Answer: Try these ideas.

These ideas are from Making Feelings And Emotions Serve Conversations from the TalkWorks Wiki website (slightly edited by me).

Making Feelings And Emotions Serve Conversations

1.  Become emotionally self-aware.

Emotional self-awareness is the starting point in using your emotions effectively in conversations.

Get to know your own emotions and your emotional patterns:

“I tend to blow up easily when I’m challenged.”

“I sulk when people don’t pay enough attention to me.”

“I’m optimistic and friendly with almost everyone.”

2.  Monitor your state of mind.

Be mindful of your emotional state during the conversation. It’s the key responsibility of the Conversation Manager role to make sure your ‘awareness’ system is switched on.

As soon as your emotional reading gets anywhere close to the red zone, your internal alarm bell should ring — action stations, emotions in danger of getting out of control!

Let’s look at a conversation from the perspective of ‘emotional self-control’.

Toby, a college student, is talking with his younger brother, Gordon. Their parents are away for a couple of days, and Toby has been asked to “keep an eye on Gordon.” Gordon has failed to do the chores assigned to him.

Let’s consider two different ways that Toby can address this issue. We’ll call them Toby A and Toby B.

Toby A says in an exasperated voice, “Gordon, stop being a selfish little brat. Grow up. You know what you have to do. Do it!”

Miracles aside, Gordon is more likely to react than respond. Indeed, a verbal war breaks out with Gordon shouting back, “Hey, shut up. You’re worse than I am!” Does this sound familiar?

Now let’s try Toby B. He says, “Hey, Gordon, Mum and Dad will be home this evening. Let’s surprise them and have the place looking better than when they left. I’ve got some time.”

While this does not assure that Gordon will rise to the challenge – he may well be a ‘selfish little brat’ – it does give him a chance to respond, rather than react. One critical difference between Toby A and Toby B is emotional self-control. Toby B does not let his annoyance with his younger brother get the better of him.

In that conversation Toby demonstrated emotional self-control in the Explainer/Teller role. We can also apply the same idea when in the Understander role — in this case, choosing to respond thoughtfully rather than react in a knee-jerk fashion, even when provoked:

Jennifer, a single woman in her late twenties, is talking with her mother about her friends from work. Her mother keeps finding fault with everyone Jennifer mentions.

At one point her mother says, “What a sorry crowd you hang out with.”

Let’s take a look at the responses of Jennifer A, B, C, and D.

Jennifer A reacts, saying angrily, “Well, I’d rather be with them than here.” And she stalks off.

Jennifer B takes a different approach, saying, “By the way, when are we going to have dinner with uncle Ben and Sally? I’d like to do it sooner, rather than later. They’re great to be with.”

Jennifer B simply changes the topic and remains upbeat. She does not reward her mother’s remarks with a reply or, worse, with a fight, which her mother seems to enjoy.

Jennifer C takes a third approach. She says, “Mum, my friends are my friends. Since you don’t have to spend time with them, I’m not sure why you get so upset by them. I think it would be better for both of us if we simply didn’t talk about them.”

Jennifer C confronts the issue directly and suggests a remedy.

Finally, Jennifer D takes an even different approach. She says, “Mum, I know you don’t care much for my friends, but I’m not sure why. They’re all so different, but you don’t seem to like any of them.”

Jennifer D wants to get to the bottom of it and ‘work things out’. Jennifer A reacts, while B, C, and D respond in different ways. The Jennifers in B, C, and D, have one thing in common – holding negative emotions in check. Which response do you prefer and why?

3.  Prepare yourself for emotionally challenging conversations.

“I realise that Evelyn gets my goat easily, so I’ll be more careful when I’m around her.”

“I don’t get excited about other people’s successes. So I don’t celebrate with others easily. I’d be a better friend if I were to get more involved with my friends in the ups and downs of their lives.”

Susan says to a friend, “Given all the mess at his job, I know that Tom is probably going to come home one of these days and say that we’re going to have to put off our vacation. Blowing sky high won’t get us anywhere. So, I have to figure out how to handle it.”

Say the same Tom, who is happily married to Susan, works with an attractive colleague, Nell. Tom is worried Nell finds him attractive too and would like to “take things further.” Tom has prepared himself for this possibility. One evening Tom is having a drink with Nell at a conference hotel. During the conversation Nell makes a sexual overture.  Tom is emotionally prepared for this: “Nell, you’re a wonderfully attractive person, but for a whole host of reasons, I’m not right for you.” She replies, “Just thought I’d give it a try.” They continue to discuss other issues.

4. Use your emotions to motivate yourself.

Use your feelings, emotions and moods either to get yourself to do things or to delay doing things until a better time:

“I really feel good, so I’ll have that talk with Felicity that I’ve been putting off. I’m in the right mood.”

“I’m finally annoyed enough with Claire to challenge her selfish behaviour.”

“I’m down in the dumps. I’ll get over it. But until then, I’m not going to inflict myself on others. I’ll mess around on the internet for a while.”

“I’m too angry to talk to Martin right now. I’ll be in a better state of mind tomorrow.”

5. Use your emotional intelligence to side-step avoidable negative emotional reactions from the other person.

“Carl’s in a bad mood. I’ll talk to him about the problem with the furnace later.”

“Edmund is easily hurt when you criticise his brother, Ray. Edmund knows that Ray has problems, but Edmund doesn’t want them shoved in his face.”

6. Learn to manage your anger.

We get angry about so many things:

• Someone has done something that annoys you.
• Someone hasn’t done something that they promised to do.
• Someone has just made what you consider to be  a snide remark.
• Someone has a point of view you strongly disagree with.
• Someone is annoying you by telling what you consider to be a very self-serving story.

It’s so easy to respond angrily with things such as, “That’s a really stupid thing to say,” or, “Look who’s talking! You’re worse, far worse, than me.”

The key is to keep your mouth firmly clamped shut to prevent your knee-jerk reaction coming out. Instead you need to think before speaking,and respond rather than react.

Here’s a worked example:

You’re in an aeroplane on a short flight. The kid in the seat behind you kicks the back of your seat once in a while.

Is this matter really important? You ask yourself, “Is the occasional bump I get, even though I don’t like it, a big deal?”

Is what you’re thinking appropriate to the situation? If you’re saying such things to yourself as, “His mother doesn’t give a hoot about the kid’s behaviour,” or, “She thinks it’s cute,” or, “She’s probably the type that doesn’t know what discipline is,” then you’re probably not in control. You could just as well have said to yourself things like, “I don’t envy her having to fly with a youngster,” or, “I bet the kid gets bored being strapped in like this.” Or other sentiments: “It’s a short flight. Forget it.”

Can you modify this situation in ways that will ease your anger? You see a free seat across the aisle and move with no fanfare. You smile genuinely at the mother and say, “He’s full of life, isn’t he?” You say to the flight attendant, “The kid behind me is a bit careless. I don’t want to be an ogre. What’s the best way of handling it?” Or, since the flight is short, do nothing.

Is taking action worth the trouble? “Get back into your reading. Chicago’s just a half hour away.”

The pay-off from venting anger in conversations is almost invariably poor. This is not to suggest that you will always be this rational. But if you have a framework for assessing anger-provoking situations, you can use it quickly, almost instinctively.

7.  Take responsibility for your emotional responses.

Ned is needling you about your letting yourself be fooled by a fast-talking salesman. Substitute “I let him make me angry,” for “He makes me angry,” in your thinking. Then choose an option for dealing with your anger that makes sense for the situation.

Don’t let others get to you. “He gets my goat,” is a common enough sentiment. The truth is that some of us go round ‘goat in hand’, making it easy for almost anyone to get it. If you are thin-skinned, find ways of reducing your sensitivity. You can say to yourself, “I’m a sensitive person, all right, and that’s not bad. But too often I’m sensitive about the wrong things.”

If you need to vent, choose a sympathetic third party. Get things off your chest with someone who understands you. Then you can discuss the best way of handling the situation that made you angry in the first place.

Put the reasons for your anger out in the open. While there is a case for restraining the expression of anger, there is no reason for not letting the other know why you are angry. Even then, be careful not to build such a solid case that your conversational partner has no room to move. Don’t nail people to the wall with your logic.

Consider the difference between the following two approaches to responding to someone who has vented his anger.

Conor and Alice wanted to have at least three children, but nature supplied them with only one, Melanie. There have been ongoing disagreements about the best way to relate to Melanie, how she should be brought up, and so forth. They have been talking about some problems she has been having with other children.

During the conversation, Conor says somewhat heatedly, “You’re just too protective. You can’t put her into a cocoon and pretend other children don’t exist. You can’t so arrange her life that nothing ever goes wrong. It’s unfair to her. You’re really protecting yourself. I think you’re jealous about any relationship she has. Maybe even her relationship with me.”

As is often the case when people get very angry, Conor says more than he means. He exaggerates to build his case. In the process, he says hurtful things.

So what is Alice to do? A number of different dramas might unfold. Here are some possibilities. She might retaliate. And this could turn the conversation into a battle. Or Conor’s attack might put Alice on the defensive, in which case she might try to change the topic of the conversation or even end it. In either case, the conversation would fail to continue on a constructive note and important things won’t get said.

Alice chooses neither of these options. Instead, she pauses a bit, then says, “I know you’re angry … We’ve never really come to grips with not being able to have more children and what this has done to each of us … It’s probably time we did … The point you’re making is that I haven’t handled my share of the problem very well … Well, that’s true. But I also think that we need to talk about what we’ve been doing as a couple.”

Alice does not retaliate with an angry outburst. Instead of accusing Conor of being unfair or telling him how poorly he has handled their mutual problem, she admits her own responsibility and suggests that it would be good for both of them to have a dialogue they have been putting off. Her emotional control at the service of dialogue might well help Conor to channel his energy in more productive ways. The point is ­- you have a choice.