Author: Nigel Brunsdon

When someone is agitated or in distress, how we carry ourselves can make a huge difference. Non-verbal cues—like posture, breathing, and personal space—can either calm a situation or escalate it further. The following tips offer guidance on using body language to reduce tension, show respect, and create a safer, more grounded interaction.

Some things to keep in mind in terms of body posture or non-verbal communication that will reduce overall stress and agitation include:

• Breathing—As discussed, breath literally tells the brain to calm itself. Remember to keep breathing as deeply and calmly as possible during the incident. Avoid holding your breath or breathing rapidly as these behaviors can increase cortisol levels and tension. This can take practice.
• Try to always be at the same eye level. Encourage the person to be seated, but if they need to stand, you stand up also. Try to never be in a position looking down on the participant.
• If possible, allow extra physical space.
• Do not turn your back on the participant. This can feel disrespectful, may agitate them, and puts you in a more vulnerable position.
• Do not stand directly in front of a participant. Stand at an angle, it is less confrontational and allows you to sidestep away if needed.
• Maintain a full-leg “kick distance” away from the agitated person.
• Do not maintain eye contact as this can feel challenging and may exacerbate the situation. Allow the participant to break their gaze and look away.
• Do not point or shake your finger.
• DO NOT smile. This could look like mockery or anxiety.
• Do not touch, even if some touching is generally culturally appropriate and usual in your setting. Agitated participants may misinterpret physical contact as hostile or threatening.
• Keep your hands visible and relaxed, not fisted or hidden.

Once you have grounded yourself during an escalated situation, next engage in active listening with the person who is agitated. This can seem counterintuitive or difficult when you are dealing with somebody who is, for example, screaming at you, and it may feel like you’re rewarding them for being completely irrational. But it is key to getting them more centered and grounded so they’re less agitated and less likely to become a danger to themselves or others.

Active listening is a term often used to describe a general approach to listening that helps you gain more information, improve your understanding of other points of view, and work cooperatively with superiors, subordinates, and peers. This approach requires not just that you learn and remember more of what the other party has said, but also that you communicate your interest and involvement to that party as well. Active listening requires effective use of verbal and nonverbal communication, as well as mental and emotional discipline. It is actually two different things: Both nonverbal active listening skills and verbal active listening skills.

Active listeners:

• Look and sound interested in the speaker. By conveying your interest, you can encourage the speaker to communicate more extensively and to clarify and expand on thoughts and feelings. Communicate your interest by maintaining good eye contact. (In American culture and many Western cultures, this means looking into the other person’s eyes much, though not all, of the time. Too much eye contact may make the speaker feel self-conscious, but too little will make them feel ignored). Maintain a body position and facial expression that indicate attentiveness, not boredom. Nod encouragingly to show understanding and interest. Avoid drawing, playing with your pen, or other distracting behaviors. (Conversely, try not to be distracted by the speaker’s mannerisms.) Use vocalizations such as “uh-huh” and “yes” to encourage them to continue.
• Adopt the speaker’s point of view. You will understand and remember the speaker’s points most effectively if you try to see things from their point of view, at least initially. Try to listen, not to interrupt, finish sentences, or rush the speaker. Most of all, try to suppress your initial reactions and to hear and understand the speaker’s perspective. Try to listen and respond from the speaker’s frame of reference, not your own. Listen for feelings, not just words. Try to empathize with their position. Depending on the context and purpose of your communication, you may later shift modes into a discussion in which you also present your own point of view; but to be a good active listener, you shouldn’t do that until you thoroughly understand the speaker’s point of view.
• Clarify the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. You will listen better if you are not talking too much yourself. When you are in active listening mode, limit your talking to things that will contribute to getting the fullest informational and emotional content from the speaker. Avoid inserting your own marginally-related experiences and minimize interruptions. When the speaker pauses, ask open-ended questions (e.g., “How do you feel about X?” “Tell me about X.” “What concerns you about X?” ) rather than questions that can be answered in a single word or phrase (” Are you satisfied with X?” “Is X on schedule?”). Use reflective response techniques (described in more detail below) to check the accuracy of your understanding of the speaker’s ideas and especially feelings (e.g., “So you are frustrated at your inability to progress on X?”). You may adapt active listening techniques to different types of listening, with your role ranging from minimal intervention to more active solicitation and even into giving advice, depending on your needs and the situation.
• Offer reflective responses. Reflection, or reflective response technique, borrowed from certain types of counseling methods, is designed to elicit the speaker’s thoughts and feelings as fully as possible. It is a way of helping someone explore their own personal feelings. This technique involves reflecting back to the speaker what you believe they have said in order to verify (or clarify) your understanding and to encourage the speaker to continue elaborating on their point of view. Reflect the speaker’s thoughts and feelings: Restate what you believe the speaker has said to check for the accuracy of your understanding (e.g., “So you couldn’t finish the assignment on time.” “Then you think the time allotted was inadequate?”). Even more importantly, reflect back the speaker’s feelings as you have heard or inferred them (e.g., “You seem to feel anxious because you couldn’t finish the assignment on time.”). This interpretation of feelings is more tricky because it often requires you to read between the lines, to infer feelings underlying what has been said (e.g., “You seem angry about the reorganization,” rather than ” So the department was reorganized.”). Thus you may want to use wording or voice tone to phrase your inferences as questions, rather than statements (e.g., “So you feel anxious because you couldn’t finish the assignment on time.” becomes “Do you feel anxious because you couldn’t finish the assignment on time?”).
• Respond rather than lead the conversation. Let the speaker’s thoughts and feelings be your guide in the conversation. Don’t guide the conversation by asking questions or interjecting ideas or suggestions that lead the speaker into new areas of interest to you (e.g., “Have you thought about X?” “Maybe you should ask about Y.”). Instead, respond to and reflect back what was actually said or what you sense is implied by what was said (e.g., “So you feel trapped by this project?”). Try to stay within the speaker’s frame of reference, rather than asking questions or making suggestions that come from your own frame of reference. Even asking “Why?” may distract the speaker from one line of thoughts or feelings into defending and justifying thoughts, feelings, or actions.
• Respond to feelings, rather than content. As suggested earlier, feelings are generally a better indication of personal meanings than content is. Thus you will help the speaker’s self-exploration more by responding to their feelings (e.g., “So you resent Susan’s frequent absences?” ) than to the content (e.g., “How often was Susan out of the office?”) There is a corollary to this guideline: You can get at a person’s feelings better by responding to the more personal aspects of what they say. Whenever possible, choose the specific, personal points (e.g., “So you and Inez disagree about what goes in outreach kits?”) rather than the abstract generalizations (e.g., “So everybody is just doing whatever they want?”) to respond to and reflect back at the speaker. This encourages them to explore those personal feelings more thoroughly and to make clear their own assumptions.