Be aware that anger makes you wrong
The Corona crisis is used to focus on a turning point in one’s own life in order to effect major personal change. Times of crisis are after all opportunities for taking those steps in the change process that are commonly seen as cumbersome, tricky to manage and difficult to grasp. From a sociological viewpoint, crises also bring things that have become buried to the surface, i.e. subconscious matters become more apparent, including a great deal of underlying anger and other forms of contempt. We use this fact to work with the topic of anger. At the same time, there’s a need to embrace positivity, an important factor in the period after the global crisis. Being positive and constructive is only ever a conscious decision, which is why the LEADERSHIP Coaching workshop balances out the understandable negativity that currently exists with positivity. A natural counterbalance emerges.
What positive things have you discovered as a result of the crisis?
Irrespective of the direct consequences for you, the crisis period also saw change. Towns and cities were quiet for a while. The air smelt different, the noise from aeroplanes was silenced temporarily, harmful emissions dropped, the plant and animal world appeared to be instantly at ease, traffic noise receded into the background and working from home opened up new and different possibilities. You now see and use your home differently than before and you embrace your immediate environment more closely. You actively shape your environment and make it more agreeable to you. You have time for those domestic matters that are important to you. What positive consequences are you drawing from this global crisis? What are you changing for the long term and how are you contributing to the preservation of nature? How are you using this turning point in the world – as we currently know it – as an opportunity to shape a better one, using your own active input?
I commit myself to implementing the following changes to protect the environment:
0: I will consistently create and nurture a greener environment for myself with a range of hardy, insect-friendly perennials. I will plant trees and bring non-poisonous greenery – in the form of plants – into my home. I will set up insect hotels and/or provide stacks of dead wood. I will repurpose at least one lawn into a flowery meadow that will only be mown twice a year, at the start and end of it.
1: _____________________________
2: _____________________________
3: _____________________________
Suggestions for personal change work
Start by using the dynamic of the crisis, i.e. that buried matters are coming to the surface, to get to grips with a prevalent negative topic: how to deal with anger. This topic is rooted in the most common conflict around the world, the age-old conflict of roles, so it is arising on a mixed-gender basis in all unconscious interpersonal relationships.
Next, look and see which unintentionally positive impact of the crisis you like and is of benefit to the world around you. Support this positive element you’ve chosen. My tip: don’t limit yourself to just one positive action but select at least three options, since negativity becomes more powerful in times of crisis.
Dealing with your own and others’ anger
Anger bundles everything together. It is a destructive force when subconscious, but with increasing awareness it becomes the positive force you need to effect long-term change. So there exists, within anger, a transformative force that can be used positively and proactively. My following prologues on ‘the angry person’ and ‘the prey’ will bring you closer to the corrosive spirit of anger in its destructive state.
Who are you when you're angry?
When you’re angry, you’re 100% in the wrong.
Irritated and angry, you’re 100%, i.e. completely, unjust.
Your anger is 100% violence.
Even true words become unjust and therefore wrong, as you’re expressing them through irritation and anger:
the state you’re in is forcing the truth using violence and the threat of it.
How does anger affect your behaviour?
- You twist the words of your target person
- You block closeness and affectionate interaction
- You blame
- You threaten and tyrannise the other person
- You’re very aggressive and therefore dangerous
- You hound the other person
- You provoke until you explode.
Behaving this way, you’re putting the other person’s life at risk.
You then make the other person responsible for your anger and thereby seek to justify your unjustness.
Your anger causes damage,
- destroying loving relationships and
- destroying trust in you.
Your anger gradually makes the other person sick
- wearing them down,
- tearing them apart,
- tormenting and degrading them.
Anke Sommer
Words for the Prey
Don’t speak with the angry person.
Don’t accept anything that the angry person may say about you.
If the angry person is your life partner, your friend, your colleague, your boss, your father, your mother or your psychological parent, then
- put your personal relationship with this person at a safe distance when they’re angry,
- don’t talk or discuss with this person during their bout of anger,
- put justification to one side and switch off your false defence mode,
- don’t enter into a discussion with this person,
- don’t try to explain and defend yourself, since
- the angry person is NO LONGER the person you know, i.e.
- no longer the person you’re in a relationship with.
Manage the situation by
- staying calm,
- recognising the danger to your body and soul,
- switching to your self-preservation mode, and
- removing yourself from the situation as quickly as possible.
Recognise that anger has an attraction factor and that the longer you expose yourself to it the more
- your mind clouds over,
- your body cells get damaged,
- your safety is at risk.
Anke Sommer
What do we do in the workshop?
- We develop a systemically relevant and thus long-term positive counterbalance to the negativity that has increased as a result of the crisis.
- We bring the angry person and their prey together and balance out the forces at play.
- You learn how to manage anger from both sides, i.e. from the perspective of both the angry person and the prey.
- We look at what’s behind these perspectives as well as the systemic correlations.
- You learn how to implement what you’ve learnt in your professional and private life.
Design and composition: Canva
Systemic Conflict Management
Power, (self-)management and growth