Anger

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transforming anger

Q: Anger is a strong emotion, a feeling. What role does anger play in the Nonviolent Communication process?

MR: The NVC process focuses attention on whether people's needs are being fulfilled, and if not, what can be done to fulfill these needs. It shows us how to express ourselves in a way that increases the likelihood that others will willingly contribute to our wellbeing. It also shows us how to receive the messages of others in a way that increases the likelihood that we will willingly contribute to their well-being.

When it comes to managing anger, the NVC process shows us how to use anger as an alarm, an alarm that tells us we are thinking in a way that is not likely to get our needs met, and is likely to get us involved in interactions with others that are not going to be very constructive for anybody.  Our training stresses that it is dangerous to think of anger as something to be repressed, or as something bad.  When we tend to identify anger as a result of something wrong with us, then our tendency is to want to repress it and not deal with anger.  That use of anger, to repress and deny it, often leads it to be expressed eventually in ways that can be very dangerous to ourselves and others.

The first three steps in managing our anger using the NVC process are internal:

• The identification of the stimulus for our anger, without confusing it with an evaluation or judgment,
• The identification of the internal image or judgment that is making us angry, and
• The transformation of this judgmental image into the need that it is expressing. In other words, bringing our full attention to the need, which is behind the judgment.

These three steps are done internally. We are not saying anything out loud. We are simply becoming aware that our anger is not caused by what the other person has done, but by the judgment, and then we are looking for the need behind the judgment.

Now, the fourth step involves what we would actually say out loud to the other person after we have made this transformation. The transformation I am referring to is transforming the anger into other feelings by getting in touch with the need behind the judgment creating the anger.

The fourth step involves now saying to the other person four pieces of information. First, we reveal to them the stimulus, what they have done, in other words, that is in conflict with our needs being fulfilled. Secondly we express how we are feeling. Now we are no longer angry because the anger has been transformed into other feelings. Notice we are not repressing the anger. The anger has been transformed into a feeling such as sad, hurt, scared, frustrated, or the like.

And we then follow up our expression of our feelings with the needs of ours that are not being fulfilled. And now we add to those three pieces of information a clear, present request of what we want from the other person in relationship to our feelings and unmet needs.

© PuddleDancer Press 2003

"What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but never the cause."
-Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.