discusses these issues, and suggest she contact that person. Preferably after
work. Be prepared to hear that you’re the only person in the whole world
that she can talk to. Let her know you’re flattered but that you don’t feel
qualified, and spend the rest of the conversation steering her in the direc-
tion of somebody who can do more to help.
GET HER TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. Call it psychological first aid, or just
trying to keep someone else’s monkey off your back, your best bet for get-
ting through an explosion into sadness unscathed—and Rachel’s as well—
lie in getting her to take responsibility for her own problem. Needless to
say, that’s no small task. The place to defuse emotional explosions is in the
moment-to-moment choices you make in conversation. This book will help
you with pragmatic strategies that encourage people who are falling apart
to get their acts together. They may not always be easy, but they will work.
An Explosion into Anger
Now that we know the basics about how emotional explosions operate,
we’re ready to take on Brandon, the guy we left yelling about the idiot who
put the late charge on his bill.
If you’re like most people, angry explosions are the hardest to han-
dle because they’re most likely to activate your own fight or flight response.
Obviously, it’s difficult to think clearly if you’re frightened or angry, but
even when you feel relatively calm, the primitive urge to fight back or run
away has a way of slithering into even the most reasonable comments.
What feels like pouring oil on troubled waters can turn out to be more
like throwing gasoline on a fire.
To deal effectively with anger, you have to look at the situation not
from your own point of view, but from the point of view of the angry per-
son. As Brandon stands at the counter glowering at you, there are two ques-
tions that are absolutely irrelevant to productive action: whether the late
charge is justified, or whether you are the idiot who put it there. Jumping
into a discussion of either of these is guaranteed to make Brandon angrier.
To know why, we need to understand what’s happening inside an explo-
sively angry person.
20 ❧Emotional Explosions