Today, I came upon a NewYorkTimes article titled “Residents’ Rights to Be Rude Upheld by Massachusetts Supreme Court.” The ruling settled a conflict between the town of Southborough’s “civility code” for public comment at meetings and Ms Louise Barron who had said to a town board member, “Look, you need to stop being a Hitler. You’re a Hitler. I can say what I want.”
Ms Louise Barron
The Southborough’s civility code required “respectful and courteous” discourse “free of rude, personal or slanderous remarks.” Leading up to the high point of the conflict, Ms Barron had accused the town board members of “…spending like drunken sailors,” and breaking the law by limiting her speech. A board member expressed that she was starting to “slander” the town officials and indicated that if she continued with such words he would move to end the open comment section of the meeting. It was at this point that Ms Barron made the Hitler comments, and then the committee members agreed to end this part of the meeting.
It’s awfully expensive settling these issues in court. Therefore, it might be worthwhile for us to take a few minutes to look at the court’s reasoning, and then consider what preventative path we might wish to wisely choose to avoid getting embroiled in such conflicts.
The Court’s Reasoning
According to the New York Times:
John and Samuel Adams
Decorum, the new decision concluded, was not a top priority for the cousins John and Samuel Adams when they drafted Article 19 in the Massachusetts Constitution, ratified in 1780. By laying out the right to request “redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer,” the justices noted, they aimed to protect the colonists’ freedom to rail against King George III, disparaged at the time as “the Royal Brute,” in a profane and ungracious manner.
The Southborough Town House, where the town’s board of selectmen meets. Credit…Sophie Park for The New York Times
“There was nothing respectful or courteous about the public assemblies of the revolutionary period,” the court wrote in its opinion. “There was also much that was rude and personal, especially when it was directed at the representatives of the king and the king himself.”
“…..The court found that her reference to Hitler was “certainly rude and insulting,” but was protected speech nonetheless. The town’s insistence on civility “appears to cross the line into viewpoint discrimination: allowing lavish praise but disallowing harsh criticism of government officials,” the ruling said.
“Although civility can and should be encouraged in political discourse,” the justices wrote, “it cannot be required.”
As I read the court’s decision, I found myself frustrated that it relies so much on the reasoning of people who thought about this issue over two hundred years ago. At the same time, I do have a great deal of respect for the principle of freedom speech. I also realize that if enough people object to this court ruling, there is a democratic process that allows for changing the constitution. Making such a change would be a lengthy process. In the meantime, how might those who lead periods of public open comments prepare for the likelihood of being insulted?
Suggestions For Dealing With Insults
Given this ruling, a license for disrespectful language is now on the books. Public figures, therefore, are going to have to figure out ways to skillfully handle this. The Times article offered a suggestion on how to go about doing so.
To encourage civil behavior, “treat people civilly in the first place, and in a way that they perceive to be fair.” For example, imagine the difference if a board member, instead of getting defensive, said, “This person is not feeling heard,” and then said, “Tell us more.” This suggestion is a good start for thinking about how to wisely move forward in a positive manner, but in my opinion needs elaboration.
Although the justices wrote that “civility can and should be encouraged in political discourse,” the Times article is not as clear as I would like. How precisely this might be done without violating their ruling that this cannot be required? Here’s my suggestion.
Immediately prior to each meeting’s public comment period, the chairperson would make the following statement–“We now invite public comments. We would greatly appreciate it if all of your comments are phrased civilly and respectfully.” Although not all will comply, I think encouraging this is worth the effort.
The Times article seems to suggest a specific type of response from a board member to an insult–“The person is not feeling heard. Tell us more.” From my experience, just making this type of suggestion to board members, sound as it is, may work to some degree, but to really increase the likelihood of this occurring when board members are in the midst of a heated personal attack, I recommend three practice sessions lasting half an hour each. Each session would begin with someone reading Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If.”
Rudyard Kipling
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!
Then I would provide this little story about Abe Lincoln:
On one occasion, Secretary Stanton was particularly angry with one of the generals.
“I would like to tell him what I think of him!” he stormed.
“Why don’t you?” Mr. Lincoln agreed. “Write it all down – do.”
Mr. Stanton wrote his letter. When it was finished he took it to the President. The President listened to it all.
Secretary Stanton
“All right. Capital!’ Lincoln nodded. “And now, Stanton, what are you going to do with it?”
“Do with it? Why, send it, of course!”
“I wouldn’t,” said the President. “Throw it in the waste-paper basket.”
“But it took me two days to write —”
“Yes, yes, and it did you ever so much good. You feel better now. That is all that is necessary. Just throw it in the basket.”
After a little more expostulation, into the basket it went.
After these two readings at each of the three practice sessions a board member, while being video recorded, would pretend to insult another board member, and the person receiving the insult would try to respond civilly and fairly. Then the whole board would critique the response. By going through this process a few times at each of the three sessions, it would enormously increase the likelihood of each board member skillfully handling these challenging situations.
“Rickey, you’re looking like you’re feeling blue,” I said softly to this 13-year boy I had been counseling for a few months. As I looked at him, I observed some sadness rising up within me.
“Ever since I remember, I always slept with my dog, Prince,” Rickey mournfully replied. “This morning, when I woke up, he was…he was…he was dead. He died!” A tear began to run down his cheek. “I really loved him, and now he’s dead!” More tears.
By now, a strong wave of sadness had washed over me. My voice became choked up, and no doubt my facial muscles twisted into a distinct look of deep concern. This reaction was not an act. I didn’t say to myself that the professional thing for me to do here is to appear concerned. My feelings of concern came to me as naturally as the warm feelings that come over me when I see a striking sunrise.
What is Empathy?
When we experience empathy we feel what we believe are the emotions of another. Empathy promotes prosocial behavior. For social beings, negotiating interpersonal decisions is as important to survival as being able to navigate the physical landscape.Empathy motivates individual behavior that aids in solving communal challenges as well as guide group decisions about social exchange. Its influence extends beyond relating to someone else’s emotions, it correlates with an increased positive state and likeliness to aid others.
Is Empathy a Sign of Maturity?
Empathy is not a type of skill that you either have or don’t have–it varies by degrees. It begins at a very early age. We see this when babies, upon hearing another baby cry, display signs of distress. And upon seeing a parent distressed while trying to reach for an object that is just out of reach, most toddlers will often crawl to the object and push it closer to the parent until the parent can pick it up.
As children get older, their empathy tends to increase. Boys, early in their teenage years tend to have a short period in which their empathy development goes a bit into reverse, but at about age 15, they begin to move forward again in developing this skill. This development tends to continue into young adulthood for both males and females, and for many, even well beyond. Since more fully developed skills of empathy tend to be more effective in achieving goals in the long run, people often view this as a sign of maturity.
Can Empathy be Learned?
Because empathy increases as a person gets older, we may become complacent when seeing our youth acting insensitive, or even downright cruel. We might simply chalk it up to immaturity, decide to rely on time itself to do its job to increase empathy, and therefore end up doing nothing to foster its development. In my view, this is a serious mistake. Many research studies have demonstrated that a number of methods can be used to increase empathy, and it makes sense that we utilize them to benefit individuals and their communities.
Methods that Increase Empathy
We can teach children to reach more mature levels of empathy in several ways. For example, when we read to them, we can pause from time to time and ask how each of the characters in the stories are probably feeling. If one of them is likely to be sad, we can express sadness in our face, thereby modeling an empathic response. We can then ask, “If the sad character was a friend of yours, what do you think would be a kind thing to do?” When the child comes up with a helpful suggestion, we could enthusiastically express our agreement that such an act would indeed be kind and then say that we respect people who are kind. If the character is happy, we can model the expression of happiness and ask a few questions about why the character is happy.
Here’s another idea. Have children learn on a daily basis in cooperative groups. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning. Research has demonstrated that when this happens often enough, students not only learn more, they enhance their skill at getting along and increase their empathy. In these studies, throughout the day there was time for the development of individual goals, but daily students had to learn to function under cooperative conditions as well.
Although to my knowledge cooperative learning research has been studied exclusively within school settings, I believe families can effectively use this approach. For example, whenever the family goes on an outing, a parent can say something like, “Let’s all work together to make this a great time. Before we go, let’s take a few minutes to think up some ways we can all chip in to make this happen.” Then, each member of the family takes a turn suggesting what he or she can do to cooperate to achieve this shared goal. During the trip, parents can make sure they notice whenever someone is cooperating and play it up as being very appreciated.
For older children, and for us grown-ups as well, the most consistent way to increase empathy is through meditation. In an earlier post (see here) I presented a detailed description of a simple form of meditation and presented the scientific evidence for practicing this ancient art to reduce stress and ruminating on angry memories. Well, as it turns out, practicing meditation has been shown to also increase empathy, along with its close relative, kindness.
By the way, one of my favorite kindness stories involves the psychologist and philosopher, Professor William James, his son, Willie, and the professor’s brother, the esteemed writer, Henry James.
Henry is on the left and William James is on the right
A Story About Kindness
When Willie had grown to be a young man, a biographer who was working on a book about his recently deceased Uncle Henry, asked to speak with him.
“Did you get to know your Uncle Henry?” the biographer asked.
“Oh, yes. He would live with us for months at a time. When I was very young, I grew to love him because he took a very genuine interest in me. Most adults back then would just nod at me and maybe muss my hair, but Uncle Henry, he would take the time to engage me with challenging questions. Like he’d ask me what I had been thinking and feeling about things and people. And he always wanted to know what I thought other people were thinking and feeling. He had a nice, kind way of listening, too.”
“Can you recall for me a particular incident that occurred between you two that stands out in your mind that captures something special about your Uncle Henry?”
“Oh, yes.” Of all the events that occurred between Willie, the incident that stood out most vividly for him is the following:
One day, 9-year old Willie learned that his Uncle Henry was going abroad. The news saddened him for his absence would last a full year.
Upon Uncle Henry’s return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the literary community entreated Willie’s dad, Professor William James, to throw a grand party for his brother to welcome him home and to discuss his latest literary achievements.
On the night of the party, Little Willie pleaded with his father to let him attend, but the professor insisted it was simply not a proper event for a young boy.
That night, Little Willie snuck out of his bedroom and peered through the banister posts at the top of the stairs. And when the grand proceedings began, oh, what a sight to remember.
All the great literary figures came—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorn, and on and on. Each person who greeted Little Willie’s Uncle Henry did so with such awe and respect that Willie found this absolutely astonishing.
The next morning, Little Willie found Henry in the library already hard at work on his latest manuscript. Willie exclaimed, “Uncle Henry, Uncle Henry, the way everybody treated you last night, saying what a great man you are! Uncle Henry, what does it take for a man to be great?”
Henry smiled, put down his fountain pen, took a second or two to rub his chin, and then leaned forward toward Willie. “Willie, there are three things a man must do to be truly great. First, he must be kind; second, he must be kind; and third, he must be kind.”
Well, that’s my post for the week. Until next time, may you find the empathy within to remain ever mindful not to judge others by what you can or cannot see on the surface. Understand that the true wealth of individuals lies deep within, and it may be your kindness, caring and compassion that will tap into the riches of their souls.
———————————
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.
“How’d things work out between Blondie and you?” you ask in a concerned voice upon running into your friend, Dagwood. “Did you manage to resolve your conflict?”
“Yeah, um…well, I’m kinda not sure,” he replies.
When it comes to whether or not a conflict has been resolved, sometimes people feel confused, or they end up engaging in needless arguments about this. Today we spend some time clarifying this issue.
The DIG Conflict Model removes much of the uncertainty about this issue by:
being precise about the definition of a conflict
introducing the concept of conflict intensity
being precise about the point at which a conflict is resolved
introducing the concept of related conflicts
The Definition of a 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.
When using the DIG Conflict Model, we describe a conflict by using the word “DIG” to remind us to identify the three conflict conditions, the desire, the interference, and the guilt. Sometimes a given situation has more than one conflict but people end up getting confused because they think that all of the conflicts are one big conflict. When using the DIG Conflict Model, we clearly describe each of the conflicts separately and systematically. This process dramatically reduces confusion and simplifies finding resolutions to each of the separate conflicts. Sometimes we have to dig to identify all of the conflicts in a situation but the DIG Conflict Model provides us some tools to make this relatively easy (see posts titled DEALING WITH CRITICISM BY DIGGING DEEPER and RESOLVING RECURRING CONFLICTS).
Conflict Intensity
Toward reaching our goal of reducing confusion about whether or not a conflict has been resolved, we have just clarified what it means to have a conflict. We now move on toward this goal by learning about the intensity of a conflict.
The three conditions of a conflict (desire, interference and guilt) are not just present whenever a conflict exists. Each of these three conditions may be present at a very high degree, a medium degree, or a low degree.
DESIRE
As an example, let’s say that in the picture on the right, John desires Mary with all of his might. Asked to rate how much he desires Mary on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the greatest desire he can possibly have, he rates his desire for her a 10.
We asked John a few months later to rate his desire for Mary. Some of Mary’s mannerisms have begun to annoy him, and there are times when he has begun to think of finding a new girlfriend. He still has some desire for her but at a lower degree then when he first met her. This example illustrates how the desire component of a conflict can vary over time.
INTERFERENCE
Now let’s look at an example of how the interference component of a conflict can be present at higher and lower degrees. In the picture on the left, Sue desires to get to a long-eared stuffed animal but Fred is interfering. Sue knows Fred pretty well and she is convinced that once he decides to not let her get something, he usually sticks to it for quite some time. Asked to rate how much Fred is likely to interfere with the achieving of her desire on a 1 to 10 scale, she answers 8.
But let’s say a few months later Fred’s behavior begins to change. He still will interfere with Sue achieving her desire to get something but only for a minute or two. By then he has grown tired of that game. When Sue wants to get her long-eared friend down from the shelf and Fred tries to stop her, she knows that by waiting for a short period of time things will work out fine. Now when asked to rate how much Fred will interfere with her achieving her desire, she answers 2.
GUILT
Finally, let’s look at an example of how the guilt component of a conflict can be present at higher or lower degrees. In this picture on the right, Mike comes home from work and sees his wife and some guy in each other’s arms passionately kissing. Mike’s first reaction is that his wife and this guy are guilty of doing something terribly wrong. If he was asked to rate just how guilty they were, he might say 10. But let’s say that moments after he first sees this kissing scene he notices that there are four other people in the room all holding a script for a play.
His wife quickly withdraws from the embrace of the male stranger and warmly greets her husband. Then she says, “Honey, I got the part I tried out for. We’re all here rehearsing.”
Now Mike recalls that his wife did have plans to go this morning to a play audition. He doesn’t like the fact that his wife usually gets sexy, passionate parts, but he had agreed to marry her anyway.
Once Mike understands that his wife was rehearsing her part in a play when he had walked into the house, he still feels uncomfortable about what he had seen, but he now recognizes that his wife and the male stranger are not as guilty as he originally thought. If asked to rate how guilty they are, he may say 2, or even a zero.
In the DIG Conflict Model, the higher each of the three components are rated, the higher the intensity of the conflict. Sometimes when a conflict’s intensity had been very high, if it is no longer as high, people think the conflict has been resolved, but not according to the DIG Conflict Model.
The Point that a Conflict is Resolved
According to the DIG Conflict Model:
Whenever Party A perceives that a conflict exists, it will be resolved from Party A’s perspective when Party A lowers his or her rating of any of the three conflict conditions to zero.
An example of a resolved conflict will be provided in the next section. But first, let’s take a look at what a related conflict is. Then we will be familiar with four important aspects of conflicts–its precise definition, its degrees of intensity, the point that it is resolved and that some conflicts are related to other conflicts. Then we will see how this will help us to avoid many misunderstandings that lead to needless confusion and arguments.
Related Conflicts
The best way to understand what is meant by a related conflict is by considering the following parable:
The Parable of Jack in the Restaurant
A dad takes his wife and five-year old son, Jack, to a restaurant. Jack’s meal comes first, a nice big plate of spaghetti and meatballs. After Jack quickly shovels into his mouth a couple of forkfuls of his dinner, the dad says, “That looks pretty good, Jack. Do you mind if I have a little taste of the tomato sauce? If I like it, I might want to get something with it next time we come.”
“NO, DAD! I just have enough for me!”
This is frustrating to the dad and he perceives that he has a conflict with his son because he desires a taste of the sauce and perceives that his son is interfering with his desire. Additionally, he believes his son is guilty of being selfish.
As he thinks about what to do about this conflict, his wife and he receive the meals that they ordered.
About fifteen minutes later, the dad still desires a taste of the sauce, but not quite as intensely as before because his hunger has subsided. He then glances over to Jack and notices that there is about half of his original portion of spaghetti left on his plate and the pace of his eating has slowed up quite a bit. His son’s desire to eat his spaghetti has also become less intense.
“Jack,” the dad says softly, “do you still mind if I have just a little taste of your sauce?”
“Sure, you can have some, Dad. I’m starting to get full.” And with that, Jack slides about a third of the remaining spaghetti on his dad’s plate while making sure that there is an ample amount of sauce along with it.
In the fifteen minutes that the dad first desired a taste of the sauce, the situation transformed from a clear conflict situation to a non-conflict situation because the dad has achieved his desire to taste the sauce. But wait! A minute later, the dad, still a bit bugged about something, suddenly realizes he still does have a conflict with his son. He tries to summarize it by using the DIG Conflict Model. “I desire that Jack not be selfish,” he thinks to himself, “but his actions at dinner suggest that he will continue to interfere with this desire if I don’t do something about it, and he’ll continue to be guilty of being selfish.”
This conflict, although related to the earlier one, is different for it has a different desire. The original conflict’s desire was about getting a taste of the tomato sauce. That conflict was resolved when the dad got a taste of the tomato sauce. If asked to rate how much he wants to taste the sauce right now on a 1 to 10 scale, he would say zero. This new conflict’s desire is about Jack not being selfish. Thus it is different enough to be thought of as a new conflict with perhaps a distinctly different set of approaches required to address it.
Now that the dad has clarified in his mind what the new conflict is all about, he begins to reflect upon possible resolutions. “Perhaps I expect too much from a five-year old boy. There is still plenty of time to teach Jack to care about others, and as he matures, he may just naturally become more altruistic. Perhaps it might help if I tell Jack some stories, from time to time, about heroes who act in unselfish ways even when they are hungry or are struggling to meet other needs. And if I model altruistic behavior for Jack with my own behavior, this too can help. As I think on this some more it occurs to me that maybe in the future if I would like to have a taste of Jack’s food, it would be wise for me to wait until he is at least half done with it. This way, if Jack was in a particularly irritable mood because of his hunger, he will have some time to take care of his own hunger desires and to calm down a bit.”
A conflict is related to another conflict when at least one of the three conflict conditions of the original conflict is similar to at least one of the conflict conditions of the other conflict. In the parable about Jack and his dad, initially the dad had the following conflict with his son— I desire a taste of the sauce and perceive that in attempting to get a taste, Jack will create a loud disturbance in the restaurant. Additionally, I believe Jack is acting selfish. A few minutes later, the dad, recognizing he has resolved his first conflict but now has another conflict, says to himself, I want Jack to not be selfish, but his actions at dinner suggest that he will continue to act selfishly if I don’t do something about it. It’s wrong to be selfish.” Both the initial conflict and its related conflict are connected because both of their guilt conflict conditions are similar (Jack is guilty of being selfish).
Discussion
We have now become familiar with four aspects of a conflict–its precise definition, its degrees of intensity, the point that it is resolved and that some conflicts are related to other conflicts. Familiarity of these four aspects of conflicts help to avoid some unnecessary confusion and arguments.
For example, let’s say a young woman named Sally had a very high intensity conflict with her boyfriend. A week later she now finds that it is much less intense. She may think, perhaps it has been resolved. How can she decide?
She can begin by describing her conflict when it originally surfaced using the DIG Conflict Model. Then she can rate what the degree of each of the three components (desire, interference and guilt) had been on a scale of 1 to 10 . Then she can rate each of these three components as they are currently perceived. If none of the three components are at zero, she would recognize that she still has the same conflict with her boyfriend, but it is just at a lower intensity.
This process clarifies in her mind that she still has some work to do if she really wants to fully resolve the conflict. It also draws her attention to each of the three specific components of the conflict.
If you practice using this process, in time you will discover that this simplifies what remains to be done and opens avenues that may lead to problem solutions. For an excellent illustration of this, see the post titled THE ABCs OF POWER AND THE GUILT CONDITION.
Now, let’s change our Sally example a bit. This time she goes through the process of clearly defining her conflict and rating the degree of each of its three conditions. She discovers that she actually did resolve her original conflict, but it has turned into a related conflict. She now has a clear way to understand what has happened. Moreover, as with the Jack in the Restaurant parable, the process of defining precisely what the new conflict is can point her to some solutions she might not have otherwise considered. Recall that Jack’s dad, once he clarified in his mind what his related conflict’s desire is–reducing his son’s selfishness–found it helpful for coming up with ideas about how to teach his son to become more altruistic.
Well, I hope you find in this week’s post some food for thought. May you all have a week with some peace, some excitement and moments of wonder.
——————————-
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.
If you have been following this blog, you know that from time to time I have been discussing insults and criticism. In earlier posts, we looked at situations in which people end up feeling insulted because someone provided negative criticism.
I have argued that rather than to feel insulted, it is possible to learn to welcome criticism, as well as words that might come off as insulting. When we learn to respond skillfully to negative criticism and insults, we develop a confidence in these types of situations. This dramatically reduces our defensiveness.
An important step toward mastering this skill is to learn to clearly recognize when criticism is occurring.If you can’t identify when a red light is flashing, you won’t be able to know when to apply the brakes on the car, and you are likely to end up in a serious accident.
Illustration by Lois Hubertz
Similarly, if you can’t identify when criticism is occurring, you won’t be able to know when to begin to put in place the plans that effectively deal with criticism.
Although some forms of criticism are as easy to recognize as a red light, some forms of criticism are far more subtle and therefore often go unrecognized as criticism. I therefore have presented posts that discuss dealing with direct and implied forms of criticism. I’ve noted that when someone makes a suggestion, this usually implies some negative criticism.
We also took a good hard look at certain forms of levity, in which negative criticism is designed to be charmingly provocative. It seeks to get people to think more deeply about an issue. As George Bernard Shaw put it in his provocative book, Back to Methuselah:
“When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.”
Shaw, to ward off defensive reactions to his quips, often created fictional plays and had the characters in the plays say them. Great examples are:
“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.“
“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
Today we will spend a little more time practicing enhancing our skills for recognizing subtle forms of criticism. This will help to improve our ability to know when to start using our dealing-with-criticism skills.
More Examples of Subtle Forms of Negative Criticism
As we move forward, please keep in mind that for the purposes of this blog, if someone evaluates something as negative the evaluator has made a negative criticism.
FIRST EXAMPLE
In the above Calvin and Hobbes scenario, Miss Wormwood politely asks Calvin to put his tiger, Hobbes, in his locker. Calvin objects to this request by crying out—“In my locker?! He’ll suffocate!”
Calvin’s response to Miss Wormwood’s request is an example of indirect negative criticism. He doesn’t directly state he has evaluated her request and found that there is something wrong with it, or that it is bad, or something of that sort. Nevertheless, he indicates that if he did what she asked, his tiger would suffocate. To recognize this as a form of negative criticism, it helps to notice that in addition to Calvin’s statement there are other indications that he thinks there is something wrong with Miss Wormwood’s request. The exclamation marks after Calvin’s statement, the drawing of Calvin with his mouth being wide open as if he is shouting, and the fact that he is practically flying out of his seat while he is shouting, all add up to indicate that Calvin’s reply is rightfully classified as a form of negative criticism of Miss Wormwood’s request.
Although Miss Wormwood takes Calvin’s negative criticism in stride, other teachers might become defensive, and yell something like, “Don’t you talk back to me, young man!” This might silence students, but leave them seething with anger that is expressed by a rejection of the school enterprise; or it might lead to shouting back at the teacher, creating an escalation of conflict that takes valuable learning time away from the class.
If Miss Wormwood would have become defensive and started to yell at Calvin in response to his negative criticism, this would, according the the DIG Conflict Model, be rated an immature level of responding (see Responding to Criticism: Four Levels of Maturity). Instead, she steers in the direction of Calvin’s criticism by offering the compromise of putting his “tiger” under his desk where it will be at least out of the way. This, according to the DIG Conflict Model, is one of the most mature responses (see Responding to Criticism: The Most Mature Level). We see, in this example, that Calvin quickly complies and his teacher can now go on with her lesson without any further delay.
SECOND EXAMPLE
Here’s a Sally Forth comic that illustrates that whenever there is a transaction involving a request or demand, we would be wise to anticipate negative criticism will be present as well.
In this comic, because Sally is visiting her mother for a few days, Ted is left on his own to deal with his nine-year-old daughter, Hil. When Ted tells Hil it’s time for bed, she begins to reject his demand. Is Hil’s rejection of the demand a form of criticism?
Well, consider her reply to her dad: “But Mom’s not here! We don’t need a bedtime!” Hil has negatively evaluated her dad’s demand by expressing her disagreement with it. If you tell someone you disagree with what he or she has done, you have negatively criticized the person’s act.
If Ted was skillful at first recognizing that Hil was providing him criticism, he would be in a better position to say to himself, “From what I’ve learned about the different levels of maturity, let me see if I can design a mature response.” What if he came up with something like this?
“Hil, I admire the way you seek to defend your freedom. I want to encourage that. And you know I’m crazy about you. At the same time, I also love your mom, as I know you do. It seems to me that we don’t want to break her rules behind her back. The bedtime schedule is designed for you to get enough rest so you will do well in school. Both of us have seen what happens to you when you don’t get enough rest. When your mom gets home, if you want to discuss the rules, we can do it with her, you and me all altogether. That would be the fair thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
These Examples are Designed to Encourage Deeper Thought
Above, I provided two examples of someone providing negative criticism. For each example, a response was described that I think is pretty mature. Please note, however, that I am NOT claiming that they are the ideal responses. Nor am I trying to make the case that the responses portrayed in the above examples are the only mature responses that can be made. There is a great deal of flexibility that we have for coming up with high level responses. I present the above examples in an effort to challenge you to think more deeply about what mature levels of responding look like according to your own lights.
Well, that’s my post for this week. To all of you who celebrate the beautiful Christmas season, I wish you good cheer, peace on Earth, and good will toward all of our fellow human beings!
With Warmest Regards,
Jeff
———————
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.
Teasing is a game sometimes known as bantering, joshing, crackin’, rankin’, playing the dozens, and trash talk. You are judged in part on the quality of your insults and also how well you keep your cool on being insulted.
Even the most mature people may like to play the teasing game, for they enjoy the duel of wits and the occasional humorous comeback.
MATURE VERSUS IMMATURE TEASING
Mature people are distinguished from immature people in this game by their lack of desire to hurt somebody in this game. Their empathy helps them to realize that the smiles and the lighthearted tone they try to set throughout the game sometimes mask real tensions. Thus, they keep their senses tuned to the subtleties of the repartee, and know when to back off when things begin to get too serious.
Less mature people, partly because of their lower levels of empathy, may think that the more awful they can make someone feel during this game, the better they are at it. When the criticizers have themselves been humiliated by other immature people, they may come to be even more motivated to humiliate others as a way to take out their own pain on others.
IS PLAYFUL TEASING REALLY WHAT IS GOING ON?
If you find that you are being criticized and it doesn’t seem to be motivated by a desire to get you to improve, and you’re not sure what else may be the reason, my advice is to first theorize that it’s just some playful teasing. If the criticism is provided with a smile, or by someone you know who likes to tease in a friendly way, you can be pretty sure that it is just for fun. Then, if you reply with a smile and a comment such as, “That’s a good one,” it shows that you can take a little teasing without getting defensive. If you want to take the game a little further, you can throw a friendly insult right back, like “Same to you, fellow.” When you’ve had enough of the game, smiling and giving the other player a pat on the back can be a good way to draw the game to an end.
Sometimes you are not sure if playful teasing is the name of the game. Then you have to be careful about throwing insults back at the insulter. If it turns out that the criticizer’s comments are not meant to be playful teasing, throwing back insults might make the situation worse. Here are some ideas that permit you to play along while providing you time to figure out what’s really going on.
After the first insult, consider responding in a kidding around way by crying, “OH YEAH!?” As you do this, pretend, in an obviously joking around way, that you have become defensive at the insulter’s comment. But then follow up your fake outrage with a broad smile. This shows that you can play along with the insult while, at the same time, you can take a joke.
If the insulter again insults you in a manner that still leaves you uncertain if the person is just teasing, consider saying the following. “It looks like you have some more missiles to send my way. Okay, hit me with your best shots. I already know that you think my nose is too big and my mother is a fool, so there’s no need to bother with those. Go ahead. I can take it.”
Then, if the insults continue, cry out, “Look out! Incoming torpedoes! Mayday! Mayday! I’m going down! I’m sinking! I’m sinking!” Then fall to your knees, and cover up your ears.
All of this allows you to continue to play along without throwing insults back at a criticizer who may not be playing the teasing game. By the time you fall to your knees, if you still aren’t clear about what is going on, get back up and try saying in a concerned, caring way, “Listen, at first I thought you were joking around. Now I’m not so sure. Is everything okay?”
This often leads to the insulter revealing what is actually motivating this behavior. But if the insulter walks away, and then begins to insult you on another occasion, it’s time to go down the list of other desires that motivate criticism (see HERE).
If you find that the person, or the group of people teasing you are playing the game of teasing in the immature manner—that is, just trying to make you feel as awful as possible—what can you do? I suggest that you just give a quick nod at the comment and then get as far away as possible. Then do your best to stay away from such people.
Now, I certainly realize it is not always easy to avoid a person or a group. Students or bus monitors who ride the school bus are pretty much forced to be confined with a certain set of students for a period of time a couple of times each day. Or the group you want to avoid might be in your classes. As you leave the class you might be stuck walking down the hall with the criticizers. In such cases, when you feel that you have reached your limit of dealing with the put downs, sometimes the following approach is worth a try.
To begin, this approach only requires that you learn to say two words—Please, enough. That’s the easy part. For some, learning how to say these words is the hard part of this strategy.
To use this technique, after two or three insults, say, in a very serious way, rather softly, but loud enough to be clearly heard, “Please.” Then pause for about three seconds while looking firmly into the eyes of each person who has been teasing you. Than say, “e” using the long “e” sound. Then, after another second, say, “nough!” When you look into the eyes of each of the name callers, you are NOT to glare at them in a threatening manner, with your eyebrows pressed to the middle of your forehead. Rather, you are seeking to be firm and very, very, serious.
If immediately after you finish saying this, somebody begins to insult you again, repeat the same words in a similar manner, but this time say it distinctly louder, though just short of shouting. At this point you are seeking to communicate that dire consequences are at hand. You must be firm and look squarely into the eyes of each insulter once again. Then you are to remain very serious while staring either out the school bus’s window or straight ahead where you are walking, but not at any one of the criticizers. You are to remain silent, without talking to anyone, for the remainder of the period you are stuck together, looking the whole time like you are through fooling around and enough is enough!
When the end of the time period that you are stuck together comes, immediately take your stuff and hurry away from the group continuing to look like you are very much annoyed.
The next time you see them, again, turn very serious and silent. If the group members don’t bother you, after a few minutes you can slowly begin to reduce the tension you have created. If the group members again insult you at any time, be silent and serious while again staring out the window or, if you are walking, straight ahead.
The game of immature name calling is kind of like a tennis game. In tennis, if someone hits the ball over the net to you and you refuse to hit it back, people will stop playing with you. Similarly, if someone insults you and you remain silent, often the insulter will find the game too boring to continue.
Although the style I want you to consider comes fairly easy to some, others must learn it with someone who can model the right tone and expression. Some people I worked with over the years found it hard not to put a smirk on their face after they said, “Please, enough!” Some came off as embarrassed while they carried out the technique. If you are not sure how you look while carrying out each step, observe yourself in a mirror. Also run through a role play with a couple of friends or family members and ask them if it looks right to them. Better yet, find out who directs plays at your school. Find out the director’s office hours, and go and explain what you want to learn.
I encourage you to avoid becoming discouraged if you end up botching the performance the first few times you try this during practice sessions. I’ve worked with students that at first kept cracking up throughout the process. Every one of them eventually learned to effectively utilize this technique. Five sessions, each lasting about fifteen minutes, can usually get a shy guy to put together an academy award winning performance.
There are times when those who are doing the teasing are being so cruel and relentless, that the wisest course of action is to inform authorities such as a school principal and the police. This may take courage, but keep in mind that if you remain silent, not only will you continue to be cruelly treated, but so too will others.
———————
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.
“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 thatinterferes 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 thatin 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.
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.
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
———————————
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.
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
Illustration by Deanna Martinez
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.
——————————-
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.
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 toBack-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
Illustration by Eric Sailer
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.
——————————-
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.
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.
——————————-
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.
Today, I came upon a NewYorkTimes article titled “Residents’ Rights to Be Rude Upheld by Massachusetts Supreme Court.” The ruling settled a conflict between the town of Southborough’s “civility code” for public comment at meetings and Ms Louise Barron who had said to a town board member, “Look, you need to stop being a Hitler. You’re a Hitler. I can say what I want.”
As I read the court’s decision, I found myself frustrated that it relies so much on the reasoning of people who thought about this issue over two hundred years ago. At the same time, I do have a great deal of respect for the principle of freedom speech. I also realize that if enough people object to this court ruling, there is a democratic process that allows for changing the constitution. Making such a change would be a lengthy process. In the meantime, how might those who lead periods of public open comments prepare for the likelihood of being insulted?
To encourage civil behavior, “treat people civilly in the first place, and in a way that they perceive to be fair.” For example, imagine the difference if a board member, instead of getting defensive, said, “This person is not feeling heard,” and then said, “Tell us more.” This suggestion is a good start for thinking about how to wisely move forward in a positive manner, but in my opinion needs elaboration.
On one occasion, Secretary Stanton was particularly angry with one of the generals.
