A short conversational excerpt from a 2010 YouTube conversation between Robert J. Strock and Dr. Ken Blanchard discussing emotional responses to anger. They propose reframing anger as "noisy sadness," using the "peeling the onion" metaphor to get past anger to sadness, helplessness, and underlying longings or needs, and emphasize responding with a compassionate, servant-hearted stance.
Robert Phil Hodges was a labor negotiator for a long time, dealt with a lot of conflict in industry. And one of the things that helped him when people got angry is to look at anger as noisy sadness. And he thought of if I responded to this person as if they were crying rather than yelling, how would I respond differently? I find that a wonderful way to look at things. That kind of rings with your thinking too, I think.
Yeah, I mean, it actually gives me chills because it's such a useful way of framing it, because it helps the listener and the person that's angry start to get in touch with a place that's closer to their heart and closer to their soul. It starts to reflect on a more innocent part of their core. And it's exactly that understanding, or that kind of understanding where a person can see that there's an innocence in there that is really sad, that it's not just trying to hurt you. And then underneath the sadness, if we keep going further, there's a deep longing or some kind of a core need that's there. So when you see the underbelly of anger, you see, okay, there's a sadness underneath that. Sometimes there's even a helplessness underneath the sadness or powerlessness. And then underneath that, there's some kind of a longing or a need that we're trying to support in the other to be able to express to the other.
So what you're really talking about is you like peeling the onion so that you can get to that juicy core. That could really be helpful. I really like that concept because it keeps on, and it's the servant heart staying there, which means I'm as interested, if not more, and what's happening with you than what's happening with me, then I can permit that sadness and that unpeeling the onion to occur.
I love the unpeeling of the onion. I love the juicy core. And certainly the servant heart, or the compassionate core, at least in my experience, is as good as it gets.
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