De-escalating situations with empathy, assertion and respect.

There’s a predictable pattern of personal conflict escalation - something that starts out as a little argument quickly balloons into a fiery mess. The literature for mental health practitioners seems to suggest escalation until someone withdraws however is not inevitable. EAR (empathy, assertion, respect) is a mnemonic used by some of those mental health practitioners to de-escalate situations for therapeutic purposes and I intend to describe it here.

Firstly it’s important to understand why you might want to de-escalate a situation anyway: angry people are nearly entirely useless. Anger is an emotion to prepare people for physical confrontation - it's a counterbalance to fear and inaction. It seems we should start by reminding ourselves that confrontation is not the goal (and if it is, we should at least be deliberate about that). More likely is that you have something valuable to achieve together, or at least a chance to. The thing you're arguing about is always an approach to a problem, usually what you're aiming for is a negotiation on behaviors or identifying a best course of action to solve that problem.

Typically the reason people start to get angry is because they don’t think you understand. They might think you’re an idiot because they’re being super-rational and you simply won’t listen. Angry people are usually also stuck in transmit mode - they are unable to process what you are saying until they have confirmed their message is understood. It's all ego. This state applies to many situations whether people are verbalizing their frustration or not.

Many people try to speak louder and louder to be heard. You should try to listen deliberately instead. You are most likely as stuck in transmit mode as the other person is. When it’s ego v. ego like this, the whole conversation might as well be on rails with the outcome obvious. With repeated exposure and deliberate practice most of the time you can derail yourself however and the key is simply listening.

Empathy is a by-product of attention. Paying attention to what people are saying or implying is key to understanding what the other person is feeling. You don’t need to cross into sympathy and agree with them. Oftentimes, the other person really is wrong and agreeing with them reinforces their position.

Practically speaking you can achieve empathy by describing a person's position in ever increasing detail. For example:

It seems like you’re frustrated with this conversation. What do you think I’m missing?

…

So I’m missing <XYZ>. Anything else?

Many people look for a formula for these questions and there’s no shortage of blog posts proffering the perfect sentence structure but I think that’s a trap. The only way to reliably get there is to really, actually, truthfully care about what someone is saying. You’ll know when you’ve described someone’s situation well enough for them to feel heard because typically they’ll say “exactly” and/or the conversation will cool off considerably.

People have hardwired incongruence detectors and you will likely struggle to fool people - especially if you have repeated interactions with them. If you don’t care, simply tell them that you don’t care for their opinion right now. I’m sure that will be controversial to some but instead of considering delivering it, consider receiving it. It’s brutal but that level of honesty means they have remained congruent, truthful and predictable. That’s a better relationship to have than someone who agrees to listen only to smugly say things like “I know that you believe that” without displaying moral courage in disagreeing openly.

Paying attention and empathizing is the first part to de-escalation, but left purely to that people tend to begin exposing you to their stream of consciousness - soliloquying until they’ve spilled that unfocussed energy everywhere. Keeping the conversation on track can be done politely through making assertions (the A in EAR).

Assertion in this context is the art of decorating a description of the situation with your own thoughts and feelings. This is one time where you absolutely must not make objective statements like “you are wrong, here’s why..”. Implicit in assertions of right/wrong is a form of disrespect - you’re really saying “my opinion is closer to reality than your own”. That friction is what raises the temperature of a conversation - exactly what you’re trying to avoid.

It’s improving discourse to assert your own opinions however:

It seems the plan hinges on good timing - I don’t see a way to achieve that

I feel like we are going around in loops, can you restate where it seems we agree and don’t?

I don’t think kicking the door open is going to be that easy

When you’re stating your opinions, thoughts or feelings you are not making a claim about the problem or reality. You're describing your position only. Argument is often used by people to try to force their view of reality onto you when they feel you won’t listen, and in only stating your opinions, thoughts or feelings, there’s simply nothing for them to press against.

Gradually though listening and repeating (empathy) and sharing your position (assertion) what starts as a personal attack response becomes a shared and separate problem you can solve together. Counter-intuitively you don’t need to agree about anything to diffuse a situation, you’re just not fighting each other over it.

Respect is something you show by the way you conduct yourself throughout the discussion(s). It’s achieved by appreciating that your views on the world are not novel and that you both are missing information. This doesn’t mean you both have an equal chance of being “correct” or “speaking the truth” but it does mean there’s something to learn for each of you in the conversation. Why else would you risk arguing?