Relationships and Emotions – Page 5

Jealousy and Envy: They are not the same.

Scenario #1

You and your significant other are out on a date or at an event and another person talks to, makes eye contact with, or otherwise engages your significant other and you have a very strong feeling.

Scenario #2

You observe that your friend, a co-worker, or even a stranger, owns something, has something, or even has options you don’t have and you experience a very strong feeling.

Scenario #1

In scenario #1, the issue is that you perceive a threat to your relationship with your significant other. At least two feelings are possible.

Or, some combination of both.

The goal regarding all emotions is to master them so that you can improve your life and your relationships.

Anger:

If you believe that the threat is to your view of right and wrong and the way things “should” be, or your sense of security, and you are ready to go to war to make things right, then the feeling you most likely are exclusively experiencing is anger.

Mastering Anger

I have discussed mastering anger in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool and in numerous posts on this blog. You can download the first two chapter of the book by scrolling up to the Welcome post.

Anger can also be experienced along with a second feeling.

Jealousy:

If you believe that your relationship with your significant other is threatened because your significant other is attracted to the person with whom they are interacting, then you most likely are experiencing jealousy. Jealousy always involves a third party and the message of jealousy is “I have something that I think you want, that I think you are coming after and that you might take from me”.

The other side of Jealousy is that your significant other may be interested in someone else because there is something wrong with you. So, along with jealousy, you might be experiencing, inadequacy, self-doubt, embarrassment, uncertainty and/or insecurity.

Mastering Jealousy

You master jealousy when you use the energy of your emotion to:

validate the feeling in yourself
understand that there may be some areas of your relationship with your significant other that you need to reexamine
engage in a conversation with your significant other about your feelings and their understanding of the nature of the relationship between the two of you and between them and the third party.

Scenario #2:

In scenario #2, the issue is that another person has something, or some ability, that you wish you had. There is no threat.

Envy:

The emotion you experience is envy.

The core message of envy is “I want what you have”.

Envy can be experienced as a painful emotion. When this is the case, you have taken the focus of your attention from the advantages enjoyed by another and focused it on yourself.

You have added feelings of inadequacy, self-contempt, shame, or inferiority. The message here is “I don’t measure up or have what he (or she) has which means there is something wrong with me.

Mastering Envy

You master envy when you use the energy of your emotion to:

validate, or accept, the feeling in yourself,
take a comprehensive look at what it is you are envious about in that other person,
decide how important it is for you to emulate that person or obtain what they have,

and, if it is important,

make a plan to do what is required to acquire the skill, or obtain the desired item.

In this post, I have addressed the emotions of jealousy and envy.

I welcome your comments.

The Golden, Platinum and Bronze Rules: Working with Others and Dealing with Yourself.

Working with others:

All of us are familiar with the Golden Rule which says “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This is an interpersonal rule from an intrapersonal perspective.

The problem with the Golden Rule is that it starts with you as the focus. As long as everyone is the same as you, this Rule works and gives you very good guidance.

However, as each of us is unique as an individual, the Platinum Rule teaches us to “Do unto others as they would like to be done unto.” Steven Covey offers the same advice in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People where he says, “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” The point here is that, in effectively dealing with others, we need to understand their point of view and gauge our interactions accordingly.

This is purely an interpersonal perspective.

While the Golden Rule might work when you are dealing with people who may be just like you, deploying the Patinum Rule will probably be more effective and work in more diverse settings.

Dealing with yourself..

Let me ask you a question I asked my students in my Personal Growth Class..

If other people said to you the same things you say to yourself about you, how long would you tolerate it?

When I ask my students this question, the answer is always “Not very long.” And yet, we tolerate it when it comes from ourselves.

Most of us tend to be very hard on ourselves when we make mistakes or when our lives are not going the way we would like them to go. In other words, we tend to be very unforgiving when we are criticizing ourselves, trying to correct our own behavior, or just rehashing all the errors we have made in our lives.

I would like to propose a Bronze Rule to help you deal with your own issues.

The Bronze Rule says “Do unto you as you do unto others.”

The point here is that, in general, we all tend to be our worst critics. This wouldn’t be so bad, by itself, except that when you tell yourself something, you tend to believe it without question. You do not apply the same filters to your own self-talk that you do to the comments others make about you.

When an associate, your kids, or a friend make a mistake, you probably attempt to understand them, give them the “benefit of the doubt”, offer some reassuring comment, or attempt to be supportive in some way. I am not saying that you avoid holding them accountable. I am only saying the the way you deliver your message may be couched in “warm fuzzies” rather than prickly thorns.

When your self-talk is directed at you, however, it is often “no holds barred”.

So, the Bronze Rule reminds you to implement some self-compassion when you are addressing your own issues.

When you are being hyper self-critical, stop, take a breath, and ask yourself how valid the criticism is, are you being overly harsh, is there another way to look at your situation, and so forth.

I am not saying that you should let yourself off the hook, so to speak, or that you should be too easy on yourself. I am only saying that you should give yourself the same consideration and compassion you give others when they make a mistake or mess up.

I welcome your comments.

“Why do misunderstandings make others angrier?”

This is a question that someone asked me on Quora.com.

There are two reasons why this is an important question to discuss.

On the one hand, it addresses what probably is a very common source of angry reactions…misunderstandings.

On the other hand, it clearly perpetuates an anger myth which both wrongly depicts how anger works, and shifts the responsibility for anger away from the person getting angry.

I should point out that the person who asked this question was most likely just curious about wanting an answer, innocently posted the question, and, along with most people, had no clue either about how anger works or about the existence of disempowering anger myths. So, please do not misinterpret my response as a criticism of the questioner. This is not my intent.

Anger and Misunderstandings

I have, in other posts on this blog, spoken about how anger is one of six primary emotions that have existed in “man” for eons. Four of these primary emotions, including anger, are primitive threat detectors the function of which is to alert us to perceived threats in our surroundings and subconsciously prepare our bodies to deal with the threat and insure our survival.

Your anger is a threat detecting tool.

Your anger tells you that you perceive a threat that you believe you can eliminate by throwing enough force at it. Anger prepares you for battle.

A misunderstanding is defined by Dictionary.com as:

To take (words, statements, etc.) in a wrong sense; understand wrongly.

When it comes to anger and misunderstandings, there are two issues:

What we have actually done or said
How the other person perceives or gives meaning to what we did or said.

It is the failure to keep these two issues separate that results in the escalation of anger when misunderstandings occur.

This is how the process works.

You do (or say) something that another person perceives as a threat to their goals, values, self-image, or “survival”.

In other words, the person interacting with, and getting angry at, you believes what you have done or said is “wrong” (for a variety of different reasons). If they do not attempt to validate the situation and their anger, as happens when anger is mastered, they “go” with their opinion and their perception, logic is suspended and the interaction deteriorates.

You, in the same self-preserving approach that they are using, see your actions as valid, view their “aggressive” stance as a threat, get angry, and escalate the interaction.

This is not to say that what you have done is objectively wrong (as seen by an unbiased observer). Rather, it is subjectively wrong as defined by the other person.

This is an important distinction.

You may have done nothing wrong (what you did) and the other person misperceived or misinterpreted (their perception) your actions based on their own psychological state at the time, the situation or surroundings in which the actions occurred, or some other, unknown, set of circumstances.

That a “misunderstanding” occurred means, by definition, that no wrong was done. If this is never questioned, the anger intensifies on both your part and theirs.

Now to the myth.

I discuss three anger myths in my Amazon bestselling book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

One of these myths is that our anger controls us. It is a myth because it isn’t true.

When the writer on Quora asked about how (misunderstandings) MAKE (emphasis added) others angry, he implied that something outside of the other person had the power to control them and to cause (read force) them to get angry without their permission. This is the anger myth. If this were true, which is is not, the other person would be a robot and would not be responsible for anything they do when they get angry.

By the same token, the myth implies that you, if you get angry, are also a robot with no control over yourself or your emotions.

This myth is widely believed.

We see the impact of it when a celebrity or athlete beats up his girlfriend, does something really stupid, or makes a fool of himself and says, “My anger made me do it.” Another example is the spousal abuser who tells his spouse, “ If you hadn’t done (whatever), I would not have gotten angry and (hurt you).”

In both of these examples, the aggressor takes no personal responsibility for the actions taken and blames the other person for causing both the anger and the aggression.

In fact, all of us are responsible both for the anger we feel and the actions we take when angry. While it is true that the aggressor would not have done what they did if they were not angry, the anger did not force them to hurt another person (other options exist) and the aggressor could have decided to change their perception and not get angry.

By the way, I have addressed how to deal with another person who directs their anger at you in a series of three posts entitled: You are the target of someone’s anger. Part 1 is archived in February 2017 and parts 2 and 3 are archived in March 2017.

So, the initial question has now been addressed in terms of the process underlying the connection between anger and misunderstandings and the myth that the misunderstanding makes the other person angry.

I welcome your comments.

A solution to old grievances- IWBNI’s

Do you ever find yourself holding onto old grievances?

Someone did something to you in your past and every time you think of it, you get pissed off. Examples include a history of abuse, an indiscretion, a social put-down that embarrassed you, a lack of support you thought you deserved but which was never given and so forth. While the incident could have happened years ago and the person who did it might even be dead, it is just as real as if it happened yesterday when you begin to think about it.

The incident could also have happened last week and you are still both angry and obsessed about it.

It is important to note that if you are able to talk to the person and, in some way, resolve the issues between you, this is the best action to take.

Sometimes, though, resolving the issue in real time is not possible because the person is dead and, therefore, not physically available to you or the emotional barriers between you are so formidable that the person is not available to you psychologically.

If this applies to you, I have some suggestions for you.

But first, let me help you understand how it is that an incident that may have occurred years ago can still be so real to you.

Your ability to think about something is a powerful gift. This is your imagination. When you imagine a situation and allow yourself to experience it, your brain can’t tell if it is a real experience or only in your head.

The upside of imagination is that you can relive your vacation, playing in the pool with your kids, or your mom’s great Thanksgiving meals. The downside is that you can become tethered to your past.

Let me give you an example of the power of your imagination.

Stop for a moment and try to make your mouth water.

Most likely, you won’t have a whole lot of success as you can’t force your body to make this happen.

Now, if you can, copy this section of the article and have someone read the script to you as you close your eyes and imagine the scene they are reading.

You walk into your kitchen and go over to the refrigerator.
You open the door to the fridge and feel the blast of cold air on your face.
You, then, notice the lemon sitting on the shelf. You pick it up and feel the cold skin.
You close the fridge door and put the lemon on the cutting board on the counter.
You take out a sharp knife and as you cut off a slice of lemon, you see the juice pool up on the board.
You pick up the lemon wedge, put it in your mouth and bite into it.

Your imagination made your mouth water. It is as if you just bit into a real lemon wedge.

You can, now, understand how it is that every time you think of what happened to you in the past, you relive it as if it were yesterday.

Ultimately, you want to forgive the person as this will allow you cut the ties with and move beyond your past. I addressed forgiveness in my last post.

Sometimes, however, forgiving a person is difficult and you need to add a step before you can engage forgiveness

The step you can add is to view the past through the filter of an IWBNI.

The word IWBNI is an acronym that stands for It Would Be Nice If.

The process behind using an IWBNI is this;

Labeling the incident as an IWBNI as in “It would be nice if the incident had not taken place or the person had not been such a jerk and so forth.” allows you to both acknowledge the onerous nature of the incident (because what you are saying about it is TRUE) and let it go (because the unstated implication of IWBNI is that it did occur.

When you replay it in your mind, you are trying to resolve or understand it. Many things that happen to us are often beyond any typical logical understanding because they are so onerous and, therefore, seem to defy logic.

Using an IWBNI acknowledges that you may never understand it and that you are choosing to let it go and move past it. This is after-all what you want.

Like forgiveness, which I discussed in the last post, using an IWBNI does not justify, minimize, or excuse what took place. It only accepts that it did take place.

Following this acceptance which begins the process of moving on facilitates the process of forgiveness which allows you to fianally cut the ties that bind you to your past.

By the way, I discussed using IWBNI’s in my 7/20/16 post on dealing with regret.

I welcome your comments.

Forgiveness

In a recent series of 3 posts, I discussed a six step process for mastering anger that is directed at you by another person. Step 4 in that process involves forgiving the other person. As the concept of forgiveness is often misunderstood, I’d like to elaborate on it in this post.

Generally speaking, there are two perspectives you can take to assess and give meaning to the actions of another that:

hurt you (or has hurt you in the past)
you believe are not right for them to do
you view as inconsiderate and unnecessary
you believe call for retaliation.

Perhaps, you have a history of physical or sexual abuse that you can’t stop thinking about. Or, someone has done something to you that continues to upset you and ruin your relationship with that person eventhough they may have apologized.

Why is perspective important?

The perspective you adopt regarding what the other person has done will act as a filter through which you assess both the nature of their behavior and the options you choose regarding what you will do about that behavior.

One perspective involves subjectively viewing and assessing the interaction from a personal point of view. When you are being subjective, you look at what is going on through the lens of your own emotions, prior beliefs and experiences, and prejudices. The subjective perspective tends to distort how you view your situation.

In other words: They did something wrong and you continue to be righteously pissed off about it.

It is important to note that emotions by their nature, are highly subjective.

As I discuss in both of my most recent Amazon best seller books Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool, the message of anger is that you perceive a current threat that you believe you can eliminate if you throw enough force at it. You perceive a threat, the threat, in your mind, truly exists, and your anger is valid.

The problem is that the behavior is in the past and can’t be changed and your anger, in the present, can have negative impacts on your body and your relationships.

The second perspective involves objectively assessing what is going on. You are being objective when you, to the degree that you can, attempt to assess what is going on with you from the point of view of an unbiased observer. You temporarily put your emotions aside and try to understand how this observer is viewing the situation, how you might be overreacting or misunderstanding what is happening, and how your initial subjective emotional reaction might be inaccurate.

In other words: What is going on with me that I am still pissed off with them?

The Anger Mastery Cycle, a copy of which is available above, calls for us to move into anger management after the initial emotional reaction. Anger management involves reducing our emotional arousal.

Anger Mastery is the next step after anger management and entails assessing the nature of the threat. It is in this step that forgiveness becomes relevant.

Here is the reasoning connecting forgiveness, objectivity and mastering the anger that someone directs at you:

In order to be able to effectively interact with another person you need to keep your own arousal level down and accurately assess what is going on. This is an important part of anger mastery and involves taking a deep breath and taking a step back from the situation.

Forgiveness moves the process of mastering the anger at another person one step forward.

Regarding forgiveness, most therapists and people in general do not understand what forgiveness is. You and most other people

believe that forgiving someone involves absolving them of any bame or responsibility for their actions. This is what happens when your past debts are “forgiven”. They are erased. Or, when in the Bible (Disclaimer: I am not a biblical expert.) when Christ forgave someone’s sins and that person was “born again”..

When I suggested to the young women I worked with in the California Department of Corrections-Juvenile Division that they forgive the men who abused them (often their fathers) or the women who abandoned them (or worse), they often refused stating that these men (women) did not deserve to be forgiven for what they did.

Psychologically, people do not want to forgive others because it doesn’t feel right that the other person should be “let off the hook” for what they did. It just doesn’t feel like justice has been served.

And, maybe it hasn’t. But, psychologically, this is not the point.

There is an old joke about a guy who comes home very late from a round of golf. His wife questions him and he says. “It’s all Harry’s fault.” After additional questioning, the guy explains that Harry died on the second hole and they had to carry him for the rest of the 16 holes of golf.

When someone holds on to feelings about what someone has done in the past, they carry that person (Harry) with them everywhere they go. One’s feelings about the past can color the perception of threat in such a way that one may see a current threat where none exists and remain angry.

As I am using the word, forgiveness means (psychologically) “letting go”. When you forgive another person for what they have done to you, you are choosing to disengage emotionally from that person and their actions. This letting go frees you up to decide the best way for you to deal with this individual and their behavior in your current context.

There is no absolution of guilt or responsibility. Rather, you decide that you can’t change the past and you will move on with your life. Psychological forgiveness is for (and exclusively about) you and has

nothing to do with the person (or people) you are forgiving. In fact, they may never know you’ve forgiven them.

Forgiveness allows you to be more objective about the interaction between you and the other person. In being objective, you have the opportunity to use the energy of your feelings about the situation to both choose and implement your best option to resolve the issues you are facing. Two options you have include resolving issues with this person (if the person is available and willing), or seeing your situation as an I.W.B.N.I (We will talk about this in a future post.) and doing nothing more.

So, forgive them for you so that you can let go of the emotional baggage (your Harry) and get on with your life.

I welcome your comments.

You are the target of someone’s anger: Part 3 of 3

This is the third and final post in my 3 part series discussing six steps you can take when someone directs their anger at you.

This is the scenario I have been using:

You are at _____ (work, home, walking the dog) and someone interacts with you in such a way that it seems clear to you that this person is angry with you. He (or she) might be yelling at you, talking fast, accusing you of having done something and so forth. It is not immediately clear why they are angry.

In my first post, I discussed Steps 1 and 2 which focused on insuring your safety in the interaction

In my last post, I covered Steps 3 and 4 which focused on lowering the energy level of the interaction.

Steps 5 and 6 involve choosing a response.

Here is the overview:

Step 1: Prepare to engage. Sub-steps: a. Calm yourself b. Take a physical step back

Step 2: Insure your safety. Sub-steps: a. assess personal threat level b.Assess need for immediate action.

Step 3: Validate their anger. Sub-steps: a. Assume their anger is valid. b. Calm them down.

Step 4: Forgiveness. Sub-steps: a. understand what forgiveness is. b. Don’t take their anger personally.

Step 5: Empathize with and attempt to understand the other person’s anger. Sub-steps: a. Seek first to understand. b. Address 7 general issues.

Step 6: Decide how to respond. Sub-steps: a. If you did something. b. The issue is in their head.

Step 5 involves empathizing with and attempting to understand the other person’s anger. As you know that the message of anger involves the perception of threat, you need to know what those perceptions are so that you can tailor your response so as to move the interaction in the direction of a win-win resolution, if possible.

Sub-step (a) is taken from Steven Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and suggests that you seek first to understand and then to be understood. Your goal here is to gain some knowledge of what it is in you, or the situation, that has resulted in his seeing you as a threat.

Focusing your attention on the other person first gives you the opportunity to learn about him so that you can later develop a response which may let you get both your and his needs met.

Sub-step (b) involves addressing 7 general issues and will help focus your attention on the information you need.

Here are the 7 general issues that I originally addressed in my book Beyond Anger Mastery: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

What is the nature of the threat the other person perceives?
Are they telling you that you have done something wrong? If so, what is it? Is is something you did recently, are currently doing, or something you did in the past?
Are they just venting and you just happened to be in the way?
Is the threat, or the implied threat, that they perceive in the present and something you may be able to resolve?
Is the threat they perceive, or the implied threat, in the present but totally unrelated to you?
Are they using their anger to “manipulate” you in some way or get you to do something specific like back-off (anger as a communicator) or give in (instrumental anger)?
If there is no obvious threat, what else might be going on? Could they be using their anger to cover over some other feeling (secondary anger)? Or, if they are attacking you or demeaning your character, could they be attempting to divert attention away from issues you have raised and onto you as an individual?

With the information you get from addressing these 7 general areas, you can move onto Step 6 in which you choose a response.

In choosing how you will respond, there are two basic issues which are summarized by the two Sub-steps. Either you did something (Sub-step (a)) or the issue is in their head (Sub-step (b)).

When it is clear that you have done something about which this person is angry, the best you can do is to accept responsibility for your actions, sincerely apologize, address their concerns as well as you can, and ask what you can do to “make it right”. You do not need to make excuses or justify your behavior (although you can offer an explanation if you choose) and you want to be assertive and seek a win-win resolution if possible.

If the threat is a figment of their imagination, you are only marginally involved or if you are a “target” and the anger has little to do with you, the best you can do is ask for clarification (I’m not really sure what I might have done. Can you tell me what you are angry about?) and attempt to address their concerns.

If, as can happen with Professional Women appropriately expressing anger in a work setting, the anger is a cover for the other person’s feeling of vulnerability, the best course of action is to take a “Project manager’s” approach to the interaction. I have a whole chapter on Professional Women and Anger in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool.

What you do not want to do is argue with the other person as getting into an argument, even if you are “right”, will most likely just escalate their anger and elicit an attempt to defend and justify their perceptions.

Remember that your goal is to reduce the energy level of the interaction so that you can seek a win-win resolution if possible, or a compromise, rather than to prove that you are right.

If appropriate, apologize for any misunderstandings. Note that you are not apologizing here for anything you’ve done just for any misunderstanding.

If nothing works and they are still angry at you, you may have to offer to get back with them at a later date and walk away.

Has this series of three posts been helpful to you? Is there any topic you would like addressed further?

As always, I welcome your comments.

You are the target of someone’s anger: Part 2 of 3

This is the second of 3 posts which discuss what you can do when someone gets angry with you. Put another way, I am suggesting that you learn to master the anger of another person and use your knowledge to make the most out of the situation in which you find yourself.

There are 6 steps involved in dealing with the anger of another person. In my last post, I discussed step 1 and step 2 and the sub-steps of each.

Steps 1 and 2 were all about you, preparing yourself to engage the other person and insuring your own safety.

In this post, I will discuss steps 3 and step 4 and their sub-steps.

Steps 3 and 4 are also preparing to engage the other person but the emphasis in these steps shifts from you to them.

For review, here are the 6 steps and sub-steps.

Here is an overview:

Step 1: Prepare to engage. Sub-steps: a. Calm yourself b. Take a physical step back

Step 2: Insure your safety. Sub-steps: a. assess personal threat level b. Assess need for immediate action.

Step 3: Validate their anger. Sub-steps: a. Assume their anger is valid. b. Calm them down.

Step 4: Forgiveness. Sub-steps: a. understand what forgiveness is. b. Don’t take their anger personally.

Step 5: Empathize with and attempt to understand the other person’s anger. Sub-steps: a. Seek first to understand. b. Address 7 general issues.

Step 6: Decide how to respond. Sub-steps: a. If you did something. b. The issue is in their head.

Again, let me set the stage (from the first post):

Step 3 involves validating their anger and has two sub-steps. Sub-step (a) reminds you of the assumption you need to make regarding their anger and Sub-step (b) reminds you that your goal here is to calm them down by defusing their anger as much as you can.

When I suggest validating the anger of another person, the response that I get usually involves two separate focal points: the anger and the person who is angry. My audience will raise two issues. On the one hand, they do not like the implication that validating the anger is acknowledging the anger as both appropriate and acceptable (when is probably is not). Secondly, they do not like the implication that validating the person’s anger is rewarding this individual for both his inappropriate anger and, possibly his inappropriate behavior.

I am not suggesting that you either accept his anger as appropriate nor that you reward his behavior although I do acknowledge that he may think this is what you are doing.

Indeed, while it is true that the definition of “to validate” is to authenticate the authenticity of”, when you validate his (or her) anger, you are only saying that the anger is valid for him and that you agree he has a right to be angry based on how he perceives the situation. Your focus is totally on the other person and the perceptions which have elicited his anger not on the anger, per se.

This is an important distinction.

To put it another way, if his perceptions of what is going on are completely correct, then his anger both makes total sense and is valid. This is the underlying logic for validating his anger.

As you do not yet know what his perceptions are, you cannot say whether that the anger directed at you is either valid or correct for the situation.

Two points to keep in mind here:

Our emotions are always valid (appropriate) for us in that they are elicited by how we see the world.
The message of his anger is that he perceives a threat or a challenge to his values, goals, beliefs, ego, sense of self, identity and so forth.

In light of these two points, if you immediately question or challenge him or his anger, you may increase his perception of you as a threat and he will escalate his anger. Acknowledging that he is angry and that you would like to understand what he is angry about communicates to him that you want to work with him and that you may not be as much of a threat as he originally thought.

To the extent that you are successful in validating his anger, you move on to Sub-step 2 as he will begin to calm down.

Once you have validated the other person’s anger as authentic and appropriate for them given their perception of the situation, you can move on to step #4 which is forgiveness.

This is tough one for many people especially if the other person, fueled by their anger has said or done things that have hurt you.

So, let me explain how I am conceptualizing forgiveness.

Most people think that forgiveness means letting the person off the hook for what they did or absolving them of blame and responsiblity. This is what happens when your past debts are “forgiven”. They are erased. Or, when in the Bible (Disclaimer: I am not a biblical expert.) when Christ forgave someone’s sins and that person was “born again”.

As I am using the word, forgiveness means “letting go”. When you forgive another person for what they have done to you, you are choosing to disengage emotionally from that person and their actions. This letting go frees you up to decide the best way for you to deal with this individual and their behavior in your current context.

Forgiveness is all about you not about them.

So, now that you have taken steps to insure your safety (Steps 1 and 2) and to initiate the process of lowering the energy level of the interaction (Steps 3 and 4), you are now ready to move toward and choose a response (Steps 5 and 6).

I will discuss these Steps in the next post.

I welcome your comments.

You are the target of someone’s anger: Part 1 of 3

In most of my earlier posts, I have discussed how to master your own anger. And, in the vast majority of situations, it is your own anger that you will be dealing with.

However, in the course of dealing with other people, it is quite likely that someone has gotten angry at you and you have become a target. Recognizing this, I included a chapter in my book Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool, entitled Dealing with Someone Else’s Anger Directed at You.

As I would like to cover this topic in more depth and as I do not want each post to be too long, I will address mastering the anger of another person in the next three posts.

Mastering the anger of another person directed at you involves 6 steps each of which has two substeps. All 6 steps parallel the Anger Mastery Cycle and how you master your own anger. (You can download a copy of the Anger Mastery Cycle by scrolling up to the top and clicking on the tab on the right side of the page.)

Here is an overview:

Prepare to engage. Sub-steps: a. Calm yourself b. Take a physical step back
Insure your safety. Sub-steps: a. assess personal threat level b.Assess need for immediate action.
Validate their anger. Sub-steps: a. Assume their anger is valid. b.Calm them down.
Forgiveness. Sub-steps: a. understand what forgiveness is. b. Don’t take their anger personally.
Empathize with and attempt to understand the other person’s anger. Sub-steps: a. Seek first to understand. b. Address 7 general issues.
Decide how to respond. Sub-steps: a. If you did something. b. The issue is in their head.

I will address steps 1 and 2 in this post, steps 3 and 4 in the next post, and steps 5 and 6 in the third post.

Let me set the stage…

Steps 1 and 2 go together and involve preparing to engage the other person and insuring your own safety.

Remember from the Anger Mastery Cycle that all of us are constantly and subconsciously scanning our surroundings for any threat that might hurt us. Anger tells us that we perceive a threat that we believe we can overpower if we throw enough force at it. This is the message of anger.

The other person’s anger informs you that he sees you as a threat. As you don’t know what it is that he perceives or if you are at risk, you need to think about your own safety first.

Steps 1 and 2 are about your safety.

Step 1 (Prepare to engage) involves two substeps. First, you need to take a deep breath and second, you need to take a physical step back from the other person.

Taking a deep breath performs two functions for you.

Taking a deep breath calms you down just enough so that you can choose what you do next. This will inhibit you from reacting to the person and possibly escalating the interaction. Taking a breath also gives you some psychological distance between you and the other person.

Taking a step back from the person also performs two functions.

When you step back from the person, you provide yourself some physical distance between you and the other person. You also signal to them that you are not an immediate threat to them.

Step 1 and its sub-steps can happen very quickly. But, they are not automatic and must be “practiced”. More likely than not, when someone “angers” (my word) all over you, you will want to react and “anger” back on them. This is never a good idea.

Even if you are “justified” in reacting aggressively toward this person, the actions you take will most likely escalate, or aggravate, the interaction and will not move you and the other person toward resolving whatever issue is eliciting (not causing) the anger. While this is not necessarily an issue if the other person is a stranger, it may be a very important point if the other person is a colleague, a boss, a co-worker, or a customer talking to you on a help line or at your business.

You “practice” your response to the anger of another person by rehearsing, in your mind’s eye, the actions you will take if you are ever in this situation. Actors, preparing for a part, rehearse, or practice their actions. Maybe, you have rehearsed what you would do prior to a job interview or a meeting with your boss during which you plan to ask for a raise. Same idea. Think about someone getting angry with you and yelling at you. When you do this, you might feel yourself reacting as if this situation were actually occurring. If this happens to you, relax, this is normal. The mind often reacts the same to a vividly imagined event as it does to the event itself. Have you ever gotten scared or cried at a movie?

So, create an angry interaction in your mind and then “see” yourself taking a deep breath and taking a step back. You should do this several times for a week or so. While rehearsing makes it more likely that you will do as you plan, I have to tell you that there is no guarantee. The more you rehearse, the more likely the new action is to occur.

Step 2 (Insure your safety) also involves two sub-steps. First, you need to assess your personal risk and second you need to assess the need for any immediate action.

Assessing your personal risk involves looking at the other person, their tone of voice, the actions they are taking (moving toward you as you move away), what they are saying (any threats) and so forth. If your “gut” tells you that you are at risk, then your best course of action is to act as if you are at risk. This gut feeling is your Amygdala sending you a message. Honor it.

Sub-step 2 involves deciding what you need to do in the moment based on what you feel following sub-step 1. If you sense that you are in danger, leave. If you have to, just walk away. If you need to excuse yourself before you walk away, make an excuse and leave. If you do not sense that you are in danger, then you can move on to step 3 and step 4 which we will discuss next week.

I welcome your comments.

It’s an emotional world: 3 rules for living in it with others.

If you are alive or you interact with others, you come into contact with emotions on a regular (even daily) basis.

In the course of living your daily life, you may get angry, anxious, sad, doubtful, jealous or envious.

In your interactions with others such as your boss, your spouse, a customer, or your kid, you may experience someone who gets mad at or impatient with you or who is sad or anxious.

How well do you deal with emotions (and the behavior that goes along with emotions) in yourself and others?

Information about what emotions are and how to master them is available both on the internet and from me in my books and my blogposts.

In my first book (Emotions as Tools: Control Your Life not Your Feelings), I discuss what emotions are, why we have them, and the Emotions as Tools Model. I also discuss specific emotions of anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, guilt and shame.

In my second book (Beyond Anger Management: Master Your Anger as a Strategic Tool) I focus specifically on anger including the Anger Mastery Cycle, anger management verses anger mastery, the anger myths, what to do when it feels like anger but isn’t and both how to deal with other’s anger and when other’s won’t let you be angry.

Both books are Amazon best sellers and you download the first two chapters of each book for free with no log-in required by scrolling up to the top of the page.

With that being said, let’s look at 3 general rules which will help you deal with another person who is emotional with you.

Rule #1: Assume that everyone (including you) does the best they can in the situation given a) what they know about what is going on, b) the assumptions they make and c) the skills they have to deal with what is going on.

My guess is that this rule doesn’t sit well with you as you know that much of the behavior you have seen in others (and in yourself) doesn’t qualify as either good or “best”.

True. In fact, what they are doing may be destructive, wrong for the situation, or just unacceptable.

Indeed, I not saying that what they are doing is the best that can be done or even what they should be doing. In many cases, this is usually obvious.

What I am saying is that, when you do not immediately judge the behavior and assume that this is the best they can do, in the moment, with the information they have, the assumptions they make and the skills they have, you have many different options from which you can choose to deal with this individual.

The other alternative is to judge the behavior and react by doing something that worsens the interaction and that you may later regret. This, by the way, is what usually happens when one’s feelings get hurt, misunderstandings occur, and the situation gets out of hand.

When you assume that what they are doing is the best they can, your next step can be to understand what underlies and has led to the actions they are taking with you.

Steven Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People notes that, in your interactions with others, you should seek first to understand and then to be understood.

When we react to others out of our own emotional state, we do the exact opposite. We want to stand up for and defend ourselves to a perceived attack. If you are interacting with a boss, a spouse, a customer, or even your kid, this usually is not an effective way to move the relationship forward.

In dealing with another person whose emotionally driven behavior clearly seems over the top or not fitting the situation and making the above assumption, you now have the opportunity to look into the information they have and the assumptions they are making. Once you know this, you can begin to change the interaction by giving additional information and clearing up any misunderstandings they (or you) may have. With new information, the behavior they are displaying toward you can change.

Please note that you have not given up any of your options either in the emotions you feel or the responses you may choose to make. But, when they change what they are doing, you, most likely will also change what you choose to do.

And, this leads us to Rule #2.

Rule#2: Know what you want to accomplish in your interactions with this person.

In any interpersonal interaction, it is important for you to know what you want to accomplish because this will determine what you choose to do.

Interpersonal interactions cover a wide range of situations from wanting good service from your server in a restaurant, building a healthy (however you define this) relationship with your spouse or significant other, keeping a customer happy on a service call, through getting respect from your supervisor and so forth.

So, you can see that it is important to understand the nature of your relatioship with this other person, what you and they expect in the relationship and where you want the relationship to go (what you want to accomplish in the relationship).

Once you know this, you are in a better position to decide what actions you will take to get you where you want to go.

And, this takes us to rule #3.

Rule#3: Seek to get a win/win with the other person but settle for a compromise if you have to.

Most people think that compromise is the best you can hope for when there is a disagreement. And, sometimes, this is true.

When you compromise, both you and the other person give up something you can do without to get something you must have. There is nothing wrong with this but, in one sense, it is a lose/lose proposition in that you both have given up something you would just as soon have if you could.

Someone once said that if you shoot for the stars and you miss you end up on the moon. If you shoot for the moon and miss, you end up back on earth. The moon is a compromise.

I am suggesting that you shoot for a win/win in which both of you get all that you want, whenever this is possible. If this is your goal in a relationship, you will work to find ways that meet all of both your needs.

This is often possible if you look for it.

If not, you can always compromise.

In an upcoming series of three posts, I will discuss in detail a six step process for dealing with someone who directs their anger at you.

I welcome your comments.

Sometimes you do everything right and still get the wrong results. A suggestion

The scenario.

This is a picture of a bicycle frame and a bicycle tire both of which are securely chained to the stand. Unfortunately, all the rest of the bicycle is gone. I am sure the owner of the bicycle thought he (or she) did the right thing by putting a chain with a secure lock through the frame and detached wheel. Clearly, the owner did not get the result (a secure bike) that he had anticipated.

The same thing can happen when you express your emotions.

I discussed the emotional process in 3 earlier posts (3/31/16, 4/6/16 and 4/13/16).

Emotionally, you are a threat detecting organism. Once you perceive a threat and your Amygdala subconsciously prepares your body to REACT and engage the threat, your cerebral cortex kicks in and enables you to assess the nature of the threat and choose how you want to RESPOND.

So, let’s say that you correctly assess the threat your feeling informs you about (The threat is genuine.), you choose your response (rather than react), and the reaction you get is not at all what you expected.

As an example. You are standing in line to get to the cashier and someone cuts in line. This is a “threat” to your view of right and wrong. In other words, it isn’t right and it isn’t fair. You get annoyed (mild anger) or even angry, gauge your response to the situation and assertively tell the person that you (and others) have been waiting in line and that they need to go to the back of the line.

When we get angry, it means we have perceived a threat to our egos, our goals, our values, our relationship, or our resources from our point of view. This is what anger, as a threat detector, is designed to do.

You expect the line-cutter to apologize and exit the line. This is what they “should” do.

Instead, they glare at you and tell you to mind your own business.

What went wrong?

In short, the person with whom you are interacting had not read the social “script” which states what a reasonable person should do in this situation. Notice the italicized words. Their anger tells you that they see you as a threat and that they are attempting to minimize the damage they believe you have caused them.

To put it another way, you viewed the “threat” from your point of view and acted accordingly. They did the same thing.

Who is wrong here?

You can answer this question in several ways.

The word “wrong” implies a judgment.

So, this person has violated a “social norm” regarding lines. In this sense, we judge him (or her) to be wrong.

Emotionally, however, everyone’s feelings are based on their view of the world. This is important to keep in mind when we deal with other people. Your emotions are always valid for you (and the other person). Valid means that your feelings are consistent with how you view the world.

Your feelings may be valid for you but wrong for the situation.

Or, in this case, his feelings may be valid for him but wrong (according to social norms) for the situation.

You, however, have experienced a valid feeling (anger), your emotion is right for the situation, and you took the right action to nullify the threat. Unfortunately, what you did resulted in the situation escalating.

Another example.

A few months ago, I posted a question on “Connect A Professional Woman’s Network (LinkedIn). I wanted to know how professional women were treated when they showed anger (both appropriate anger and anger appropriately displayed) in their work settings.

Over 2000 responses indicated that when women got angry, the men in their work settings demeaned and marginalized them and/or called them derogatory (misogynistic) names.

These women did all the right things (from an anger mastery point of view) and got all the wrong results.

So, what can you (as a man or a woman) do?

The short answer is that you shift your point of view and use the energy of your anger (or other feeling) to motivate and energize the actions you need to take to nullify the threat.

My assumption here is that you have correctly perceived a threat and that some action needs to be taken to nullify that threat.

In this situation, you need to shift your point of view to that of the other person. The questions to ask are: How does he (or she) see the situation and in what way does he see you as a threat?

Please note that I am not saying his point of view is correct (by any standard). Nor am I suggesting that you ignore your perception of threat. On the contrary, he (or his actions) are a threat which you need to address. But, you can’t address these issues until you understand and work around his perceptions.

There are several actions you can take.

First, you can apologize for any misunderstandings that may have occurred. Note that you are not apologizing for your getting angry. You are only attempting to soften any misunderstandings.

Next, you need to take a “project manager” approach. By this, I mean that you need to step back and review what your goals are in the situation, what the stumbling blocks are, what risks you might be exposed to, and what resources you need to move forward.

You are approaching your situation with this person as if it were a project and using your anger to give you the energy you need. You are still angry but you are not outwardly showing your anger as this will only escalate the interaction.

Your “project” goal is to address the threat.

The stumbling block is that his ego, sense of vulnerability, misperceptions, or hidden agendas are preventing you from addressing his actions.

Your resources include your ability to find a different way to approach him. Perhaps, you need to bring in a third person or you need to approach this individual from a different angle perhaps a cost-benefit analysis or a productivity or a workplace environment suggestion.

The point here is that you look for an approach which will grab his attention, take the focus off of you as a possible threat, and enable you to address the issue of his behavior that needs to change (for a reason he sees as important).

This approach will work in a professional setting or at home with your kids or spouse. In using this approach, you are mastering your anger by using it as a source of energy and you are mastering the anger of the other person by understanding his perception of you as a threat and working around it.

I welcome your comments.