Practices

Working out what someone meant by hurting another person is a conversation for the person who did it. Said to the one who was harmed, they were not really trying to hurt you lands as being talked out of your own experience.

Anyone who has been on the receiving end of violence has usually spent a long time being told it was not what it was. Even a kindly meant explanation…

You do not have to jump straight to understanding. Try the step before it: hands open, honestly puzzled, help me see what just happened here.

It has to be a real question. The rhetorical version, asked with your jaw set, makes things worse and both of you know it. Ask, then stay quiet long…

While the feeling is at full volume, no argument gets through, including a good one of your own. Settle the body first and talk afterwards.

Reasoning with someone at their peak, or with yourself, nearly always adds heat rather than sense. The order that works is calm, then conversation:…

In a bad moment your attention, your seeing and your remembering all narrow onto the threat. So your memory of the row is a partial recording, and so is theirs.

Worth holding on to before you go back over who said what. Neither of you is necessarily lying when the two accounts differ. Starting with here is…

When somebody says they were not scared, they just do not like being disrespected, take the dislike seriously. We dislike what threatens us, and that is why we avoid it.

The move keeps everyone's dignity intact. You are not telling a person they were frightened, you are pointing out that disliking something and being…

If somebody insists they were not afraid of the disrespect, agree with them. Good, because if there was nothing to fear then the words were safe, and safe things can be left alone.

Whichever way the answer goes it is useful. Either the fear is now on the table, or the disrespect has just been agreed to be harmless, and the next…

There is a difference between being afraid and being seen as afraid, and it is usually the second one people are defending. Worth asking which of the two is actually the problem.

Once somebody can say the trouble is what others would make of it, the whole reputational job anger has been doing comes into view. Often the belief…