Shortly after 9/11 I was asked to speak or rather calm down a group of service professionals and offer words of reassurance.  Something I had learned from >30 years as a psychotherapist turned Fortune 500 executive coach when helping people to calm down is that it is much less important what you tell others than what you enable them to tell you and in the process tell themselves that results in them calming themselves down.  When you do the latter, people vent, then exhale, then relax and are then more open to engaging with you to discuss their options.

Therefore when I met with this group of 30 tense individuals that included bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers, accountants, real estate agents and others, I asked each person to take two minutes to tell the story of a time in their life that they never thought they’d get through, but did and became the stronger and wiser for it.

One by one each attendee spoke about a very tough time for them.  One of the most memorable stories for me was when a very civil female CPA who because of her being so well mannered was seen as “lightweight” calmly told about how on the day she graduated college and was about to be able to start paying back her sizable loans, she was given total custody of her 12 year old brother.  She wasn’t impressed by it, but you could see the room collectively realize what a “heavyweight” solid person she was.

An equally memorable story came from a very smart and very dry humored criminal defense attorney, not known for showing much emotion or vulnerability.  He told us how his last child had been born very premature and how each day he would visit the intensive care unit and sit by her and reach in to touch her hand.  He then started to choke up – as did the entire room – when he said that when his daughter would grab onto his baby finger with all the tenacity of a little living thing fighting for life, he told himself that if she could be that strong, so could he.

Interestingly, after everyone finished their stories, everyone in the room had a >90 % recall of what the others had said, whereas that group would be hard pressed to remember what each other did professionally despite meeting every month for years.

The most important outcome of that meeting was a collective emotional exhale, deep bonding and a true belief that all of us were strong and would make it through.  Furthermore, in that collective exhale, people felt bonded by both their vulnerabilities and strengths.  Being alone with negative emotions nearly always makes them worse.  Being alone with fear can rapidly turn into panic; being alone with frustration can rapidly turn into anger; being alone with disappointment can rapid turn into discouragement and even worse, despair.  Being open with others by sharing stories of what I refer to as the “road back from hell” can prevent a bad situation becoming worse.

If you want to calm the fears of others around you and you, yourself, have everyone share such a story of making it through a difficult time that they didn’t think they would.  Build upon those stories by having people deconstruct what were the key components that they can now use to help them through their current fears.

What would also help the experience is for people to share the name of someone they’re grateful to that helped them through that time and what that person did.  There is something calming and emotionally restoring when you focus on gratitude for a known deed that helped you, instead of fear of the unknown.

Doing this exercise can help restore a sense of calm and re-center you and the people around you.

* During the funeral procession of FDR, one man was overcome with emotion.  The man next to him said, “You’re so overcome with emotion, did you know President Roosevelt?”  The first man replied, “No, but he knew me.”  Isn’t that something we could all use from our elected officials?

One of the places you can observe fearful aggression in full display is in many of the politicians who are running for office during this election especially as they are feeling more desperate.

There is a nifty way to see fearful aggression for yourself. In the following pictures, take an index card or business card and block out the person’s mouth and look at their eyes and then block out their eyes and look at their mouth.

When we look at a whole face the eyes and mouths seem to balance each other, but when you look at either one or the other you can see the tentativeness, the anger, the fear and maybe even the paranoia.

More often than not the eyes when viewed alone will reveal the inner emotions while the mouth is your way of fending off or trying to convince the outside world of something that your eyes reveal you may not be feeling or even believe. Here is the rub. When we look at the whole face we may not consciously observe the disconnect between the eyes and mouths, but unconsciously we pick it up and it creates dissonance. Dissonance is the feeling we get when what we see and hear doesn’t match what we feel and it causes us to pull back. An even better definition that a friend of mine shared with me is: Dissonance = What are you going to do for me?/What are you going to do to me? And when what we feel politicians are going to do to us exceeds what we believe they are going to do for us, it results in the current mistrust that we have toward our elected officials.

Interestingly, when you look at pictures of young children under the age of 7 you will often see that their eyes and mouths are in sync that when they are happy both look happy, when they are sad both look sad, and when they are scared both look scared. But after age 7 they begin to learn from their role models (you and me) and to deceive and that is when you begin to see their eyes and mouths start to be out of sync.

To find out more about Mark’s coaching, leadership training or speaking explore the menu to the left and contact him at: mgoulston@markgoulston.com

Catch Mark’s recent interview, “Don’t Sabotage Yourself” on Total Career Success radio.