A Guide:
How to talk with aggressive people?
There are a lot of people around us. Some are friendly, some are neutral, but sometimes you meet angry or aggressive people, who are not pleasant to talk with, but due to some circumstances you have to deal with them. What do you feel when it happens? Are you scared? Annoyed? Or any conversation with such people turns into a fight (verbal, hopefully)?
If you want to learn how to deal with such people, and moreover, direct the communication with them to the flow that you want, read these hints and try to apply them in a relevant quest (link to quests related to this topic):
It is very difficult to be furious when you are talkigng to a
person who is polite and friendly.
NOT sugary and
artificially sweet, or derisive, which infuriates even more, but
calm and attentive.
Don’t reject straight any blames or complains the person has.
You
definitely feel that urge, especially if the blames are totally
irrelevant or wrong. It is a very important thing not to do.
Show the person that you understand him/her. Say: “I understand you so well… “, “It should be so annoying… “, “Let’s see what we can do to fix it…” - this will let them feel that you listen to him/her and understand.
If you become aggressive too, it will not end in anything good. The best thing is to remain polite and friendly, but if you feel too overwhelmed, you can either leave the conversation or - a better trick - change the topic, switch to something neutral or interesting. Or you can find something interesting in that person and unexpectedly talk about it. For example: “Oh, your gestures are so expressive! I always wanted to learn to do it!” or “Where did you get these earrings? They look fantastic!”. But it should be something that you really think, you should be sincere.
Most often aggressive behavior is caused by something else. For example, a person was upset because of a quarrel with a partner or a colleague. And this just requires some outcome. Or a person feels so lonely and abandoned, he/she just wants to draw attention to him/herself. What can you do? Ask questions like: “Are you upset?”, “Was it a difficult day?”, etc.
Always remember that this is just a person, same as you. And something happened in his/her life that makes him/her behave in such bad way, and most probably the person can’t control it.
If you punched somebody occasionally, or stomped your heel down on his/her foot - just apologize and accept it’s your fault. Or if you didn’t do what you promised. Suggest some ways to fix it.
If you speak softly and slowly, it will help reduce the tension of the conversation. Actually it can do magic. Speak slower than you usually do. Fast speech will demonstrate that you are nervous, and it will not help at all.
Remember, that everybody is a human being, and sometimes even an adult person can feel like a child who lost control. Sometimes you can explain why a person is angry - for example, your Mom asked you many times to stop playing games and help her, but you ignored it and didn’t do anything. So you can accept it, apologize and offer her what you can do instead. But sometimes you have no idea what is the reason of the aggression. In this case, there is a very important rule: don’t take the blame on you. Just follow the steps mentioned above and try to make the conversation productive and get the result that you want from it.