How we respond  

Imagine you are hanging something on the wall. You are hammering in a nail and it stops going in. Is your first reaction to think, “Well, there must be something behind this wall in this spot where I was going to put this nail. I am not going to be able to hammer this nail in place. I will just choose a different place to hang this.” 

  

Or, are you like most people? Do you hit the nail harder?  

  

We tend to hit the nail harder.  

  

We all have needs. Having our needs  met leads to security. Needs that are unmet can lead to feelings of insecurity. And we all have needs, as much as we sometimes hate to admit it. If someone has had a need met and now is not having that need met, they tend to do whatever is necessary to get themselves to the comfortable place of having that need met again.  

Expressions of anger are often the result of an unmet need. The often unconscious nature of an unmet need comes out as furrowed brows and raised voices. Have you ever tried saying the same thing, just louder? Maybe you said it more forcefully?  

  

If you have been successful in the past doing something a certain way - or even if you have not been successful but think that’s the way it should be done - when that way does not work our first reaction can be to try to continue using the same strategy. An awareness of anger as an expression of an unmet need can change our perspective and the way that we respond. 

  

What if instead of louder or more forceful, our reaction was to try something different? What if that was our first thought?  What would this look like? 

  

What if our first thought was engaging to better understand, rather than retaliation? “Help me understand why you think that? Help me understand why you said that that way?”  

  

What if our first thought was to step out of the conflict and look for the unmet need before engaging in the back-and-forth of counter aggression and escalation? We can not always choose how someone engages with us, but we can choose how we respond.  

 

Kyle McClure, 
LCPC, LMAC 

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