7 Tips for dealing with confrontation

March 29th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

dealing with confrontation A
lot of people cannot handle confrontation and start to shake, they lose control
of their voice pitch, and they want to hit out and cannot control their thoughts
properly. It can be frustrating when someone is putting us
down and you can’t argue back as you have got a touch of confrontation
jitters. This is the ‘flight or fight’ syndrome kicking in
and it pumps adrenaline throughout your body in readiness to kick someone’s
arse or in readiness to run away from someone you think might kick your arse. It
is your body getting prepared.

Here are seven tips to deal with confrontation:

Take a deep breath just before the confrontation or
during it if necessary. This
lowers your heartbeat and blood pressure.
Breathe a little slower, again this lowers your heartbeat and lowers the
amount of adrenaline running through your body.
Take 5 minutes, if you can, and quickly rehearse what
you are going to say to someone. Make key points of your argument.
Get to know what triggers your anger and prepare a new
response to that trigger. By doing this you are aware of the buttons people can push
to elicit a certain response. When you know your own triggers it
less likely that someone can push the buttons as you are prepared.
Make the person aware of how confrontational they are
being. Saying
something like ‘why are you shouting at me?’, ‘Why are
you being so aggressive’. This turns the energy back on the person
and lets them look at themselves for a minute, this might calm them down
as a lot of people get lost in the moment and don’t realise they
are being aggressive.
Another way is to turn all the attention back on the
person you are arguing with. ‘You seem really angry about that!’; ‘You
look as if you’re really pissed off?’ Again this
can have the same affect of point 5.
Don’t get sucked into their arguments. The purpose of an argument
is to manipulate you into losing the argument thereby showing the other person
they have won and they are superior. If you don’t get sucked
in there is no argument to win, and you come out looking the better person.

There was an incident a few weeks ago just outside my house. I had driven
past someone who stayed in our estate and he was walking his dog. He
was on the pavement when I drove past and I went through a puddle and soaked
his dog. I pulled into the driveway as normal when I heard this guy shouting
on me, he walked aggressively down to me and I prepared myself for a confrontation
as I hadn’t a clue what had happened I just knew by the way he was walking
he wanted a fight. The conversation went like this

‘You ****ing soaked my dog’, I looked at his dog and suddenly
realised I must have went through a puddle. Inside I laughed at the absurdity
of this man looking for a fight because some water had gone over his dog. I
said

‘Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realise.’ He didn’t
hear me.

‘You F***ing did soak him, you went through a puddle and soaked him.’

‘I said, apologies for soaking your dog I didn’t realise’ repeating
what I had said before. His demeanour changed.

‘Well you did and I’m pissed off!’

‘I can see you’re pissed off, but it was an accident’. He
started walking away.

‘I’m sorry I was so angry, it’s just it happened last night
as well with somebody else.’

‘It’s okay, I understand. See you later.’

I laughed again at the strangeness of someone wanting to fight over a dog
getting wet. The strange thing was he was walking his dog in the rain. This
shows that different things annoy different people, but it’s easy to
deal with their behaviour if you point out how they are behaving.

If all else fails, the nose is a good place to hit first which can temporarily
blind them with tears.

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There Are 11 Responses So Far. »

Comment by Steve Olson on 29 March 2007:

Stephen,

One thing that has worked wonders for me lately is this simple phrase:

Maybe you’re right

My ego hates saying it. But it has reduced the stress in my life dramatically.

Comment by Tabs on 31 March 2007:

Great post, I simply don’t get sucked into confrontations, my ego is put in check by my need for peace of mind and lack of an urgent need to justify anything to anyone, I simply let it go, and 90% of the time I am right any way.

Cheers
Tabs

Comment by tharon on 23 October 2007:

confrontions stink

Comment by michelle on 26 January 2008:

I’m a trembler- all someone has to do is start with that ‘voice’ and I begin to tremble and get ready for a fight- Then I play the event over and over in my head wondering if I could have done something different. I always wish I could have been bigger then them and really kept my cool and acted more zen about it. I think it’ll take a lot of growing before I get there. I hate that I give other people that much power over me ! I feel a vodka tonic coming on!

Trackback by Anger Management Tips on 18 February 2008:

Anger Management Activities That Are Easy For You…

Anger is pain against some unexpected and unwanted events. Anger may result in physical action or shouting loudly. Everyone gets angry. Some people will react very quickly to the perceived pain. Some may not. May be some lose their coolness and hit the…

Comment by Glen on 27 February 2008:

The best fight is the one not fought, especially over someone wanting to fight over a wet dog.

A calm demeanor and simple apology go a long, long way to diffusing conflict.

Comment by Amy on 7 May 2008:

The problem I face is that the agressor is a family member. I am terrified to speak to this person (not because of violence but because of the way they make me feel). I am stuck with having a relationship with this person. They are annoyed with me for not talking about my feelings - but the reason I can’t do this is because I do not trust them. But I’m too scared to tell them this. They are very confrontational and tease me regularly - but if I try to say I find it upsetting I’m told not to be a wimp. Maybe I am a wimp, but I’d prefer that to being angry. I don’t know how to deal with it.

Comment by Steven Aitchison on 8 May 2008:

Hi Amy, thanks for being so open about this. What you are experiencing is called ‘Bullying’. As this is a family member it will be hard to deal with however the best piece of advice i could give would be to avoid contact with the family member. If you feel up to it I would let them know why you are not going to be at events where they are there, and why you are removing yourself from their life. If you are not up to it I would try and discreetly avoid being there when the bully is there. This will eventually be noticed but it will help your situation in the short term. Hope this helps Amy.

Comment by anon on 9 May 2008:

hey guys i just searched “dealing with confrontation” on google, and this came up. i just got back from work, and i am so frustrated. basically im only a teenager, and this women, shes twice my age, but she acts really aggressive, and if i dont do something right, she will talk to other people about me, right in front of me sometimes, and this will be humiliating for me, and can ruin my work relations with other colleague’s… but i just cant say anything to her. i usually just piss her off more by purpose, and dont say anything… but when i get home i feel so angry at myself for not sticking up for my self. arggghhhhh pisses me off so much… i need a back bone…

Comment by rallison on 11 July 2008:

Confrontations are my worst nightmares. If some comes to me and starts shouting and being very aggressive towards me I start to tremble and even cry to the point that I can’t control myself anymore.
I google “dealing with confrontations” and I got this site. Now I want to let it all out and see if there is anyone else out there that feels and gets the same way I get. What do you do to make yourself feel better. Just this morning I had the worst confrontation with one of the mom’s in my son’s swim team.
The team were having an event, I called this mom just to ask for some info. I need it to know at what time this event was being held and I happen to call this particular mom and she offered to take mom son with her so I could stay with my daughter. I made sure to let her know that she was being so kind and helpful but giving my son a ride to this place. At the place where we met, their were other kids who were going which included my son’s good friend, my son found out that his good friend is going with some else. So, my son got sad and asked me that he liked to go with his good friend instead. I explained to my son that we had already arrange for him to go this mom and her son. Her son found out that my son did not want to go with him and he left with the other group.
I was left there not knowing how to explain to this mom that my son did not want to go with them.
I said a little prayer in my mind hoping that this mom would understand. But OH MY GOD! She was PISSED OFF! She started going off on me saying that how could I let my son hurt her son’s feeling because he was left all by himself with no friends. This mom was literally yelling at me pointing her finger at me saying that I did not care about her sons feeling. Did not give me a chance to apologize that my son decided to go with the other group instead. I felt horrible inside yet this lady kept accusing me. I manage to get some words out in order to fix this whole ordeal, I suggested to her to let her son get a ride with the other group so he could also be with the other friend. But no, she was so angry about all this that did not want to listen to anything that I said. I felt that she was being very aggressive very unreasonable. What do you guys think about this? Any suggestions as what I should do or say to her, because she said she would come to me later to talk about this. Please say prayers for me. Thanks for hearing me out.

Comment by Woo on 27 August 2008:

Hey to those of you dealing with confrontations….

It’s something I haven’t had to deal with until recently. It involved moving house with housemates - Eeesh. In the couple confrontations that arose I found myself very calm. Let the other party know you understand where they coming from. Really listen to them. Whatever you do - DON’T get defensive - it get’s you nowhere and the other person will not be interested in listening to you defend yourself. If you are not able to come up with a conclusion go away and think about it and have a conversation with them next time, if that’s possible. Otherwise you end up having conversations with them in your mind, and that is an energy waster when you could be focusing on happier moments. Good luck to you all out there.