouble.  Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“Listen, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore!”

At this point, I realized that, for now, to pursue this any longer would be counterproductive.

Shortly after this, I noticed that the two black kids in the group I was working with were frequently being put down by the four white kids.

 Whites ganging up on blacks

Some words got thrown back and forth that could have made a Brooklyn boy blush.  Well, okay, maybe not a Brooklyn boy, but most people.  Anyway, my efforts to address this were, unfortunately, met with the boys shouting over me as their anger flamed into rage.

“You’re doing just fine,” my supervisor assured me.  “Working with kids requires great patience.”

I would have preferred specific suggestions on how to better teach.  Still, his comments at least temporarily took some pressure off of me.

But as time went on, my patience waned, and I began to have difficulty falling asleep.  In the wee hours of the morning my mind kept going over and over incidents in which my efforts to teach something to the kids ended without success.  And then, during one such night, amidst an experience of what felt like endless tossing and turning and excruciating frustration, suddenly I recalled an incident that happened to me in fifth grade.  Back then I had recently seen the movie, The Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper starring as the New York Yankees’ great baseball player, Lou Gehrig.  Nicknamed “The Iron Horse,” Gehrig had his Hall-of-Fame career cut short at 36 years of age when he was stricken with a fatal disease.  As the film comes to an end, it reenacts Gehrig’s farewell address in front of a packed, tearful crowd at Yankee Stadium.  I’ll never forget his parting words.  “People all say that I’ve had a bad break.  But today…today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Shortly after seeing the film, I decided to read a Lou Gehrig biography and learned that his parents were from Germany.  Because I had grown up on war movies that depicted Germans as the vicious enemy, I had, at that time, come to hate Germans.  But, when I began to read Lou Gehrig’s biography, I found my hatred undergoing a dramatic change.  The story tells us that Lou’s parents were from Germany, spoke with a German accent, and this led the kids in his neighborhood to incessantly torment him.

Gehrig as boySomehow, my heart went out to Lou, and from that day on, I came to believe that it wasn’t right to judge a person by their nationality.

Lying in bed recalling having read that biography so many years ago, my mind, at one point, returned to thinking about teaching kids coping skills.   It seemed to me that there was something about that Lou Gehrig story that enabled me to reconsider attitudes that I had firmly held for so long.  Perhaps if I could tell the kids at the clinic stories about a hero who portrayed higher levels of maturity, they might identify with the hero.  I figured that kids like to try out the behaviors of their heroes.  I know I did.  Criticizing the actions of characters in the story would produce less defensiveness than when I had directly criticized the actions of the kids at the clinic.  If I told the stories when the clinic kids weren’t already in a defensive state, maybe they would be open to a real discussion.  Once they had thought the issues through, perhaps then they would be better able to integrate what they had learned into their own lives.

Soon afterwards, each time I saw the kids at the clinic dealing with a different conflict in a way that struck me as immature, a story dealing with the conflict in a more mature way just came to me in some strange, effortless manner.  The hero of the stories, Cool Steve, has many of the attributes that the clinic kids admired.

I made it a point to tell each story at some point in our session when things were relatively calm.  And it turned out that the kids loved them.  When I told the stories to the group of kids I worked with—kids well known for their rambunctiousness—they settled right down and you could hear a pin drop as the tale unfolded.  They discussed them, grappled with the issues, and oftentimes came to agree that Cool Steve had handled the conflict in a way they respected.

An interesting discovery that I made when I was teaching conflict management to graduate students at the University of Minnesota was that the adult students there enjoyed the stories every bit as much as teenagers. And so, with that encouragement, the stories grew and grew so that they now comprise a series of three novels collectively called The Cool Steve Stories that you can learn about HERE.

hero coverLove cover

Readers of this blog know that as I provide lessons on conflict management, I often illustrate the ideas with newspaper comic strips. Although these comics are very helpful for introducing basic ideas, to really learn the subtleties of applying the ideas of conflict management in actual situations it is hard to beat the longer narratives that novels provide.

The first novel in the trilogy is A Hero Grows in Brooklyn.  Most of the action occurs when the main characters are junior high school students.  If it was a movie, it would likely be rated “PG.”  Fights in the Streets, Tears in the Sand, the second novel in the trilogy, deals with some more mature themes.  The main characters are now beginning an urban high school and there is a modest amount of cursing, and some talk about sexual feelings and fantasies.  It would probably be rated “PG13” if it was a movie. Love, Sex and Respect, the final novel in the trilogy, takes the main characters through to their high school graduation. If the book was a movie, it might be rated “R.”

You can learn more about the novels at this blog’s NOVELS page toward the top of this page.  There you will find that the first novel in the series can be downloaded for free on any iPad, Nook, Kindle or computer, or you can order a paperback version HERE.

I encourage my students to check these books out because they provide memorable adventures that are not only fun and exciting, but teach some profound lessons as well.

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.

Categories
ABCs of Personal Power confiict management conflict resolution emotional intelligence fairness free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum social intelligence wisdom

THE ABCs OF POWER: THE LETTER F

power girlpower guitaristOn this blog, for the past few weeks we have been discussing personal power.  We have noted that the reason why people use insults is to try to achieve their desires.  This strategy often backfires.  Therefore, we have been learning plans to increase our skill to achieve our desires without launching insults.

One valuable way to come up with plans to achieve our desires is to become familiar with various sources of power.  And so, I have begun to build an alphabetical list of sources of power.  So far, it looks like this:

THE ABCs OF POWER

A=Advancing Skill (see The ABCs of Power: The letter “A”)

B=Breaking Down a Conflict into its Three Conditions:  Desire, Interference and Guilt (see The ABCs of Power: The Letter “B”)

C=Coalitions (see The ABCs of Power: The Letter “C”).

D=Discussions or Debates (see The ABCs of Power: The letter “D”)

E=Encouraging Caring (see The ABCs of Power: The Letter “E”)

Today we add to our list a source of power that begins with the letter “F.”

F is for Fairness

Fairness is a fascinating subject.  Consider the following Blondie comic.

Fairness1

Here we get the sense that Dagwood believes his boss’s request is unfair.

Capuchin_Costa_RicaHuman beings and capuchin monkeys have what some biologists believe is a fairness instinct.  In one intriguing study, primatologists Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de Waal trained capuchin monkeys to perform a certain task for which they received cucumber slices.  The monkeys performed the task just fine until they were permitted to see others being rewarded with grapes, a higher-value payment.  Suddenly many of the cucumber-receivers stopped performing the task, sometimes even throwing those measly, unfair cucumber payments out the cage.  Behavioral economists call this “inequity aversion”—the tendency to turn down a perfectly good offer if others are getting a better deal.

In studies with human beings, a similar tendency has been observed.  People insist on fairness, even at the apparent cost of their immediate best interest.

Fairness2.gif

In this comic, Dilbert, the guy with glasses, begins to shout at his boss even though staying on the good side of your boss is a pretty obvious principle of advancement in the business world.  But Dilbert’s sense of fairness has been violated, and he ends up losing his temper.  The comic ends by implying to the reader that if the boss would learn to act fairly the workers would get more done.

There is no question that the cry of “NO FAIR!” ranks as one of the most common complaints.

Fairness3.gif

Fairness4.gif

Fairness5.gif

The good news is that this sense of fairness can be used to increase your power.

As a simple example, suppose that you want to play chess with your friend Alfred and you desire to always make the first move.  Alfred says he’ll only play if he gets to go first.  What can you do?  Well, you can say firmly, “You can go first for the first game, but the next game I get to go first.  After all, that’s only fair.”  Although you don’t get to go first on every occasion, with this resolution you at least get to go first half the time and you enhance your reputation as someone who is fair.

Another fairness strategy is to suggest flipping a coin to see who goes first.

Fairness6.gif

Although the flipping the coin strategy doesn’t work out too well for poor Hammie, it often can be very effective.

An even more powerful strategy to try when someone like Alfred tries to always go first is to say, “Alfred, I’m willing to let you pick between taking turns or flipping a coin to see who goes first.”  This gives Alfred a choice and helps to feed his need for power.

The following fairness strategies may be used when someone wants to do something that is incompatible with your desire:

  • People will do things for you if you give them something in return that they deem as a fair exchange and resist doing things that they deem as not a fair exchange.Fairness7.gif
  • People who always want to do something that is incompatible with your desire may be persuaded to do the incompatible act only half the time if you agree to use a game of chance, such as a flip of a coin, to decide if the incompatible act will or won’t occur.Fairness9.gif
  • Taking turns often strikes people as fair.
  • Splitting rewards or chores evenly is one way to settle a dispute. Fairnes11.gif
  • People may be persuaded not to do an incompatible act if both parties agree to an open discussion followed by a vote.  Consider the following comic.Fairnes12.gif

Here Luann and Quill are disagreeing over which of two names to call the album they are working on.  One simple way to decide would be to flip a coin, but let’s say they don’t want to decide the matter in that way.  Another approach they could use is to agree to come up with five different names that they like, and then get ten of their friends together to discuss which name they like best, and then they could all vote for their favorite one.

  • By pointing to a precedent, people may be persuaded to resolve the conflict in a similar manner.Fairnes13.gif

In the above cartoon, Charlie Brown’s use of this strategy doesn’t go too well.  A more successful use of this strategy is illustrated with the following example.   To decide who will go first in a chess game, you first seek out a precedent by finding out how neighborhood chess tournaments decide which players get to go first.  You discover that this is decided by one of the players hiding behind her back a pawn and then the other player attempting to guess which hand it’s in.  If the opponent guesses right, she gets to go first.  You then explain to your chess partner that because this is done at the tournament, you think it’s a fair way for you and your opponent to decide.  This strikes your opponent as a fair and fun way to decide.

  • judge1By pointing to a court decision that is similar to your own conflict, people may be persuaded to resolve the conflict in a similar manner.
  • Letting an unbiased person choose.  There are several variations of this procedure.  The parties can agree to submit a particular question to someone they agree is an expert for advice or a decision.  They can ask a mediator to help reach a decision.  Or they can submit the matter to an arbitrator for an authoritative and binding decision.Fairnes14.gif

In this Blondie example, the kids have a desire to play a new game using the equipment they have.  They could have argued for hours over the rules and never actually played.  By getting the neutral Dagwood Bumstead to quickly decide on a set of rules, they can more quickly get to playing.

These fairness procedures will not always produce an ideal outcome for you.Fairnes15.gif

You may always want to go first.  You may always want to choose something that is much better than what the other party will be left with.  Sometimes there is a difference in opinion about what is fair.

Fairnes16.gif

Nevertheless, a reputation for fair dealing can have long term payoffs.   And if the other party ends up concluding you are an untrustworthy lout, the cost to you may not be limited to just the deal you have managed today to work out.  Keep in mind that sometimes to lose is to win.

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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.