Say, “Tell me what happened.” Venting allows the person to begin moving from blindly striking out (the most primitive response) to feeling emotional (a higher response). The person’s screaming or yelling will upset you, but it’s far less dangerous than the threat of physical violence—so let it happen. 2. Say, “I need to make sure that I heard exactly what you said, so I don’t go off in some wrong direction. If I heard you right, what you said is. . . .” Then repeat exactly what the person said, calmly and with no angry or sarcastic inflection in your voice, and say, “Is that correct?” When you
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