Hi I'm Dr. Roberta Marowitz, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Florida and CEO of The Digital Academy, home of Sane Games, mental health computer games for children and their families. Today we're talking about how to approach someone who is angry to calm them down and I want to be very clear about this with you. This is a disclaimer. I'm not trying to tell you how to deal with somebody who is in a rage because rage is different than anger so if you are dealing with somebody who is really out of control and they need distance then you need to give them distance, that's different. When somebody is angry, the difference that I mean is it's someone who can still be reasoned with so if you're talking about dealing with somebody who is angry but can be reasoned with, that's who I'm talking about. So this is most commonly seen in children, you'll recognize them they have tantrums. They act out. They do things that potentially can be very obnoxious and difficult for the people who are around them but this happens with adults too. So when you are trying to calm someone who is angry there are some things that you need to do for yourself. Number one is you really need to stay calm for yourself and not engage in the anger. So, initially what you are trying to do is you are trying to get them to calm down by modeling for them what calm looks like. Now, I'm going to tell you that there are two options here and they are going to sound like night and day because they are night and day. For some people who are angry when they are confronted with a person, you, who is calm, they do model what you're doing and they do calm down because they see that they are out of control and they are willing to do something differently about that. So, you don't want to enter into a shouting match with them. What you are trying to do is you are trying to get them to just lessen their voice, lessen the intensity and lessen the anger. So when anger comes from frustration, once they are calm they might be willing to talk about it a little bit, they might be willing to deal with it in a different kind of a way. Different solutions for different people. But the second way is going to sound a little counterintuitive and it is to get angry with them. Now that doesn't mean that you fight with them but there are people who deal with issues by fighting and the problem is not necessarily in the fighting of it. It's in the lack of resolution afterwards. And so if your choice is to get angry with them, so that you match the intensity of the level of their conversation in the hopes that you can both then diffuse together, that's some way that works for some people. So I don't want to take it out of the picture completely. You have to be careful and you have to know some history. If doing that makes the anger worse, this is not your good solution. Your good solution is going with calming down yourself and approaching it that way. However, if you know that getting angry with the person helps them match where you are and then you're able to diffuse it together by talking it through even if it might be in a louder voice or even if it might seem harsher than somebody else might deal with it, for you, this might be the solution. Wish you well.
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