Listening to anger by hearing the collective pain behind it

Beautiful lil thread. Relatedly, a technique I have for listening to someone who is angry with me, when it feels like their anger is too big for the situation and my individual role in it, is to imagine everyone else who's ever been angry at anyone about the same sort of thing.

Nick @nickcammarata · Nov 29, 2020

To me it’s sort of beautiful that humans usually repeat roughly the same kinds of mistakes When I make a big mistake I imagine myself in a pub drinking and singing about it with people throughout history who made it too

Jan 19, 2021

So someone's mad because I didn't text when I was going to be late, and they had to wait. Can I feel the collective structural sense of what it feels like to be in that situation, and how anyone would feel that way?

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Jan 13, 2021

stages/levels of reconciliation: 0: fuck you 1: space 2: flat apology/forgiveness 3: empathic apology/forgiveness 4: I can see how you could have done that 5: I can see how you couldn't have done anything else 6: I can see how anybody would have done that t.co/RueqHgKgkQ

I get this image of a chorus of every time anyone has ever said "why didn't you tell me you'd be late?!" It's cacophonous to actually simulate hearing it all at once, but the point is to feel the intensity of the collective unheardness of this particular pain, as a shared pain.

There's an aspect for me in this of kind of burning off karma or something. The more I can really listen to this person in front of me and hear their anger, the more humanity can collectively be heard about this shape of thing.

This also applies to my own experience, in that moment. Maybe the way they're chewing me out is connected to a deep archetype, but maybe the experience I had of not knowing how to do anything different is too! I don't have to *like* them yelling at me.

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Dec 8, 2020

idk who needs to hear this, but…   You don't have to like it. That thing you don't like? That book? That person? That situation? That awful sound? That thing your partner/parent/roommate/kid does? You don't have to like it. You get to have whatever experience you're having.

I also don't have to sit and listen to them yelling at me at all if it doesn't make sense to me to do that. Important to not feel trapped in such situations! If the frame I'm offering here feels like it empowers you to do something you want to do, then great! No obligation tho!