Tag Archives: Anger

Parents, when you fight with your partner, what do you tell the kids?

Posted on October 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

Parents do you go and talk to your kids after they hear or see you fight and talk to them about how it was for them to have been in this experience? Do you help them with identifying their feelings and sharing what needs they had in the moments of the fight?

Do you try to tell them what the fight was about and get them to pick sides or do you tell them truthfully what you are feeling about them experiencing the fight with you? Such as regret and sadness that you didn’t met their needs for safety? Once you and the child connect to theirs and your needs about the fighting experience you simply might say that you and partner had needs that were not being met and that the frustration came out in the behavior that was demonstrated. Do children need to know adults stories or do they simply need to know you care about them and that it is normal to have frustration? What’s important might be how you model the process of dealing with the frustration and not the frustration itself. Be truthful about the behavior scaring you if in fact it did and begin teaching them the feelings that go with different behaviors without making the behaviors threatening. Normalizing the behavior through the process of coming to understand it begins to defuse the level of fear attached to it and its power, opening the door to future mediation skills in moments they may face anger.

Turn these moments into teachable experiences and explore it and not feed the fear.

Views of Anger from different vantage points

Posted on October 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

In a group dialogue I listened to a secondhand viewpoint on anger from someone who had attended a workshop. This view was that anger could be focused in a way that wasn’t from a source of ego, yet simply to cut through it (ego).

Reflecting, I had memories of reading this message in Rinpoches dharma teachings and witnessing this skillfully in action, by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, and experiencing it unskillfully from another teacher.

The person sharing in our current group seems to attracted to this topic and that it was relevant to her in the general topic we had been asked to discuss. This filled me with curiosity on how to marry these two together.

Coming back, what about anger? I shared above how one person used skillful means in the process of cutting through the anger with no ego and one who had not achieved this skill, yet thought they had. I believe the difference in these two experiences is that one person had the skills of empathetic listening (of themselves and for others) and one did not. The second person carried an authority of knowing something and was not interested in others perspectives. My experiences was their only interest was being their teacher. Both these teachers had their own journey of experiencing and learning therefore, in my opinion, neither were right or wrong. It was simply them!

What is the key to healthy anger? The hint in the last paragraph – empathetic listening! My perspective is that developing the ability to listen to your anger and go through it’s protective layer to what is alive underneath will release the current charge or grip of it.

The beauty of it is this experience is can become a new skill to resolve anger issues of the past and for new issues. You may even begin to recognize that you are NOT triggered by the same old events.

Another key lesson is soon as you are honest with yourself and accept your anger without judgement it becomes the basic skill for hearing anger in others with deepened empathy!

I understand anger as being an emotion to notice some action needs to be taken. Anger, therefore in this sense, is the protective use of force. An example could be a child crossing the street. It is anger that will increase adrenalin and provide the force to get there in time and out of harms way!

I wonder if skillful use of anger without ego then is anger without being attached to an outcome and therefore it is spontaneous (not a result of old issues and aggression. A flash in the frying pan action, if you will, that will release the tension of the moment and result in a healthier outcome when combined with the right techniques to process and move forward with mutuality of all sides!

‘Empathy and our Brain’

Posted on October 28, 2010 | 2 comments

by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning

Empathy can transform reactions at the core conception that forms a cognitive perspective. An example of a shift is a change in feelings of shame, anxiety, or irritation into feelings of understanding, patience and regret.

Responses to outside stimulus are based upon left- brain or right-brain dominance

When the brain is triggered beyond windows of tolerance, the response is fight, flight and freeze

Some of the physical, mental and emotional experiences when going beyond our windows of tolerance could be:

discomfort, distraction, confusion

Some cognitive reactions when we’ve gone beyond our limits of tolerance could be:

denying responsibility, advising, diagnosing, educating, making demands and moral judgments, blaming and comparing

Some short-term emotions could be:

anger, fear, yelling, violence, slamming doors, hanging up, leaving

Some long-term reactions:

overwhelmed, mortification, terror, dissociation, numbing, going into a trance, leaving your body, going deeply into confusion, being unable to feel your body, shame, not caring what happens to you

Read more on: Physical reactions and the reactions of the left and right hemispheres, to the stimulus of gossiping, sniping, criticizing, moral superiority and logic.

Cultivating effective empathic responses can be learned and experienced mentally, emotionally and physically

Ways of learning and integrating empathetic responses are:

Awareness through Communication
- Values & Empathy integration in communication transforms disconnection into connection
Awareness through Movement
- Learned posture responses mimic tolerance or lack of tolerance, translating into unconscious behaviours
Awareness through Environment
- Cultural patterns create habitual or, lack of tolerance behaviours
Awareness through Eating
- Brain, body, emotional and cognitive function response to food and drink consumed