10.24.2013 Training
OUR SIDE
Not about intimidation about integrity—when
we manifest this and dignity, we reduce the possibility of trouble. When we
control our space, we control situations. Giuliani’s “broken window” theory.
Social service agency redecorates its lobby, reduces incidents by 50% because
it doesn’t look like a place where rowdiness is permissible. You take care of
yourself, you’re respectable. People follow suit.
The Negative Stances
We create adversarial relationships
with the following:
Punitive Stance – Don’t be a
person who aggravates the situation.
Be firm when you need to. Frontload sanctions. Let people know where
they stand at first. Like telling people it’s a no-shoe or no-smoking house.
Following, we are kind, gentle, welcoming, and helpful. Tactfully remind people
of limits.
Patronizing Stance – Don’t
explain slowly, do the obvious. But also avoid acronyms. Don’t talk around
people with them. Most are afraid to interrupt, don’t want to look stupid by
asking what OCLC means.
Saccharine Stance – Person
comes in crisis. Don’t respond like the person’s a child. A strong person gets
mad. A weak person believes they’re weak, regresses. Throw tantrum either way.
People need assistance, not comfort. Babies need comfort. Help people
self-regulate so they don’t need us.
Intimidated Stance – We fool
ourselves into doing the wrong, easy thing. Violate professional ethics, we
teach people that it works. We rationalize. Can be someone we like; we get
played, anxiety at being disliked.
Burned-out Stance – Slow-motion PTSD. From a work environment that erodes a sense of self-respect and well-being. Brain grows to be a traumatized brain; we react to past ailments & abuses. Brain shuts down, emotional blunting. Burn-out is emotional blunting without the drama. When we treat someone like they’re not important, they will create the drama to be noticed. Lash out. A burned-out staff-member creates a more dangerous situation for everyone when they fail to assess emergency situations. You get so burned out, you no longer care for safety. Or can become provocative, “I hate this job, I’m going to make the job hate me.” Fix this by: Enlivening life outside of work. Put meaning to work.
Mercurial Stance – As a free
spirit, we let people know how we feel at any point in time. Supervisors can be
the touchstone of stability to help them through.
Enmeshed Stance – We ignore
more quiet people for the dramatic ones (see Mercurials above), focus on how
the relationship with one person is going. We must only think about
relationship in regards to the service you are charged to provide. 1-3% of our
population are sociopathic, and aim to create this relationship. They use our
best human qualities to manipulate us.
Leveling Stance – We become
client or employee’s friend. There is a power differential, if we pretend it’s
not there, we’re basing the relationship on a lie and there will be a nagging
problem with the person. When we have to lay down a sanction or set a limit,
person feels betrayed.
Bias Stance – Biological
norm; as animals, anything that is not part of our normal circle is
problematic. We can’t help it. But we need to be able to question bias. People
will either sink to our expectations or rise to our hopes. We shouldn’t judge.
We can trap people.
How do we ethically deal with a
staffer who exhibits any of the above?
On the Job / In the Moment We
can mitigate by doing their work and creating busy work. This is not ideal or
sustainable.
Talk to Them If someone is
harmful or unhelpful, we talk to them (if they can take it). Be respectful.
Talk to a Supervisor Do
something, doing nothing is the worst possible thing. Watch out for “the
ghost,” who disrupts team solidarity by using the restroom or working on
special projects, being invisible and disappearing at the moment of need.
A disorganized organization that
is not unified is more dangerous. Need unity of purpose, standards.
Interpersonal Space
If you’re too close, person will become agitated. Look for signs –
weight shifts, breathe less freely, shoulders hunch, the eyes stop dancing,
start to glaze; they don’t hear what you say. Think about your warning sign,
what your body physically does when threatened. This can help expose danger.
What does your body do when you’re being conned. Our “lizard brain” scans for
what threatens the DNA and what helps it survive. Doesn’t use words. Only
physical reaction/sensation, “gut feeling,” “pain in the neck,” etc. Like road
rage, you get the same feeling from blatant hostility. Don’t ignore your gut.
How Do You Live with Shame?
You eliminate self or person who did it. Neither. Pay attention. Street
smarts are trainable. Just pay attention to and emulate the Lizard, they are
naked and feel no shame.
Aggressors
They “interview” us for the future. Don’t
lose your temper – lose edge, flexibility, and strength. Borderline
Personality – someone becomes how they feel. Don’t get thrown off balance,
lose perspective, be like that. Don’t let people push the button of the things
we hate about ourselves. Also recognize what we like about ourselves, which can
be used against us. Vulnerability. Someone can ruin you for a month by saying
something. We tense up from surprise, the “startle reflex.” Noise does it too.
We let down our guard. Paranoia is bad, all-encompassing. Awareness is the goal
here.
Bracketing – Remind your brain
what your “buttons” are so you can roll with, rather than react to situations.
Be mindful, eliminate the startle reflex. Take an inventory of your buttons,
what undermines your integrity (things you hate about yourself, things you
treasure, behaviors that can throw you off balance, envy, your biases). Don’t
take it personally. Little things eat away, make us off-center, incapable to
respond to the bigger things, aggression. Little things add up; the worst
torture ever is the water drop on the forehead. Tears the nervous system up,
lacerates the mind.
Centering – the mind, body,
and spirit are braided. Physical change can affect the rest. Our “tightrope
walker” state – we can shift with the wind, in an emergency, we drop the pole,
hang on to the wire. *Circular breathing.
Inhale to belt, pause, exhale around and up back—or the reverse. Brain responds
to this image. Makes us more aware, more present. Spend some time every day on
this, also when you come home, helps detoxify from the day. Don’t bring
violence to your home. 2-3 min/day while driving. After a couple weeks, it
clicks, we feel a hum. Every stressful situation, practice it, so you’re ready
for it when an emergency presents itself. Demeanor will seem placid, buttons
can’t be pushed.
Go Slow – Social service agents
are often seen as sheep to the wolves. Kids & teens need to be big dog. Eye
contact comes slow. Familiarity also. Firm & fair. Breathing helps. Eyes
wide open.
THEIR SIDE
Manipulation – the “tension release cycle.” You can break it. Slow down, don’t respond. Force eye contact, take it away. Called the grooming cycle. Exercise: tense until can’t stand it, relax until can’t stand it. Helps to reorganize the mind. A little like tai chi.
How to Communicate to Avoid Aggression (pgs 6-7,
handout)
The Cycle of Aggression –
our brain has 545 parts that are in conflict. Person with integrity doesn’t
notice the aggressive part. Many aren’t this sophisticated. Human brain, mammal
brain, and lizard brain split. Scale of escalation 1-100%.
1-20% we’re
human-brain-dominant, it coordinates all parts of the brain, creates things,
gives sense of identity/consistent view of self, sense of community (we give to
get, make do with what we’ve got), dialog is possible.
20-95% anger manifests from
frustration, forces listening. Remember, they are trying to communicate and we
may not know the full story. We want to get person amenable to disengaging, to
“line up.” Don’t explain or ask questions. Don’t tell them why they got the
parking ticket. Don’t grill them. They feel interrogated, mammal brain hates
this. Best technique at this point is paraphrasing; it won’t work for the
enraged. We tactically paraphrase from our understanding. Can be as simple as
“pretty confusing, huh?” Comes from good faith assumptions. Then, can help
calmly explain, advise, help. If this doesn’t work, they don’t want to calm
down, they’re looking for a fight.
95-99% rage, lizard brain
takes over (fight-flight-freeze-rage) the transition between anger &
violence. Violence comes at threat, not at being struck. Go for safety here.
The 1% that stops the aggressor is consequence, morality (bible helped
kick-start this), physical limitations, values (what we acquire). Use control
techniques. Say “I keep it safe here” a way of talking which can bring it back
to human brain. Talk slowly, soothingly, from the chest…an “alpha” voice. Keep
out of personal space. Say “breathe with me,” to regulate breathing, pace it
down.
(Works for terrified rage. Delirium or disorganized rage, short
commands, repeated. Use name if you know it. Hypnotic induction: “sit down…sit
down….sit down.” Without losing temper. “Islands of sanity,” a childhood song,
etc. can help bring people out of it. Shift focus, Eliminate crisis.)
Aggression can come in many disguises – even seduction, if we don’t
accede to their “come on,” we’re saying we’re smarter than them. Enrages.
The Gift of Fear – Gavin
DeBecker. Fear is a wisdom teacher. Protecting
the Gift same deal, for parents.
Behavior at the Edge of Attack
“I really want to hear what you’re saying, but please take a couple
steps back.” Never apologize or excuse yourself for this.Follow with eye contact. But if the eyes get sexually aggressive, say “the meeting’s over.” “Why?” “You know why.” End of story. Don’t define yourself as a victim. Eyes can stray. If it’s a calculated act of aggression, end it.
Power testing – Someone picks
something off desk, throws it down. Banking your reaction for the future.
Displacement Activity –
kicking, hitting, punching walls, things. Amping up, threatening you.
Scapegoating – Yells at kid
in meeting, as an assault on morality. Their way of saying what happens at home
later, “this is going to be your fault.”
Blanching is an indicator of
rage. Red skin can mean drugs or rage.
Disassociating they stop
talking, go blank. The 1000 yard stare indicates dehumanization. This can be
the calm before the rage storm. Yell to bring back. Then escape if that doesn’t
work. Eerie smile can be similar to the blank stare.
Hot Rage/Fury
Small, a wolverine. Big, a bear. Not anger. Well beyond.
No Ambiguity At the
point of explosion. Low frustration tolerance. You may need to stop talking. Find
the exit. Look for weapons on him, to protect self. How do you signal or call
for help. No ambiguity. Use “ladder
technique.” Say “step back, back off, etc,” whatever works. “We’ll talk about
it, Mr. Anders, when you step back.” If they step back, it’s bluff rage. If
they keep coming, this is an assault. Immediately go for safety. Repeat the
phrase, go back to the ladder. Thinking doesn’t help. Never say “calm down.” It
doesn’t work. Don’t force them to leave, they may just barrel through others.
“Sit down.” “Please bring your voice down.” Stop yelling before you stop
swearing. “I can’t hear you when you’re yelling.” “I can’t follow you when
you’re moving around. Sit down.”
What about swearing? You made a mistake? Say: “Talk to me with the same
respect I talk to you.” AND “I understand how enraged you were. I messed up.
But before we talk about that, we need to talk about what you did. You came in
and tipped over my desk. That can never happen.”
(note, if developmentally disabled, a lot of explaining will not be
effective.)(note, if it’s bluff, can quickly salvage the situation).
Every Staff Meeting – Should
have a portion on safety, will at very least bring staff together, make them
feel more secure. Not only for when we’re in crisis. And we may learn something
that we didn’t know, that we needed to know.
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