There are times when violence is inevitable. There are times when you can’t avoid or escape being targeted and times when it is impossible to de-escalate a situation, that under a different set of conditions may have been possible etc. Unfortunately, some people can’t accept this and try to alter reality so that every potentially violent situation can be resolved in a non-physical manner e.g., there’s always a way to “talk” yourself out of danger etc. In this article, I want to look at when de-escalation isn’t an effective option, even when an incident may seem to lend itself to this approach. At the very top-level, violence can be classified as being one of two types: Premeditated or Spontaneous. Premeditated acts of violence are those that are planned (to at least some degree), and have defined goals e.g., street robberies where a predatory individual, aims to acquire money, a phone etc., from an intended victim are a good example of premeditated incidents. Spontaneous incidents by contrast aren’t planned and have no defined goals e.g., if you spill a drink over somebody and they become aggressive towards you they don’t really know what they want or need to resolve the situation, they simply feel there is no alternative but to act violently towards you. Premeditated situations don’t lend themselves to de-escalation because the individual has a goal which they are trying to achieve and will rarely settle for anything less than that, however Spontaneous situations may i.e., it may be possible to help an aggressor find a non-violent alternative/goal that will resolve the situation peacefully. I have written a lot about de-escalation tools and processes however in this article I want to look at factors which may prevent incidents from being de-escalated even when they fall into the category of Spontaneous incidents (that have no defined goals/outcomes).
The degree to which an incident is situationally or characterologically driven will largely determine whether de-escalation will be successful or not. There are some individuals who are predisposed to using violence as a solution to any and every situation. This might be because they lack the social skills to navigate a situation where a perceived injustice has been committed against them, and/or because their personality type is one where they tend to react in a highly emotional and volatile fashion to any situation where they feel/believe they are the injured party etc. There are some people who don’t want to avoid using violence to deal with social situations and are not seeking or looking for non-violent alternatives and outcomes to an incident. It is not so much that these individuals are looking for trouble, but rather that when trouble “finds” them, they would rather deal with it physically. If an incident is situationally driven by the components of the incident, such as being focused on what has happened, rather than who it has happened to, then de-escalation is much more likely to be successful. If an individual who has had an injustice committed against them would rather seek a non-violent outcome to a situation – such as having had a drink spilt over them – but is simply in a highly emotional state because of what has happened, then they are more likely to respond favorably to de-escalation i.e., they want to be able to calm down, but simply don’t know how to given the circumstances of the situation. This illustrates the point that de-escalation and conflict resolution are two separate things. De-escalation being the process to remove the emotion from an incident in order to get to a point where the conflict can be resolved. Another way to look at this is to try and determine if an individual is “internally” or “externally” motivated/driven i.e., is the incident just a trigger that sets somebody off (internal intent) or is the incident primarily about what has happened (externally motivated). One practical way to determine this is to recognize when somebody engages in “Repetitive Looping”, where they keep repeating the injustice of what has happened to them, usually with an increase in volume as they go. This is a good indicator that the individual is not looking for a non-violent resolution but is instead getting themselves ready to use physical force.
If a person is looking to use violence in an impersonal manner, then a situation is unlikely to be resolved using de-escalation. If a person is looking to use you as a vehicle or object, rather than seeing you as a person, in a somewhat emotionally detached manner, then de-escalation is unlikely to be an effective solution to the situation. De-escalation works best when a person has become emotional due to an injustice, they believe has been committed against them, something which they have taken personally. If, in a street robbery you are simply a means to an end – a vehicle – then the only thing that the mugger is interested in is taking/acquiring your possessions, they are not seeing you as a person; and are not taking things “personally” i.e., they are simply concerned with the “transaction” they want to take place. De-escalation is best suited to events where an individual feels personally offended and can view you as a person too. If somebody has a drink spilt over them, their emotional state, is a result of several things, such as embarrassment, social awkwardness, disrespect, injustice, shame etc., the drink itself and even the wet clothes are usually secondary to these things. If these other “personal” issues can be resolved and dealt with – through de-escalation – then it is likely that a non-violent outcome can be achieved. This is why it is vital to focus on restoring these things which the individual feels they have lost, such as the status they have in the group they are with, rather than focusing on the drink/action that caused the conflict; this may have to be dealt with as well, however not ignoring, denying or discounting these personal and social issues, whilst giving the individual not just a face-saving way out of the conflict but one where they can actually restore their respect and standing etc., is what allows de-escalation to be effective.
It is important to note that de-escalation isn’t about “talking your way out” of a situation by using clever arguments, and making points that the other person is unable to come back at you from etc. It’s about dealing with the other person’s emotional state, and emotional people are not operating from a rational place. It is vital to be able to recognize that even when a potentially violent situation appears to be spontaneous in nature where the individual did not come to the situation looking to act/behave violently etc., that there are times – and people – where they are committed to responding violently, and in these situations it is either enforcement or avoidance, rather than de-escalation which is needed.