Practices

When they are upset, move physically closer before you say anything.

Nearness often comforts before any words can, and asks nothing in return.

Anger and fear are not two separate weathers. They run through much of the same equipment in the body, which is why the two can feel almost identical from the inside.

Heat rising, breath going short, focus narrowing to one person: that is the same list you would give for the ten minutes before a hospital…

Keep one word ready for when the heat arrives: danger. Asking what feels dangerous here gives you something to answer instead of somebody to beat.

Answers are allowed to be small and unimpressive. Being seen as useless. Being talked over again. The value is in having a question short enough to…

When a conversation is getting hot, change the geometry. A step back, sitting down instead of standing, ending up side by side rather than face on, all of it lowers how much threat your body is taking in.

Somebody coming too close reads as a threat before a word has been said, and it runs both ways, so you are also the person standing too close to…

Your eyes flag a threatening shape before you have properly looked at it. By the time you are weighing up what is going on, the alarm has already gone off.

So the spike itself is not a decision, and there is no point arguing with it or feeling ashamed of it. What you can do is give the slower part of you…

The gap between your car and the one in front belongs to nobody at all, and still, somebody moving into it lands like a break-in.

Old territorial machinery is running on a stretch of road you do not own and will never see again. Seeing that clearly on the motorway makes it…

Being cornered is a trigger all by itself. If you want somebody to come down, hand back a little freedom: a clear way out of the room, a choice about where to sit, some say in when this gets talked about.

Watch how fast things escalate the moment a person cannot move, cannot leave, cannot decide anything. It is not stubbornness, it is an old alarm…

Let yourself be frightened. People who cannot stand the feeling tend to do something reckless to make it stop, and it is the recklessness that gets them hurt.

Old soldiers say the same thing about who survived: not the ones who felt nothing, but the ones who could admit they were terrified and stay careful…

When somebody's anger is filling the room, the bravest sentence available is usually the plainest one: you are frightening me right now.

It gives them a piece of information they almost never have, which is what they are actually doing to the person in front of them. It also puts…

Picture two parts of you. One is fast and jumpy and does not take arguments; the other thinks things through but needs a moment to wake up.

Under provocation the fast one is already talking, and reasoning with it goes nowhere. What works is buying the slow one time: step outside, get a…

Keep a line ready for the moment somebody tells you something you did not want to hear. Something like: I did not know that, I would have had to learn it sooner or later, and now I do.

Write your own version and learn it by heart, because nobody composes a generous thought while their face is hot. The aim is not to feel gracious. It…

Not every threat needs answering. A knock to your pride is not a danger to your safety, and it does not require a defence.

The test is short enough to run in the moment: if I do nothing here at all, what actually happens to me? Often the honest answer is that somebody…

Someone shouting at you is usually frightened of something, even when they look like the one in charge of the room.

It might be fear of being left, of being made a fool of, of losing something they cannot afford to lose. You will not always find out which, and you…

Never decide you are safe because the other person is scared. Frightened people are often the ones who go furthest.

Anger as fear is a useful way of understanding somebody and a useless safety assessment. If the voice is rising, if the space between you is closing,…