Steve D. Valentine recommends pausing heated phone calls by muting or hanging up to break the emotional surge. Use the silence to examine your triggers and why their words hit you. Call back with a thoughtful response instead of reacting, and the pause itself often unsettles them more than any immediate reply would.
If you are getting heated with somebody on the phone, pause, either mute it or hang it up. We all know how bad cell phone service can be. If you hang it up and take the pause and then sit there for a second, go, why is this person pissing me off? Why does this bother me? Is this my story? And how does it impact me? Now you've identified whatever that is. Now you can call them back and now you can respond thoughtfully and appropriately rather than the knee-jerk reaction. And what I love now is the pause and identifying the responding is that the silence actually bothers people more than the response does.
It’s Not What Your House Is Worth; It’s What It Can Do for You (Pause, Identify, Respond)
