Response-able

March 13, 2010 at 11:45 pm · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: conflict.imcr.anger, response-able

As a conflict mediator at the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution in South Bronx, New York, I was subject to professional development trainings.  At one such training, the director of the conflict Mediation center, Titus Rich, gave a speech about anger management.  Mr. Titus Rich stated that anger is a natural emotion that should not be eliminated.  Anger helps us gauge our feelings, communicate with others, encourage progress, and protect the individual, among other factors.  Mr. Rich argued that the best way to manage anger is to realize that humans are response-able.  Response-able refers to the power to decide how and if one will react to external stimuli.  While the amount of time one has to make this decision is approximately one fifth of a millisecond, the choice exists.  One has the power to decide whether an event is important enough to take control of his/her being.  An effective way of harnessing this control, Titus insisted, is by prioritizing interests.  For example, does someone removing your clothes from the washing machine before you are able to remove them really affect your well-being? Does someone not saying thank you really affect your sense of self or retard your ability to express empathy to another being on another occasion?  From the perspective of an individual whose supreme interest is survival, does this act threaten your existence or ability to grow?  You may practice prioritizing your response to stimuli and regaining or strengthening your sense of power over self by using a scale numbered from 0 -5 to shift your responses.  Zero can represent completely insignificant and five can represent “village pacification.

Another way of sharpening your response to stimuli is through your pattern of perception.  Practice developing a more optimistic perspective of life and your place in the world.  How do you habitually explain bad events? Do you perceive them as being your fault or the cause of a temporary circumstance?  Does your life completely fall apart when one aspect of it unravels?  In his text, “Learned Optimism,” Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., insists that people learn helpless and that it stems from the way the person perceives his/her problems.  If after being downsized from your job you return to your new (now, super expensive) apartment and discover that it has been robbed, don’t view yourself as being cursed with bad luck.  Instead, compartmentalize the loss of the job and material items as a temporary loss.  You may say to yourself, “Right now the country is experiencing a bad economy, so jobs are laying folks off and some people are responding to it by seeking ‘five finger discounts’.”  Then, stop connecting this incident with the bad treatment you received as a child or in your past relationship.  Limit it to the moment and recognize that something really fulfilling can and will come your way as you always attract good luck, your rivals are inept, and you are talented.  Also, it may help to put your experience in perspective by thinking of others in worse situations, like those in Haiti and Chile who have recently lost even the roof over their head due to a natural disaster.  Removing focus from yourself (your fault, your loss, your bad luck) will boost your height and allow for a better view of remaining options that you might have overlooked, before.  Becoming aware of your explanatory style and actively working to alter it, if it doesn’t serve your best interests, is a powerful tool for change, including a more fulfilling internal and external life.

You may increase your personal power by alienating experiences instead of grouping them together.  If you become extremely angry at someone for judging you, most likely it is because you coupled that one event with the many times that others have judged you in the past and the ill way in which those experiences affected your sense of self.  Going back to the laundry mat, what if instead of interpreting this person’s decision to remove your clothing from the wash as an act of disrespect (because other people have done that to you in the past and you are tired of folks thinking that they can make decisions on your behalf without consulting you first), you decide to introduce yourself to him/her, tell him/her that you are busy and value time, too, and that next time he/she finds your clothing in the machine, you welcome him/her to verbally inform you.  When we do not alienate acts and, instead, associate each with past acts, we aggrandize them; implicit in this act is transference of power from the individual to the issue.  This may explain a phenomenon of experiencing heightened anger, instead of a lower or unaffected emotional state, each time you have the same experience.

Anger is a symptom of a conglomerate of factors, some connected and some disconnected.  Within the context of this paragraph, anger is a symptom of our perception of someone else’s intentions.  One way to decrease anger intensity is to reshape the model used to interpret others’.  Instead of ruining your relationships with insulting feedback, physical or emotional violence, or the “guilt treatment,” why not decide to interpret the reactions of others through the nonviolent technique of O.F.N.R., which is becoming aware of your observations (without judgement), your feelings about that which you sense, stating your needs as it relates to your observations, and making a request that you believe will make you feel better and improve your relationship.  Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., father of Nonviolent Communication, esposes this technique.  Rosenberg argues that understanding one’s feelings and that of others creates a space for understanding and connection with others, which increases the possibility for collaborative relationships.  Nonviolent communication serves as a source of light to help individuals recognize and verbalize thier needs. 

Conflict and anger are necessary in order for progress to occur.  Be encouraged; do not render your power to external stimuli as every problem has a solution.  Solutions and problems are interdependent; an issue only becomes a problem if there is an awareness of an alternative.  If there is no alternative, then it is almost impossible to view the experience as a problem.  Evaluate your needs and the resources available and needed to meet those needs in a non-judgmental manner.   Do your best not to confuse having a lack of attractive alternatives with a scarcity of solutions.  Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is the decision surrender to the fact that while you do not control external factors, you are response-able and armed with many tactics to harness your strength, grow relationships, meet your needs, and affect positive change. 

Sources:
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, by Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Titus Rich, Director of the Institute of Mediation & Conflict Resolution
My personal life experiences and experience as a conflict mediator in the South Bronx

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