Ch. 10 Expressing Anger Fully 

Chapter 10 – Expressing Anger Fully, page 141.

• The expression of anger clearly demonstrates the difference between NVC and other forms of communication. 
• I would like to suggest that hitting, blaming, and hurting others – whether physically or emotionally – are all superficial expressions of what is going on within us when we are angry. 
• If we are truly angry, we would want a much more powerful way to fully express ourselves. 
• This understanding comes as a relief to many who want to increase their power to effect change. 
• This process does not encourage us to ignore, squash, or swallow anger, but rather to express the core of our anger fully and wholeheartedly. 

Distinguishing Stimulus From Cause 

• The first step to fully expressing anger in NVC is to divorce the other person from any responsibility for our anger. 
• We are never angry because of what others say or do. 
• We can identify the other person’s behavior as the stimulus, but it is important to establish a clear separation between stimulus and cause. 
• The first step in the process of fully expressing our anger is to realize that what other people do is never the cause of how we feel. 
• So what is the cause of anger? 
• The cause of anger lies in our own thinking – in thoughts of blame and judgment. 
• It is not the behavior of the other person but our own need that causes our feeling. 
• When we are connected to our need we are in touch with our life energy. We may have strong feelings, but we are never angry. 
• Anger is a result of life-alienating thinking that is disconnected from needs. It indicates that we have moved up to our heads to analyze and judge somebody rather than focusing on which of our needs are not getting met. 

All Anger Has a Life-Serving Core 

• I see all anger as a result of life-alienating, violence-provoking thinking. 
• At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled. 
• Thus anger can be valuable if we use it as an alarm clock to wake us up – to realize we have a need that isn’t being met and that we are thinking in a way that is unlikely to be met. 
• To fully express anger requires full consciousness of our needs. 
• In addition, energy is required to get the needs met. 
• Anger, however, co-opts our energy by directing it toward punishing people rather than meeting our needs. 
• Instead of engaging in “righteous indignation,” I recommend connecting empathetically with our own needs or those of others. 
• This may take extensive practice, whereby over and over again, we consciously replace the phrase “I am angry because they…” with “I am angry because I am needing…” 
• All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently, those people deserve to be punished. 
• I would like to suggest that when our heads are filled with judgments and analyses that others are bad, greedy, irresponsible, lying, cheating, polluting the environment, valuing profit more than life, or behaving in other ways they shouldn’t, very few of them will be interested in our needs. 
• We may be successful in using such judgments to intimidate people into meeting our needs. 
• If they feel so frightened, guilty, or ashamed that they change their behavior, we may come to believe that it is possible to “win” by telling people what’s wrong with them. 
• With a broader perspective, however, we realize that each time our needs are met in this way, we not only lose, but we have contributed very tangibly to violence on the planet. 
• We may have solved an immediate problem, but we have created another one. 
• The more people hear blame or judgment, the more defensive and aggressive they become and the less they will care about our needs in the future. 

Four Steps to Express Anger 

• Let’s look at what the process of fully expressing our anger requires in concrete form:
  • Stop. Breathe.
    • The first step is to stop and do nothing except breathe. 
    • Refrain from making any move to blame or punish the other person. 
    • Simply stay quiet. 
  • Identify Your Judgmental Thoughts
    • Then we identify the thoughts that are making us angry. 
    • We sense anger, stop, and recognize the thoughts stirring in our heads. 
• Connect With Your Needs 
  • We know that all judgments are tragic expressions of unmet needs, so we take the next step and connect to the needs behind those thoughts. 
• Express Your Feeling and Unmet Needs
  • To fully express ourselves, we now open our mouth and speak the anger – but the anger has been transformed into needs and need-connected feelings. 

Offering Empathy First 

• In most cases, however, another step needs to take place before we can expect the other party to connect with what is going on in us. 
• Because it will often be difficult for others to receive our feelings and needs in such situations, if we want them to hear us we would need first to empathize with them. 
• The more we empathize with what leads them to behave in ways that are not meeting our needs, the more likely it is that they will be able to reciprocate afterward. 
• The more we hear them, the more they’ll hear us. 
• When we hear another person’s feelings and needs, we recognize our common humanity. 

Taking Our Time 

• Probably the most important part of learning how to live the process we’ve been discussing is to take our time. 
• We may feel awkward deviating from the habitual behaviors that our conditioning has rendered automatic, but if we intend to consciously live life in harmony with our values, then we’ll want to take our time. 
• For those of you wishing to apply NVC, especially in challenging situations of anger, I would suggest the following exercise:
  • List the judgments that float most frequently in your head. 
  • Collect all the negative judgments in your head and then ask yourself, “When I make that judgment of a person, what am I needing and not getting?” 
  • In this way, you train yourself to frame your thinking in terms of unmet needs rather than in terms of judgments of other people. 
• To practice NVC, we need to proceed slowly, think carefully before we speak, and often just take a deep breath and not speak at all. 
• Learning the process and applying it both take time. 

Summary 

• Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger. 
• If we wish to fully express anger, the first step is to divorce the other person from any responsibility for our anger 
• Instead, we shine the light of consciousness on our own feelings and needs. 
• By expressing our needs, we are far more likely to get them met than by judging, blaming, or punishing others. 
• The four steps to expressing anger are
  • Step 1: Stop and breathe 
  • Step 2: Identify our judgmental thoughts 
  • Step 3: Connect with our needs 
  • Step 4: Express our feelings and unmet needs 
  • Pro Tip: Sometimes, in between steps 3 and 4, we may choose to empathize with the other person so that he or she will be better able to hear us when we express ourselves in step 4.