The worst way to calm someone down

Think back a time when you were really angry, frustrated, freaked out, and someone told you to, "Relax. It's gonna be fine. Take a deep breath. Chill." Did this advice make you want to:

A) take a deep breath and relax

OR

B) Take a crowbar to that person's head and THEN relax

If you're like most people, and you're being honest, the answer is "B".

But it's the most intuitive thing we usually do -- either out of an honest attempt to calm them down, or because we think they're being irrational, ridiculous, over dramatic, type-A, or immature. In other words, we don't think their state is justified.

One of the most fascinating things I saw last week at the Parelli conference was a demonstration of taking three different extremely nervous (what they refer to as "right brain") horses--fearful, pacing, tense--and bring them to a relaxed state. What I expected was what we're all taught to do (or do instinctively with both pets and people)... a process of trying to be as calm and reassuring as possible. After all, becoming excitable ourselves can't possibly do anything but add more feul... right?

But what I saw was just the opposite.

The trainer, Linda Parelli, walked near the first horse and started pacing with him. When he turned, she turned. When he stopped to look at something he was afraid of, she stopped to look. When he started to run, she started to run. When he was tight with h is head up, she tighted her body as well. She just kept mirroring him like that for quite a few minutes, and then ever so slowly she started to "lead" just a little by getting to the point where he would normally turn around and taking just one step past it. The horse would follow, but then that was his limit and he'd turn, and she'd turn.

Over the course of 15-20 minutes, she eventually got him to a point where he was paying attention to her and letting her help him go past his earlier limits. Most importantly, whenever he relaxed--even if just for a split second--she would relax as well. But the instant he tensed up, she'd tense her body as well. Soon you could see a dramatic transformation--where the horse was eventually trying to figure out how to get her to calm down... and learning that if he relaxed, then she would. So the horse was believing that it was his job to "get this crazy human to relax."

Linda did variations of this with three different horses, all dramatic examples of how this seemingly counterintuitive approach could work a small miracle.

Obviously horses don't think like people. They have prey animal brains, and operate largely on the instincts of life-preservation. But still, I couldn't help but think how much more pissed off I get when I'm really upset and someone tells me to calm down. How completely unhelpful it is when I'm nervous and worried about something and someone tells me to "chill".

The foundation of many customer service training programs is to give an angry customer your full attention but remain as rational and cool and calm as possible. We're taught that if we match the customer's right-brain emotion with an emotional response, we'll make things worse. And that's true... at least if we respond defensively and especially if we get angry in response.

But still... maybe instead of always being the one who is "more rational than thou" when the other person is upset, maybe sometimes in some scenarios it would help to at first be a little less calm in response. (Not angry at the person who's complaining--that definitely WOULD make things much worse.)

But there is another aspect of this that Linda also uses at times, and it goes beyond rapport and into something a little stranger (and deliciously tempting). I am NOT suggesting that this is a good, useful, ethical idea for people, but I'll mention it anyway because I think it's both funny and--with horses--seems to work. The idea is that you not only match the horse in "craziness", but even exceed him in some cases by just acting even MORE crazy (not angry or aggressive, just nuts)... so that the horse thinks, "Geez... I was scared but THIS human is crazy. I'm going to back away slowly and..." So with this approach, the horse calms himself down because you gave him something new to think about ("how can I get HER to stop being so crazy?") and that breaks his emotional pattern.

Just think about it... imagine what would happen if someone "goes off on you" and rather than reacting in a purely calm and rational way (or getting angry), you just suddenly act completely nuts. ; )