Blog: Marshall Rosenberg

Most of us were taught to speak and think "Jackal." This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. It provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. "Giraffe" bids us to speak from the heart, to talk about what is going on for us-without judging others. You give people an opportunity to say yes, although you respect no for an answer. (continued)

For me the subject of anger is very much a political issue. To me anger is not a central issue and I'm worried about thinking of anger as a problem. Thinking about anger as a problem is like a man who is in the habit of smoking in bed and catching the house on fire and he notices there's always this damn fire alarm going off. He gets really annoyed and he keeps changing houses because he doesn't like dealing with the fire alarm. (continued)