64
Days for Peace
Peace Training
Week
Eight - Understanding
and Expressing Anger
Thoughts and Intentions for the Week
The study of anger through the NVC perspective encourages us to use our skills in understanding and responding to intense emotions in ourselves and others on a new level. Because anger is emotional, intellectual and physical, it creates some of our greatest challenges when it comes to "living" NVC. Because of the time constraints created by the practice group, we will not intentionally be working with intense situations. The process of understanding and acting on our anger can be time consuming (and doesn't work as well rushed). Because of this, we will be working with hypothetical anger or with less stimulating situations where the level of feeling is more in the "annoyed" zone as opposed to "angry."
Optional Preparation
- Read chapter 10 in Marshall
Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication, a Language for Life"
-
Write down three or four situations where you got angry
(homework from last week).
Reading and Discussion
Stimulus,
Cause and Anger Management
by Thom Bond
Even when we've heard it before... “People don’t make us angry, how we think makes us
angry” it can be hard to wrap our brains around these words.
What is meant to be remembered through this quote is that when we are stimulated, in other
words when there’s something bothering us, when we’re upset, that comes
from a combination of two things happening. First, something’s
stimulating us (something that happened or that somebody said or did). It could be something
like somebody cutting you off on the road or driving in front of you on
the highway or something like missing an elevator by two seconds.
The other thing that's happening is that, we are holding a judgment about
that event (right/wrong, should/shouldn't).
In the concept of "stimulus v. cause" the elevator
didn’t make you angry, the elevator didn’t make you frustrated.
You made yourself frustrated; the elevator was just the stimulus. This is a hard concept for a lot of people so I’d like to
demonstrate it with two versions of the same story to look at it as a way of
really getting clarity around this.
So let’s suppose that I had planned to have a friend over for dinner and it
was a very special dinner and we were suppose to start dinner at 8:00 sharp
and I made a big deal about it, that it was going to be 8:00 sharp because
we’re having soufflé and it was really just going to be this amazing
gourmet meal so I get home from work at quarter to six and I start to
work on the meal and I get everything set up perfectly for 8:00. The candles are lit, the
soufflé is perfect I’m just sitting there waiting for that doorbell to ring
and nothing. And so 15 minutes
goes by nothing. 30 minutes,
nothing. 45 minutes the doorbell rings. It’s
8:45, my soufflé has fallen and so I’m at my wits end and my friend shows
up at the door. So did he make me
angry by coming 45 minutes late? So
to get the answer to that question let’s try another version.
I’m
on my way home from work and I get stuck in the subway for an hour and I
don’t end up getting home until 7:30 and my ice cream melted so I had to buy
more and I ended up not even getting into the house until 8:00.
Then I spent the whole time preparing dinner like a manic waiting for
the bell to ring or anticipating the doorbell ringing and moving like crazy
just getting everything ready by 8:45. Ding
dong, the doorbell rings and it’s my friend 45 minutes late and I have the
greatest sense of relief that I could ever imagine because he was 45 minutes
late.
So if he mad me angry in the first time and he didn’t make me angry in the
second time, What did he do differently?
He did the exact same thing. So
that makes him the stimulus, in other words, he’s doing what he's doing and
I'm reacting based on whether or not my needs are being met. Because of
this, I can think of my needs being the cause.
That’s really the bottom line. This
is not to say that we couldn’t argue about this forever, but let’s just
think of it this way… Why? The
advantage thinking about this this way is that if I am the cause then I am at
choice. In other words, if he’s
making me angry I’m in trouble because I have no choice. If it’s how I’m thinking about it that’s making me
angry, then if I’d like to
think about it some other way I have choice.
So when I say we have choice… well, what’s our choice?
Our choice is that we can think about either judging (or what the
persons doing wrong or blaming or what the other things we’ve been taught to
do) or we can think about what needs of ours we would really like to have met
and focus on having that happen without the judgment and blame. Is the
judgment true? Is somebody rude?
Can people be rude? Can people be
bossy? Is that true?
Is that really true? I
don’t know if it’s true or not? I
know that thinking with my judgments in the front of my mind is less likely to get me to having my needs
considered and met.
I like the way Marshall put it... "I strongly believe that to the
degree I support the consciousness that there is such a thing as a
"careless action," "conscientious action, a "greedy
person," or a "moral person," I am contributing to violence on
this planet."
Being the cause points us to choice as to how we want to think. Do we want to think about judgment or do we want to think about the need that is causing the judgment?
Discussion Questions
1) Feedback about homework #3 - Situations where you got angry. Identify judgments? Identify Needs?
2) What do we mean when we say "people don't make me angry, how I think makes me angry."?
3) What is the relationship of
anger to judgment?
4) What is the best thing to say when I'm angry?
5) Why is anger the hardest
emotion for most of us to control?
Exercise
#1 - The Anger Process
This is a template for using NVC in situations where you notice
you are angry. This utilizes several skills you have been developing over
the past weeks, such as identifying judgments, and feelings and associating them
with needs. The process as outlined, could take minutes, hours or days
depending on circumstances. It is not designed to be done in any
particular time frame, however the order of steps is very important. For
tonight, it is recommended that we work on the level of "annoyance"
not full blown anger. Because of the time restrictions of a practice
group, it is not recommended that participants work with very stimulating
situations. This exercise can be done in diads with your partner as
support. Work with an observation or a judgment where you are stimulated,
write it down and go through the process. Switch. Repeat.
Step 1 - Notice. Are you tense? Are you thinking someone should or shouldn't be doing something? Are you feeling agitated and uneasy? Do you need something?
Step 2 - Stop, shhh, quiet. Still Angry? Don't speak.
Step 3 - Make Space - Excuse yourself, run!
Step 4 - Identify my moralistic or should/shouldn't thinking. (Get empathy support if necessary/possible)
Step 5 - Identify underlying feelings such as agitation, fear, frustration (Get empathy support if necessary/possible)
Step 6 - Identify and connect to your unmet needs (Get empathy support if necessary/possible)
Step 7 - Think of requests you can make of yourself or others.
Harvest.
Exercise
#2 - Screaming in Giraffe
Many of us, when first learning NVC wonder if we will ever have the satisfaction of screaming at someone again. Well... close, we can scream TO them. In this exercise we will practice what we call "Screaming in Giraffe." When we scream in giraffe we express ALL our pain, discomfort, sadness or whatever! And yes we can be energetic, enrolled and emphatic. The only difference is that we will channel the energy that we usually use up in firing judgments, to fuel our expression of our unmet needs. This is fun, challenging, empowering and freeing.
An example might be " I'm really hurting here!! I'm going out of my mind! I'm at my wits end! I need a Break!!!
Try to channel your intensity without channeling judgment. It can be tricky. Practice, Practice.
Harvest.
Exercise #3 - Empathy Circle Part IV (optional)
KEYS:
a. NVC empathy is a process of discovering
feelings and needs. “Accuracy”
is not necessary for empathy to take place. If the person does not connect with
our guess, he or she will let us know and we can then make another guess based
on this new information.
b. Keep yourself out of the empathy guess, making sure to connect the
person’s feelings to his or her own
needs, not to you, even when their feelings seem very much about
you. Example: Instead of saying: “Are you frustrated at me because you want me
to understand you?” you could say: “Are you frustrated because you’re
needing understanding?” Keeping yourself out of the empathy guess will help
both of you to remain clear about the source of feelings and give you more room
to hear those feelings without either “defending” yourself or
“attacking” the other person.
This exercise is designed for Diads. In this exercise have your partner tell you about what they liked and didn't like about the 64 Days For Peace practice group over the past nine weeks. Give them empathy and identify the needs met and not met. Think of Requests you could make of yourself or others that you think would contribute to that need being considered or met. After 5 - 10 minutes switch and repeat.
Homework
1) Find an "empathy buddy" and exchange 30 minutes each of empathy sometime this coming week.
2)
Go through your notes and write down anything you want clarity about.
3) Bring
a candle next week (optional).
For more information call (646) 201-9226 or email to 64days@nycnvc.org.