Dealing with anger and aggression
Pema Chodron, a well known Buddhist teacher, is one of my favourite teachers on facilitation practice. She has enhanced my understanding of dealing with tricky situations and scary places with practices, advice and stories which are beautifully rendered.
In this article, “The Answer to Anger and Agression is Patience” she writes about her own struggle to cultivate a practice of patience as the antidote to anger and aggression:
Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it, but it also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting. You let the words go and just be there.
This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to the de-escalation of aggression and the cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage. You will really get to know anger and how it breeds violent words and actions. You will see the whole thing without acting it out. When you practice patience, you’re not repressing anger, you’re just sitting there with it–going cold turkey with the aggression. As a result, you really get to know the energy of anger and you also get to know where it leads, even without going there. You’ve expressed your anger so many times, you know where it will lead. The desire to say something mean, to gossip or slander, to complain–to just somehow get rid of that aggression–is like a tidal wave. But you realize that such actions don’t get rid of the aggression; they escalate it. So instead you’re patient, patient with yourself.
In situations where groups are in conflict, it is pointless to pretend that there isn’t anger and aggression in the room. The presence of this anger and aggression calls for this radical honesty and trust in what is real, and it means being very grounded as you approach what is there and give it your attention. There are few things scarier for a facilitator than leading a group towards the honest appreciation of the true anger and emotions in the room. If you are unable to stand in the fire, exhibiting patience to be there fully yourself, you will not be able to invite others to join you there. The shakier you are, the more afraid everyone else will be.
The challenge is to remain of service to a group of people for whom an honest relationship with what is real is important. Remaining of service means being able to address the anger and aggression honestly, without judging it, which only adds to it. If you think anger is wrong, you won’t be able to be a peacemaker. If you think anger is true, you can go there.
This is a fundamental skill needed in the world right now, on all levels. Think about how you deal with confrontations in your work environment, in your family or in your community. Do you shy away from the anger, or do you let it overwhelm you and do you take a position?
Imagine you were called to facilitate a ceasefire in the Israel – Lebanon conflict. Could you do that? Who do you know in the world that has the capacity to do this? If the answer is no one, what do you think it would take for you to become that person? Trust me, if you are that person, the world needs you right now.
Cultivating patience cultivates peacemaking.
Thanks to my blogless life partner Caitlin Frost for the link.
[tags]pema chodron, patience, peacemaking, peace[/tags]
I so agree with you…and I think one of the things that helps me when I’m working with this kind of emotion is to be honest about my own anger and frustration with clients. Unless we as consultants and facilitators can connect with, manage and process our own shadow side then we’re going to be of poor service to those who seek our help.
Yes…helping requires us to transcend. That does not mean somehow being unhuman, but rather being fully human…able to have these emotions AND transcend them.
A beautiful, inspirational, and practical post. Thank you.
You’re welcome, Tina.
Beautiful post. Thank you for this.
A friend commented to me one time that there is a difference between anger and rage. Anger, she said, contains some core personal truth, often not yet expressed. The anger burns away everything until the expression is there. Rage, by comparison, is about helplessness and powerlessness. No amount of expression will lead to more than the sense of that powerlessness at the core. In working with groups it’s been helpful for me to draw out the distinction consciously so that the “truths” and the feelings of powerlessness don’t get mixed up with one another. The other lesson with angry groups has been setting the ground rule that “only one person gets angry at a time,” which means the rest of us listen.
Dan…thanks for the comment. For me – and this is the reason I like Pema’s work here – it’s the difference between the energy of the emotion and the content. Both are true. It seems pointless to me in most cases to set a rule that says that only one person can be angry at a time becuase to me that would deny the truth in the room, and dealing with a room full of anger means that I want as much truth in there as possible. Only be truthfully seeing what we have will we be able to get ourselves out of it. It’s hard work. It’s areally fucking hard work, if you’ll pardon the expression. And it takes tremendous courage to stay in there.
However, I agree with you that having a listening piece is critical in these circumstances because it allows us to seperate the truth of the energy of the emotion from the truth of the content. When we can cultivate this capacity, people are better able to express needs in a way that is useful to others, and the others are finally able to hear needs for what they are: true human needs. It makes it easier for others to meet those needs and that way lies peace.
In rooms where there is much anger, there may be many things to be angry about, and talking one at a time slows the process down to allow things to burn and stew and be considered deliberately. In your friend’s terms, it helps mellow the rage into workable anger.
If I was in a group that could not abide by this rule, I might suggest that inhstead of one at a time, we pair up and take turns to express the angry feelings to a partner, so at least the catharsis can begin. That way the rage might disspate and a circle of speakers and listners might better find it’s ground.
And then sometimes, no amount of rule setting from a facilitator will do the trick and people just have to yell and shout and scream until they have no more energy for that. And when they tire themselves out, I am always there with a question: “is there a better way we want to be?” So far, in my experience, the answer is usually “yes.”
Chris
It sounds to me like you’ve really been in the fire. I believe a critical piece is holding a container for people that helps them not escape their emotions and also take responsibiity for them. The very first retreat I ever facilitated began with a participant wanting to know if things “got out of hand, like there’s a fist fight,” would I try to physically intervene myself! I think my answer at the time was something like, “Hey, if you all are gonna take each other on that way, I’m outta here!” And maybe, though it’s all too easy to rewrite experiences long in the past, I also encouraged the group to be responsible for their own outcomes, and that was one they could choose, though it might not be terribly useful to them.
I’m personally not a big fan of let ’em yell until they are spent because it can cause such damage and shutdown and sometimes retaliation later, and yet there are also times when I wouldn’t want to abridge the expression of the emotions and content that surface when people absolutely need to be open, must clear the air, must see one another more accurately in order to get through it.
It is definitely very hard work and to me openess is never the problem; it is all the stuff that has been held and boiled inside, that turns into people who are just burning. To me an effective environment would be one in which people can see, feel, touch, experience their own and others’ burning, but they also can hold that energy enough not to feel deep regret or guilt later about what was said or done, which in my experience has been a problem where burning has turned into group meltdown. The goal to me always has to be learning of some kind. And that’s the question I ask when angry exchanges have gone on for awhile — as you asked your exceptional question about better ways to be — I ask, “What are we learning here from this experience right now?” and similarly that can begin a subtle shift toward renewal.
Thank you for opening up this whole aspect of facilitative work, Chris. It deeply needs attention.
Great comments Dan.
My first retreat experience was very much like yours as well.
I operate on the Open Space principle of passion bounded by responsibility. If someone is ranting for a while in a meeting, my curiosity is piqued and my first question back to them, after acknowledging their frustration and anger, is to ask them what they are suggesting we need to do about the situation. In the vast majority of cases (the one exception being a guy who was tanked the whole meeting, and couldn’t even be silenced by his friends) people respond to this call for responsibility with some ideas that at least create invitational fodder for others.
Passion unbound by responsibility is a rant. Asking someone “what would you like to do about this?” changes everything. And if the person says “nothing” then there is really not much that can be done.
I don;t like it when people rant and rant. I get uncomfortable and I begin thinking that the group must think I’m a bad facilitator. But my first step in making that experience a useful one is to get ahold of these stories and make sure that they aren’t clouding my listening and curiosity about the anger in the room. I don’t shut people down – that contributes to the energy of the room, but I will sometimes stop th emeeting and ask this great question: “what do we learn from this? What has this exchange say about how we want to be together?”
I believe if a conflicted group is talking to one another, there is at least an unstated aspiration for them to be in a better place with each other. Appealing to this aspiration for peace has done wonders for helping people to focus on the benefits of dialogue.
My message to groups on the edge of violence is: If they want to fight, the meeting room isn’t the space for that. Head outside and duke it out if that’s how you feel it will get resolved. That’s not the work I do.
When you’re ready to talk to one another about how you will live together now, give me a call. Maybe I can help.
Yes, the unstated aspiration is the key…again thanks. This is a topic worthy of a full-scale learning event…
Best to you
Pema is a favorite of mine too. I read her latest interview with Bill Moyers. She always has something for me to sit with. Fearlessness in patience…beautiful! Thanks for the post. I’ll check in again!
mr. borden sucks