In this 20‑minute YouTube presentation, conflict‑resolution expert Doug Noll addresses parents struggling with heightened household anger during the pandemic. He argues that anger stems from a wide spectrum of underlying emotions—anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, abandonment—that both adults and children share. Noll contends that modern culture teaches emotional avoidance, leading families to habitually invalidate each other's feelings through dismissive remarks (e.g., “don’t be a drama queen,” “stop crying”). He labels emotional invalidation as a pervasive form of emotional abuse. The core solution he proposes is “listening others into existence,” which involves two complementary practices: (1) self‑validation by labeling one’s own emotions in the moment, and (2) outward validation by directly naming a person’s feelings using simple “you” statements—no “I” statements, no questions, no problem‑solving. Noll explains how this practice calms both the validator and the validated, re‑programs the brain, and creates a safe emotional environment where children can learn. He walks through step‑by‑step exercises for children, teenagers, and adults, prompting viewers to identify their own feelings, infer the other’s feelings from images, and then reflect those feelings back verbatim. He emphasizes managing parental anxiety before attempting validation, avoiding premature problem‑solving or punishment, and maintaining a non‑judgmental stance. The video concludes with a call to action to subscribe, explore his “Parents Game Changer” program, and visit his website for deeper training.
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Hi, my name is Doug Noll, and I spent the last 40 years studying human conflict and how to resolve it quickly and efficiently. And I have some really interesting information for you parents. That have to deal with anger at home because of the pandemic. And so in the next 20 minutes, I'm going to be showing you how to get rid of anger in your home once and for all. So let's get started. So first of all, why is there so much anger? Well, you could be feeling angry yourself or frustrated, or you could be annoyed. Or you could be irritated. You could be aggravated. Maybe you're really mad. Maybe you're infuriated, or disrespected, or unsupported, or you don't feel listened to, or you feel sad, or you're lonely, or unloved, and you might even feel abandoned. Now these might be feelings that are coming up because you're sheltered in, or because of other things that are happening in your life. But the anger is going to come from all of these different feelings and emotions you have. But here's the thing that's really interesting. Your family members, your kids, your spouse or your partner, or your other family members that might be living with you have the same feelings. They have anger. They're frustrated. They're irritated and annoyed. They're aggravated too. And they're mad. And they're infuriated. And they feel disrespected and unsupported. And they don't feel listened to. And they feel sad and lonely and unloved and completely abandoned. The point here is that they have exactly the same set of feelings that you have. And the problem is in our society and culture is that because for thousands of years we've been told to avoid emotions and that emotions are bad, we've never learned how to listen to emotions and we've never learned that we all share the same feelings all the time. So when one of your children gets really angry, This is what's going on inside, and it's the same thing that's going on inside of you. And if you can get the insight that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational, you can get rid of the anger once and for all. So how do we get rid of this anger? Well, here's the great secret. Every human being, and especially children, have a secret need to be listened to. They need to be validated. And we don't do that as a matter of course. In fact, we do just the opposite. We emotionally invalidate those around us, including kids. So what is this emotional invalidation about? Well, have you ever used the phrase, "Don't be a drama queen," or "Shut up," or "It's not a big deal," or "Stop crying," or "Don't be a sissy," "Don't be a girly girl." There are hundreds of invalidating statements that we use every single day on those that we love. And when we invalidate, we don't listen. We do just the opposite. We emotionally abuse. Emotional invalidation is the most pervasive, insidious form of emotional abuse that exists. And we do it to our children all the time, and we do it to ourselves all the time. And so one of the secrets here is to do exactly the opposite. Instead of emotionally invalidating our children, we want to validate their emotional experience. In fact, I call this listening others into existence. Learn how to listen your children into existence. It is the most powerful, transformative thing you will ever do in your life, for both yourself and for your family. And guess what? I'm going to show you the basics of how to do it right now, so hang in there. So the first thing you have to do to listen other people into existence is to listen yourself into existence. So whenever you're feeling any of those emotions that I listed a little while ago, label them for yourself. You can do this silently or you can do it out loud, or some people will journal. They can write down what they're feeling in the moment, but you want to learn how to label your feelings so you're validating yourself. So you'll say something like, "I'm really angry," or looking at this young mother, "I'm really frustrated. I'm at wit's end. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. I'm anxious." What do I do? And I'm sad and frustrated and I don't feel supported. I don't feel listened to and I'm all alone and nobody's here to help me with this quite angry little girl. So just label whatever it is you're feeling and that will have the immediate effect of calming you down. It has a long-term effect too of reprogramming your brain in really wonderful and powerful ways. But the thing that's most important is it's going to calm you down right now in the moment. So self-regulate your own feelings by simply labeling or naming what you're experiencing in the moment. And then you're going to do the same thing with your kids or your partner or other family members. You're going to label what their feelings are and you're going to do this out loud. You're going to say, for example, with this young man, I would say something like, Oh, you're really sad. You're really frustrated. You feel embarrassed or shamed. You feel left out. You feel alone, abandoned. You don't feel supported. You don't feel listened to. You don't feel respected. All those feelings I listed before, just name them and use a very simple 'you' statement. Don't use an 'I' statement. That's old psychology. Doesn't work, never has worked, never will work. No 'I' statements. And don't ask questions, "Oh, are you angry?" No, just make a flat-out "You are whatever the feeling is." And again, with practice you will see some amazing transformative results. So you have to cultivate emotional awareness. You have to cultivate self-awareness of your own emotions, and you have to cultivate an awareness of the emotions and feelings that your family members, especially your children, are experiencing in the moment. You also have to learn how to manage your anxiety, because when you are exposed to an angry, upset child, for example, you're going to get triggered and all kinds of anxiety is going to come up for you. And as soon as that anxiety comes up, if you are not self-aware, you are going to start to emotionally invalidate, and that will only make things worse. Or you might start to problem solve, which is another form of emotional invalidation. You'll try to immediately solve the problem, fix it. For the child, and all that does is invalidate that child's emotions in the moment. You can't begin to problem solve or fix or even punish or, or have consequences until you have a calm child. So even when a child is misbehaving, you have to learn to manage your anxiety, self-regulate yourself, de-escalate the child, and then you can talk about consequences or impose consequences if you have to. But remember, Child's not going to learn anything when the child's emotional. The child is only going to learn when the child is calm. So you've got to calm your kids down and you have to manage your own anxiety. You have to approach all this with non-judgment. As I said before, we have been biased for thousands and thousands of years that emotions are bad, that we are rational beings. Well, we're not rational beings. That's old, old philosophy. It's not true. It's— neuroscientists today tell us that we are emotional beings with small moments of rationality. And once we get this insight and flip things around, then we can look at emotional situations or angry situations in our family and not judge it as good or bad. It just is. And so we'll just deal with it as it is, as it presents itself. And as I said before, we've got to stop invalidating our children. That's the first deadly sin and we need to stop it. And the simplest way to stop invalidating is to do exactly the opposite. Validate their feelings by reflecting back to them what they are experiencing. And we're going to practice this here in just a minute. So let's look at some examples. So I'm going to go through 3 separate examples: a child, children's anger, a teen's anger, and adult's anger. And the first thing that I want to ask you to do is to identify what you feel when you see these images. And if you've got a place where you can sit down with a piece of paper, it's very helpful to write this out slowly And if you have to stop the YouTube video for a moment to do that, then do that. This is a really useful exercise, and so take your time doing this. Identify your own feelings, and then once you've done that, you want to guess at the feelings that you think the image is portraying. What's this person or a child feeling right now? And write down all the emotions. And if you don't have a good list of emotions, just scroll back to the beginning of the video where I listed all of those emotions. And make a note of them all. And then pick and choose from those 15 or so emotions that I picked out. And because that is, those emotions are probably what you're going to be facing most of the time. So that can be your vocabulary right there. Very easy. So here we go. Children's anger. So we're here, we have a little boy, young man, quite upset. What do you feel as you look at this image and think about situations where you had a child yelling at you in anger and frustration? What feelings come up for you? Write them down. And I'm going to keep moving, so if you need to pause the video, go ahead and do that, because I want to get through this so that we don't waste a lot of screen time. And then once you've written down everything that you feel, what does he feel? What's he experiencing? So write down all his emotions, and you can It's easy really when you look at it. He's angry, he's frustrated, but what's underneath the anger and frustration? He doesn't feel listened to, he doesn't feel supported, he's sad, he doesn't feel loved, he feels abandoned, he feels like he's being thwarted in some way, he doesn't feel like he's got power. Could be all kinds of different things. So just list out all the different things that might be going on for him that's got him in such a rage. And write them all out. Now, of course, in practice, what you're going to do is reflect those back to him and say, 'Oh, buddy, you're really angry. You're really frustrated. You are really, really infuriated. You don't feel like you've got any control. You don't feel like you have any power. You don't feel listened to. You don't feel supported. You don't feel appreciated. You're really sad.' And you don't feel loved and you feel completely abandoned. And by the time you get down to abandonment, the tears will start to fly and the temper tantrum will go away. So that's how you do it with children. So let's take a look at a teenager. Does this look familiar? So do this again. What do you feel? Write down all the feelings that you have. You are feeling You're angry, you're confused, you're anxious, you don't feel respected, you don't feel listened to. Notice how all these are the same for everybody. You're sad, you feel alone and unsupported, you feel abandoned, you feel like your daughter doesn't care. Now what's she feeling? She's feeling angry, and disrespected and maybe a little scared or anxious. And she doesn't feel listened to or understood, and she doesn't feel supported, and she feels sad and all alone and unloved and abandoned. That's what's going on in her, and that's what you tell her. It doesn't matter whether or not the basis for the emotional feelings is true or not. Because she is experiencing these, so they are true for her. We don't care whether or not she's got a good reason for feeling these things. All we care about is that she's having this experience, and we want to validate that emotional experience. And when we do that, the tears will start to flow, she'll calm down, she will start to listen to you, and you can move into problem solving and figure out what's going on and how to stop this from happening again. That is the secret of life. It's the secret of all relationships. Validate. Listen your child into existence. All right, one more. We've got an adult. All right, so the first thing we want to do is think about what do you feel when you look at this guy? Are you scared? Intimidated? Do you feel threatened? Do you feel guilty or shamed? Maybe you feel sad because he's a friend. Or maybe you don't feel listened to or supported, or you don't feel heard or understood. So write down everything that you feel, and then think about what's he feeling. So he's obviously intense, might be frustrated, angry, or annoyed. Doesn't feel listened to, feels disrespected, unsupported, unloved. All kinds of different feelings. Go back to the list and pick out the ones that you think that he might be feeling. And then remember that what you're going to do is label what he's feeling, and by doing that, you're going to listen him into existence. Oh man, you're really angry. You're really frustrated. You don't feel listened to. You don't feel supported. You feel like you've been treated unfairly. You feel insulted. You feel disrespected. You're sad. You don't feel connected. You feel abandoned and unloved and upset. Just like that. No I statements, no questions, just simple you statements. And that is how you listen people into existence. So if you want to stop anger at home and get rid of it once and for all, the simple rule is listen your family into existence. Just reflect on their emotions, use a simple "you" statement, and watch what happens. I hope this has been useful to you. Down below you'll see links to get more information about my work and who I am. And this is part of a new program called The Parents Game Changer, so subscribe to the channel and you'll be picking up the videos as I post them. And also you can go out to my website and check out how to learn more about listening other people into existence. Thanks for watching.
