How do I help someone see their anger when they can’t see it themselves?

Simple question, but it's such a difficult question to help an unpredictably angry person. And it's difficult for at least two reasons. One is that angry people tend not to see their anger as a problem, because anger tends to feel like a righteous reaction against some kind of injustice. Another is that angry people, they can combust in a moment, and so it's a bit frightening to raise a difficult issue with them when you don't know what the response will be. For us, something that's really hard means that we pray; we recognize immediately that this is beyond us. We don't have skills that are simply going to make this happen well. So we pray. What do we pray for? If it would be me, I would pray that I would be able to love rather than defend, love rather than react, love and consider what would be best for this particular person. I would pray that I have courage to be able to speak words that are important, important for that person, important even for our relationship. I want to pray for words that are apt, that are suitable, that are potentially hearable. I can't control a person's hearing, but at the same time, skillful, wise words are attractive and they're able to be heard by a person who is willing. So the first thing we do of course is we pray.

Then we continue our preparation. We gather specifics. What are two recent events that you have observed in which the person was angry? And then you consider what might be some apt and gentle and humble and clear words by which you can begin a conversation. You might ask others to help you with this, to pray for you with this, and then you move toward the person. The only thing you can actually script most likely would be the first sentence or the question you would ask. And it could be something like this, this would be a kind of humble introduction to it: “I’d like to be able to talk with you about something and frankly, it is really hard for me to talk about it. In some ways, believe it or not, I am a bit frightened to talk about it, but I think for you and for us together, it's important for me to raise this. What I'd like to talk about are times recently where I've seen you angry.” And then you can speak about the angry event. That's about as much as you can script. You can never ultimately predict how the other person is going to respond. Well, here are some of the things you can do. Perhaps the person will respond in a way that they will blame you or they will blame something else. And if you have no idea what to say, you can say, “Well, okay, I hear what you're saying. Could I take some time to think about this? Because I believe that this is important, but I really don't know how to respond. It's probably better for me to consider this first. And could we talk about this this evening, could we talk about it tomorrow morning?” You see what we're aiming for? This is a very difficult process and it demands a certain skillfulness, but it's available to us all, which means that there is a certain humble simplicity that we bring to it.

So the person perhaps blamed you and you say, well, you can say, “Yes, I understand what you're saying, or I don't understand what you're saying. Could you help me to understand how I contributed to this?” In which case you listen, and where you believe you can own it, you own it, and then you get back to the point that you began. “Now, could we go back, and here's the part that is difficult for me to say: Your words leave a trail of fear at times. It feels as though in these situations that I've identified, you're declaring a kind of war. You're using power to enforce rather than the power to love.” Then you hear what the person has to say. If you have no idea how to respond, you could say, “Could I think about what you're saying? Could I pray about what you're saying?” Or could you work it back to the task at hand: “Could you please try to listen? This is so difficult for me to do. In some ways it's frightening for me to do. And the last thing in the world I want is for fear to be part of our relationship. Could we talk about this together? Then, if you have no idea how to proceed, courage and love—it compels you to say this is important. The nature of anger is it is unlikely to fade on its own. The nature of anger is it persists in even a more flagrant form. So what do you do? Rather than give in to your fear, you pray, you get help from other people, and you come back and you perhaps ask the person the same question: “This is going to be hard for me to do, but I believe that this is so important for us. If there's a better way that I can speak these things, please help me. But I'm asking if you would listen to what it is that I'm saying. What you've done, it's hard and it's been sad for me. Your anger feels murderous at times, and that's not, I believe, what you want in this relationship.”

You can see what I'm suggesting is that there is no script that is going to move you through this successfully. It is wisdom that is able to make decisions in the moment. And if you don't know what to say, you don't say it. You say, “Could you give me a chance to think about this?” It's love that keeps the task before the two of you and persists in it. And if you find that you get nowhere, what does wisdom do? This is important, so you consider with the person, “We need help. Where can we go for help?” or “I am going to ask for help.” And we continue to pray and we continue to move forward in courage and in love.