This is a defensive page and its main argument is that most confrontations are avoided rather than handled. Nearly every incident that turns physical had a point, several minutes earlier, at which somebody could have walked away.
The reason people do not walk away is that it feels like losing. Recognising that feeling for what it is, and going anyway, is the actual skill.
The skill is leaving
Leave early, before it would be embarrassing to.
That is the whole page in one line. Leaving is available long before it becomes obvious that you should, and it stops being available quickly once things develop.
- Change your route. Cross the road, turn round, go into a shop, take the next street.
- Leave the situation rather than the argument. You do not have to finish the conversation.
- Do not go back for the last word. This is a specific and common way people get hurt.
- Property is replaceable. A phone, a bag, a bike, a car. If somebody wants it and the alternative is a confrontation, let them have it and ring the police afterwards. Nothing you own is worth an injury.
Being right is not a defence against being hurt. The argument you win in the street costs you nothing if you were going to lose it anyway and costs you a great deal if you win it.
What stress does to you
Worth knowing because it explains why plans made calmly fail in the moment.
Under threat, attention narrows. You stop noticing things at the edges, including the exit, the other person arriving, and the traffic.
Fine motor control degrades. Hands shake, small tasks become difficult, and anything fiddly becomes impossible.
Complex speech stops working, both giving and receiving. Long sentences do not land. Instructions with several parts are not followed.
Time distorts, and memory afterwards is unreliable and incomplete. This is normal and it matters when you are giving a statement later.
The practical consequences:
- Keep everything simple. Short sentences, one instruction at a time, repeated.
- Decide in advance, because you will not think well in the moment. Household defaults do the deciding for you. See meeting points and a household plan.
- Expect the other person to be similarly impaired. They may genuinely not be able to process what you are saying, which is why complicated reasoning fails.
Distance and position
Distance is time and time is options. Almost everything good comes from having more of both.
- Make space early, and do it in a way that does not read as a challenge. Stepping back while talking is easy and unremarkable.
- Keep something between you if there is anything: a table, a car, a gate, a counter.
- Turn slightly side on, which is a natural conversational posture and is not squaring up.
- Hands visible and open, at about chest height. Not pointing, not clenched, not in your pockets. Open palms are read as non-threatening in nearly every culture.
- Know where your exit is, and do not let yourself be moved away from it.
- Do not touch them, and do not let yourself be backed into a corner, a doorway or a narrow space.
How to speak
Quieter and slower than they are. People match the register they are given, and matching a raised voice raises it further.
- Short sentences. Under stress, long ones are noise.
- Use their words back. "You've been waiting an hour" rather than "I understand your frustration". The first shows you heard; the second is a phrase people have learned to distrust.
- Ask a simple question, which requires them to think and interrupts the momentum. "What do you need?" or "What would sort this out?"
- Agree with anything you can honestly agree with. It costs nothing and it removes the argument.
- Give your attention. Most anger that is reachable is asking to be taken seriously.
- Say what you are doing if you move. "I'm going to step back" rather than stepping back silently.
- Silence is a tool. Letting a pause sit often does more than the next sentence would.
The phrases that make it worse
The theme is that all of them add humiliation, and humiliation is the fuel.
Giving them a way out
The technique that resolves the most situations.
Most confrontations continue because backing down would mean losing face. If you provide a route out that costs them nothing, a surprising number of people take it immediately.
- Offer a face-saving reason to stop. "Look, I've got this wrong, let's leave it" costs you nothing at all and gives them the exit.
- Take the blame if it ends it. You are not in court. Being seen to be right has no value here.
- Let them have the last word. Genuinely. Walk away while they are still talking and let them believe they finished it.
- Do not require an apology, an admission or an acknowledgement.
- Reduce the audience. People perform for onlookers, and an audience makes backing down much harder.
When somebody is not reachable
Somebody in your home
Afterwards
- Ring 999 if it is happening or somebody is hurt, 101 otherwise. Report it even if nothing was taken; patterns matter and your report may be the one that completes one.
- Write down what happened as soon as you can, while it is fresh. Memory after a stressful event is unreliable and degrades fast.
- Preserve anything relevant and do not tidy up until told.
- Expect a reaction. Shakiness, poor sleep, replaying it, irritability and being jumpy are all normal for a while after a frightening event, in adults and children alike. If it does not settle over a few weeks, that is worth talking to a GP about.
- Talk about it with the household, especially with children, in plain unfrightening terms. See teaching children safety.