Your partner, boss, or friend looks at you patiently with baited breath. They drum their fingers on the kitchen table or pat their knees as they wait for you to talk. The silence is deafening. Forgetting that they are talking to a forty-year old man and not a child of four, they ask, “So what do you have to say for yourself?” Or perhaps these tried and failed words are spoken, while you are lost in your history, “I don’t hear anything,” “You do know it is your turn to talk.”
The temporarily mute person searches the corners of their mind for the right words that can be used to resolve the conflict before shrugging and blurting out,” I don’t have anything to say,” “What do you want me to say?” “Just write it up and I’ll confess and sign,” or they just storm out of the room.
The words won’t come. Hours later, the dumbfounded person finally thinks of what they should have said and repeats the responses over and over in their heads. They return to the logical, reasonable, rational, choice-making, word choosing portion of the brain and then analyze what went wrong. They realize they weren’t being grilled by an irate parent but just or angry husband or wife. They understand it wasn’t the junior high principal that caught them smoking when they were thirteen but rather a boss who wanted to know why the project they were working on wasn’t finished.
The right words come too late and we feel foolish, small, and little and certainly less powerful then we usually are. The tightening in the chest, the clinched jaw, and the grinding our teeth at night are all still there. The tension and stress is locked in the body, and is not set free until they get the release they long for, which may be followed by rage.
For more information go to johnleebooks.com and read The Anger Solution: The Proven Method for Attaining Calm and Developing Healthy, Long-Lasting Relationships, Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately, The Missing Peace--all available on Amazon.com.
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