What are your methods to remain level headed in heated situations?

[Anonymous]

[sage2021]

Some people put their hands in their pockets and take 3 deep cleansing breaths.
Cleansing breaths:
If you can lay down on your back and try to relax. Put your arm at each side of you palms up.
Inhale with you nose, hold it for a few seconds, then exhale slowly
through your mouth.

Ok, I know you might have to do this after the heated discussion so it's there for you if you want to calm down afterwards.

I had an encounter with a heated discussion with the Customer Care people at Walmart for over an hour and a half. I had to call 5 fricken times!

I was calm at first, the it progressed to me yelling "You get me a manager RIGHT NOW or I will never buy anything from Walmart again"!!! Yelling this.

I was put on hold for 10 minutes and he never came back.
I called back again, same thing happened.
I called again and was left on hold another 10 minutes then odly enough I hear a phone ringing someone. It got some man's voicemail so I hung up.

Again I called. I think this was the 5th and final call.
A nice young man with only a slight foreign accept answered the phone.
Right from the get go, I told him I am very angry right now but I promise you I will stay calm. So, we were both on the same page. As we got further into our calm conversation, he informed me that my order was CANCELLED and no one told me.
That's when the tears started to fall and I was in full blown crying. He felt really bad and told me he was upset at what happened to me as well. We were on the phone for an extended period of time to the point his boss wanted him to get back to work. But he promised me he would stay with me and not put me on hold and promised me he would get to the bottom of the problem. Apparently there is a glitch in my account check out process but he said give it 12 hours and try to place my order again. That girl that cancelled my order emptied my shopping cart completely and I had 8 items in it. It took me hours to be on Walmart. com to look through everything and out items in my shopping cart. Now there was 0 things in my shopping cart. I started crying again.😢😥 So, he took the time and put them all back in my shopping cart. They are safe right now.

So, to answer your question, tell yourself you are going to calm down and do it on purpose.
Tell the other person that you promise to stay calm for them and hope they will too. That seemed to really set the tone of our entire conversation when I was honest with him and told him I was angry then promised him I would stay calm while we talked this through.
Usually guys are wearing pants 👖 so it does help to put you hands 👐in your pockets. I learned that in a seminar once.
Good luck. Sorry this was so long. 😎

[sage2021]

Thank you 😊 for the MHO

[Asker]

Quality answer

[Breanna_nonbinary]

The reason you learn cpr or first aid or whatever is so that you can keep a level head when bad things happen.
Learning and practice are how you do it.

[Sonorous]

I like the find the comedy in it & also remind myself that the person is acting like that because of events that are out of my control & mostly don't have much to do with me.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in arguments with people in the past simply because they're agitated or in pain. We're all like babies in a way when things get extreme. We feel sad, cry, throw tantrums, etc. At varying levels of intensity ofc.

Nowdays, unless a situation is very important & requires my action, I just remember that the agitated person is not really in control of themselves. None of us really are. For the same reason that we can literally manipulate situations to our advantage, most (sane) people are predictable.

What's the difference between a good & bad person? Circumstance. Genes & environment. Internal or external. We're all shaped by events not in our control.

We're balls of potential. Depending on our emotional state, we can be the most loving creatures on the planet to the most hateful. I like to really take advantage of this.

I think that if we want to de-escalate situations, we can't react extremely negatively to a persons transgressions. When others are hostile towards us, what helps not make it worse is to try & validate their perspectives in the most subtle & casual ways we can. Even better if we can verbally validate core emotions they're feeling. I notice that constantly reiterating my understanding of core emotions & values really helps to calm mofos down & swing the situation more to my advantage due to their guard being further let down.

[Sonorous]

So even if I disagree with what they're saying, I don't make that very apparent at first. I want them to first see me as not a threat. Then I can challenge their viewpoints as the conversation progresses.

[NathanDavis]

experience...

been working with Karens for a while now... lol

[genericname85]

emotional detachment. focus on the goal of the conversation and think about how you can most efficiently get there.

[LaurenM1997]

Walk away and don’t retaliate