The Self Compass and the Year of Faith

It has come to my attention that the Catholic Church has declared October 11, 2012 to November 24, 2013 as The Year of Faith. As a committed Christian and theologian-psychologist I applaud this emphasis. 

I believe The Year of Faith expresses the heartfelt cry of Christians worldwide to draw close to the Lord Jesus Christ in our modern day. As Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).

When the Catechism of the Catholic Church first came out I read it cover to cover in a week. It is a profoundly spiritual, Scriptural, and psychologically sensitive work. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, was a chief architect of the Catechism. 

I want to share with you one powerful paragraph from Pope Benedict's apostolic letter “Porta Fidei” that has introduced The Year of Faith. I do this with admiration for his spirit of pastoral care—and with the conviction that he is speaking on behalf of the Body of Christ, Catholics and Protestants alike:

“The Year of Faith is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. In the mystery of his death and resurrection, God has revealed in its fullness the Love that saves and calls us to conversion of life through the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ushers us into a new life: “We were buried ... with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. “Faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life” (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:20-29; 2 Cor 5:17).

As the Pope says, personal transformation “is a journey never completely finished in this life.” But we can benefit from psychological and spiritual tools that help us move forward. One of these is the Self Compass. The Self Compass helps us renew our personal conversion to Jesus and cooperate with the Holy Spirit in guiding our daily lives. 

This Vatican has endorsed the Compass Model for personality transformation because it is based on Christ's personality, and therefore supports "the radical new reality of his resurrection" in our personalities. By applying the Self Compass growth tool, your life can be "purified and transformed" during this Year of Faith.

LOVE & ASSERTION

Faith is deeply connected to personality health. Faith helps to counter the corrosive effects of anxiety, depression, and anger. The Self Compass promotes personality health and thereby increases a person's faith. 

Love and Assertion are two complementary compass points within every person's Self Compass. What is the connection between faith and Love? In order to love God or another person, we must reach out to them. We must open our hearts. We must risk caring for them. This requires faith! I have counseled hundreds of people who suddenly received this insight and gasped: "Oh no, now I realize I've lived my whole life to be safely self-contained. I've been too afraid to ever really love anyone." 

To grow in Love requires the courage of Assertion. Mary risked trusting the Angel Gabriel's message to her. Though she no doubt felt some fear, and though she certainly didn't know how she could become the Mother of our Lord, she ended the conversation assertively: "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). Mary dared to assertively express faith in the God whom she loved and trusted. We can become more like Mary.

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

Spend a few concentrated moments today or tonight hungering and thirsting for Christ’s presence in your life. Don’t be afraid of any Weakness. Integrate your vulnerability and even self-doubts into your faith in God’s Strength. The Catechism says, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power” (273). Out of Weakness we are made strong. This humble Strength is what God loves to foster in us. A rhythm between Weakness and Strength never makes us arrogant.  

The Self Compass helps you cooperate with grace, so that in Pope Benedict's words, your "thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed." 

In case it might help your journey of faith this year, I'm including a link to God and Your Personality: The Newly Revised Catholic Edition. You can imagine my humble gratitude when Pope Benedict's personal theologian wrote and told me that this book had been added to his personal library. 

Paul Cardinal Poupard of The Vatican has this to say: “God & Your Personality is no New Age influenced waffle clouded in a mystique of blurb, but a useful tool for all those who seek to address personality issues and quench their innate spiritual thirst with the living-water which truly satisfies.”

 

GOD AND YOUR PERSONALITY

Why Your Personality Matters to Jesus

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.

—Ps 51:6 NIV

The sun has arced to its highest point in the desert sky as the wind sculpts patterns in the sand, which is all the eye can see in any direction, save for a white-robed man seated by the edge of an ancient well, and a Samaritan woman standing nearby, a water jug by her side. 

She is asking questions. And giving replies.

Surface replies, that bat away insight. Openness. Transparency.

The man persists.

Still there is avoidance. Refusal to go deeper.

Again, he persists, now with home truths about this woman.

Truths that shock. Truths about her real self.

Her response?

Not defensiveness. Not resistance.

But honesty.

And surrender.

To the Son of God.

“Come,” the Samaritan woman entreats the townspeople, “come, see a man who told me everything I ever did” (Jn 4:29 NIV).

Come, invites Jesus. Open yourself to me. Your interior self. Your personality and behavior. Your person-hood matters to me. 

Why is that, Lord? Why is my personality important?

Knowing the truth about your inner self allows you to “do what is true” Jesus says. This self-knowledge will set you free so that you can better love God and others as you love yourself (Mk 12:30-31).

As you examine and refine thoughts and actions, behavior and feelings, you develop the loving connection God desires with you. And build satisfying relationships with other people that flourish, and do no harm. For “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” (Mk 7:14). Only when you take action concerning the truth about your inner self can you “come to the light” (Jn 3:21).

What sort of action, Lord? How do I grow in the ability to love you and other people as I love myself?

To discover more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS: CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST 

The Self Compass and John Wesley

The Self Compass provides a lens through which we can understand Christ's personality, our own personality, and the lives of other Christians who have come before us.

Let's apply the Self Compass to discover the personality dynamics of John Wesley (1703-1789). I'll cite his own words to help us.

John Wesley was an Anglican cleric who introduced Methodism as a highly successful form of evangelism throughout the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century. Wesley's distinctively biblical preaching in country fields and home or church services changed people's lives. He warned people of the spiritual dangers of sin, judgment, and hell, and warmly encouraged them to know Jesus Christ personally.

For forty years he preached about a thousand times a year throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. He traveled on horseback thirty to ninety miles a day, often through snow and rain, averaging about 8,000 miles per year!

I've recently been reading his spiritual journals that cover some of those years. I'm most impressed by the balanced Self Compass swings in his personality and relationships.

First and foremost, John Wesley was a man motivated by love for God, love for the lost, and love for the Christians that he organized into small discipleship groups. But he wasn't stuck on the Love compass point alone. He regularly moved into the Assertion compass point. Wesley never would have survived — let alone pressed forward in the face of intense opposition — without it. He also  exercised the rhythm between Weakness and Strength compass points. He felt humbled by the weakness of occasional doubts and uncertainty, as well as strengthened by confidence in his mission and trust in God.

LOVE

Wesley's personal conversion to Christ came unexpectedly after years of striving to please God, and being on the verge of “preaching no more.”

Thursday, May 25, 1738: “The moment I awakened, 'Jesus, Master,' was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon Him, and my soul waiting on Him continually. Being at St. Paul's in the afternoon, I could taste the good Word of God in the anthem which began, 'My song shall be always of the loving-kindness of the Lord; with my mouth will I ever be showing forth Thy truth from one generation to another.'”

Rev. Whitefield, a passionate teacher of a Calvinist form of Methodism, for a time opposed and criticized John Wesley's Arminian form of Methodism. Very significant, then, was their eventual reconciliation.

Wednesday, November 5, 1755: “Mr. Whitefield called upon me. Disputings are now no more; we love one another, and join hand in hand to promote the cause of our common Master.”

Wesley recognized the heart as the seat of a person's passion and motivation. He aimed his sermons to strike the sinner's heart with God's judgment and love:

“It is plain. God begins His work at the heart; then 'the inspiration of the highest giveth understanding.'”

ASSERTION

Wesley drew the line on misbehavior by confronting a man who had verbally abused him and thrown stones at his family. Yet in his letter to the man, his Assertion was tempered by Love:

Monday, March 4, 1745: “Robert Young, — I expect to see you, between this and Friday, and to hear from you that you are sensible of your fault; otherwise, in pity to your soul, I shall be obliged to inform the magistrates of your assaulting me yesterday in the street. I am, Your Real Friend, John Wesley.”

He asserted himself strongly to preach even when his life was in danger. And he recognized the strong assertion of the Lord to protect him:

Thursday, July 4, 1745: “I never saw before, no, not at Walsal itself, the hand of God so plainly shown as here. Although the hands of perhaps some hundreds of people were lifted up to strike or throw, yet they were one and all stopped in the midway; so that not a man touched me with one of his fingers, neither was anything thrown from first to last; so that I had not even a speck of dirt on my clothes.”

Wesley often chose biblical passages that proclaimed God's judgment of sinful lives and behavior, asserting the destiny of heaven or hell depending upon a person's repentance:

 Sunday, August 28, 1748: “There is the highest decency in a churchyard or field, when the whole congregation behave and look as if they saw the Judge of all and heard Him speaking from heaven.”

WEAKNESS

Wesley knew the terror of physical assault, the horror of death threats, and the helplessness of being targeted by people who hated him and all he stood for.

Wednesday, May 23, 1750: “They burned me in effigy near Dant's bridge. The mob was still patrolling the streets, abusing all that were called Methodists, and threatening to murder them and pull down their houses if they did not leave this way.”

Like the Psalmist, he discovered how a season of Weakness can redirect our attention to something new the Lord has in mind:

Friday, January 4, 1753: “I began writing Notes on the New Testament, a work I should scarcely ever have attempted had I not been so ill as to be able to travel or preach, and yet so well as to be able to read and write.” (Wesley finished the first draft of Notes on the New Testament on March 19 of that year).

He sought words to capture the wisdom of the Weakness compass point — that place where we all live with anxiety and suspense, and in stress reach out to God for His will to be done:

Sunday, August 8, 1736: “We were to sail, the wind being fair; but as we were going aboard, it turned full east. I find it of great use to be in suspense: it is an excellent means of breaking our will. May we be ready to stay longer on this shore or to launch into eternity.”

STRENGTH

Wesley understood the delicate interplay of Strength and Weakness, and how, for those who are serving the Lord: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:21).

Thursday, April 16, 1752: “The more I use my strength, the more I have. I am often much tired the first time I preach in a day; a little the second time; but after the third or fourth, I rarely feel either weakness or weariness.”

Wesley credited God for his unusual strength to forgive those who had hurt or wronged him.

Sunday, October 29, 1752: “I cannot but stand amazed at the goodness of God. Others are most assaulted on the weak side of their side of their soul; but with me it is quite otherwise; if I have any strength at all (and I have none but what I have received), it is in forgiving injuries; and on this very side am I assaulted more frequently than on any other.”

At a ripe old age, John Wesley acknowledged the source of his Strength compass point throughout his life journey.

Monday, June 28, 1784: “I am as strong at eighty-one as I was at twenty-one; but abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache, and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth. We can only say, 'The Lord reigneth!' While we live, let us live to Him!”

I thank God for John Wesley's life and witness!

Notre Dame Professor Commends New Christian Personality Theory

The concept of moral psychology was unheard of in Freud's day, and even under the early influence of the behavioral psychologists. This is because, for Freud, human behavior was an offshoot of neurology, or the study of the nervous system, and the human mammal had no soul. 

Likewise, for behaviorists like Thorndike, Pavlov, and the American B. F. Skinner, the human being was a black box of stimulus/response reflexes that could be conditioned by the environment, but possessed no "self" or "free will" within.

Young Child in the Famous "Skinner Box"

This heritage is why modern advertisers for cars, lip gloss, and life insurance all utilize extensive testing programs where market researchers calculate statistically how to control a consumer's psyche through words, promises, and images.

Market Research

But there is a higher realm of human functioning that makes human persons greater than the sum of their physiological reactions or unconscious conditioning. And this is studied in a field called Moral Psychology.

Moral psychology seeks ways to integrate the mammalian instinct, drive, and urges that characterize human behavior with the aspiration, motivation, and inspiration within every person. In other words, like isn't just about what you're made of, but who you are and what you're making of life.

For this reason moral psychology has re-opened the doors to philosophy and theology that psychoanalysis and behavioral psychology had previously slammed shut. These doors had been opened in the history of Western civilization by the presence of Christianity as a worldview within which philosophy and science operated.

However, in the nineteenth and twentieth century many scientists wanted more objectivity to study nature and human nature without the influence of religious beliefs. This was indeed needed to gather data about human behavior and social psychology, but has led to a new conundrum, that we have now assembled a vast amount of information of human anatomical, metabolic, intrapsychic and interpersonal behavior, but are pretty much devoid of a metaphysical overview with which to find meaning and purpose in life.

"Who Am I?"

Compass psychotheology, compass therapy, and the self compass are contemporary concepts and tools designed to aid people in developing a moral compass that holds. This allows for a Christian personality theory that stands alongside Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality and the behaviorist's learning theory of personality.

In bringing Christian personality theory forward into modern discourse, I naturally wanted it evaluated by professors in the field of moral psychology. 

So I was delighted to receive the following commendation:

Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D.
Developmental and Moral Psychology
University of Notre Dame

"I love the systematic and creative thought that went into Dr. Dan and Kate Montgomery's new book on Christian Personality Theory. 

"I am fascinated by the Self Compass. It has an intuitive resonance and it synthesizes what we know about the human psyche, its pitfalls and redemption. 

"The growth orientation of the Compass Model offers a transformation mindset that can benefit any reader. Well done!"

Christian Personality Theory: A Self Compass for Humanity

How Teachers Use The Self Compass for Classroom Management

Before becoming a psychologist and doing thirty-five years of therapy, I was a K-12 teacher in science, speech, and drama. I learned fast that I needed more than mastery of my subject matter. I needed practical psychology for classroom management. Otherwise, the couple of unruly kids that showed up in every class would have ruled me!

Haven't you, too, run across the child or adolescent, or even college student, who is mouthy or defiant, who has a vested interest in sabotaging the learning experience. These students become defensive, irritable, and critical of the teacher who has much to teach them, if only they will listen.

Most teachers enter the profession because they love their subject matter and care about teaching. And it is very shocking to meet the first few students who are defensive about being taught, who are rude and demanding, or who act as though they know better than the teacher what should be going on. You try to give them an assignment and they argue or roll their eyes. You tell them to stop talking and pay attention and they tell you to shut-up. Or they expect you to drop everything you're doing to help them, and get mad if you don't. 

In worse case scenarios, they regularly  distract the whole class and make learning impossible.

I've sat in as a psychological consult to classes where the students, led by a few aggressive or narcissistic ringleaders, had the teacher running around in circles from beginning to end, begging them to behave to no avail. However, by implement a few Self Compass insights we can turn usually restore teacher dignity and inaugurate firm boundaries to the classroom that benefit everyone.

Likewise, I want to help you preserve your self-esteem, increase your classroom management skills, and enhance your enjoyment of teaching through the power of the Self Compass.

In brief, there are four universal compass points in every human personality, and students are no exception. Love and Assertion form one pair of compass points, while Weakness and Strength form the other.

When people have developed personality health, they integrate Love and Assertion. They show their caring openly, and when needed, assert themselves with diplomacy. They also integrate Strength with Weakness by showing a degree of confidence balanced by a degree of humility. When you teach students who have balanced Self Compasses you know why you chose this profession. Their politeness, curiosity, industry, and willingness to comply with your guidance is gratifying.

However, trouble comes for nurses when students are stuck on the Strength or Assertion compass points.

Strength-stuck controllers lack Love and Weakness compass points, so they are neither warm nor teachable. Instead, they are full of demands of what you should or shouldn't be doing. From their view, they are right, you are wrong, and that's that! So what do you do with a compulsively controlling student who keeps making demands on your time and energy, and finding fault no matter what you do?

• Recognize that perfectionist/judgmental students get worse when you kowtow to them and need their approval. 
• Show them from the start that you know your job by calmly performing it. 
• Listen to their complaints without raising your anxiety level. 
• Refuse to be rushed by their impatience. 
• Relax and breathe when you're around them. 
• Step back and objectively see the pattern in action. This will help you deal with the pattern without feeling frantic or picked apart. 
• Be in charge of your own self-esteem.
• Don't be afraid to have a private talk with them or their parents, suggesting ways they can contribute to a better learning environment for the class.
• When you walk out of their room, relax your shoulders and find something pleasant to focus on.

Oddly, it is your calm and professional demeanor that often quietens a student like this. They sense that their criticisms don't ruffle you and their infantile demandingness doesn't distract you. Once they have sensed these firm boundaries within the classroom, they feel emotionally secure and surrender to their temporary discomfort of having someone else in charge of their lives.

Now for aggressive students, who are chronically stuck on the Assertion compass point.

Your secret here is to predict the arguments they will start, the rude comments they will make, the mean glare they're going to give you. This is the power of the Self Compass, that it gives you X-ray vision into a student's motivation, and keeps you in charge of your reaction to them.

The hostile, antisocial, or verbally aggressive student is used to getting their way through attacking and intimidating others. But you are not in teaching to take a verbal beating from an obnoxious student. They are quite unnerved if you don't fear them or do everything to appease them.

• Don't be pushed into reaction behavior, where they pull your strings by escalating their aggression. Keep you breathing relaxed and your pulse rate normal. 
• Expect their challenges to your authority; predict their defiance.
• Keep the rules of engagement simple.
• Don't get into argumentative power struggles, which would reward their behavior by usurping your attention and showing your impotence.
• Keep your focus on what you are doing to provide competent teaching. 
• When they show anger in their voice and eyes, make full eye contact that shows you have no fear. 
• If they call you a name, take it in stride, so that they see this has no effect on you or your self worth.
• If they make threatening physical gestures, stop the class and take them to the principle for direct discussion of their behavior.
• Keep providing your high standard of teaching, but take an attitude of nonchalance toward their antics. 

Strangely, aggressive students will intuitively know that you are one of the few people they can't intimidate. And they will behave better once they respect you.

The key to dealing with both controlling and aggressive students is to quickly recognize their rigid personalities, so you can disengage your emotions and deal with them firmly without feeling wounded. Keep a storehouse of the faces of positive students and gratifying moments in teaching. Keep your own Self Compass in good balance. And when you run across one of these troublesome types, handle it competently and let off steam in the faculty lounge!

How To Understand Antisocial Personality Rule-breakers

What thoughts go on inside the head of a person stuck in the Rule-breaker personality pattern, which in its severe form is known as the antisocial personality disorder?

Picture this young adolescent on a hot summer afternoon:

 

I aim the slingshot with precision and flick it. I watch the carefully selected stone arc perfectly, as if in slow motion, soaring through the air. Then the sound. Crash! The tinkling of glass from Mrs. Johnson’s garage window. I scurry away down the alley, chuckling and leaping. Oh, the ecstasy.

Later that afternoon Uncle Zack and I are on the sidewalk outside a convenience store. “Hey, Robbie,” he whispers. “Want to learn about the five-finger freebie?”

I nod, breathless.

“Okay. Here’s how it works. When we go into the store, go right to a display rack where there’s something you want. Pick up a different item and pretend you’re examining it carefully. While you’re doing that, grab the item you want with the other hand and slip it in your pocket. Replace the first item and find something real cheap to actually buy, and then take it to the counter.”

We enter the convenience store. I stroll over to the toy display. With one hand I pick up a miniature dinosaur and examine it carefully. With the other, I scoop up a yoyo and slip it into my pocket. I stroll over to the counter, select a package of gum, and hand it to the clerk. Buzzing with excitement, I smile appealingly as I pay for the gum.

It’s a snap.

Back in the car, Uncle Zack smiles triumphantly when I pull the yoyo out of my pocket. “Thatta boy, Robbie. That’s the five-finger freebie.”

Rule-breaker Self Compass

Rule-breakers are charming and sociable on the surface, but calculating underneath. Aggressively deceitful, you’re stuck on the Assertion compass point. You size up situations according to how you can personally profit by exploiting those around you. There is no sense of remorse.

 

You have learned to repress the Weakness compass point. You avoid empathy with other people’s pain and do not consider your own shortcomings. This lack of healthy weakness results in an undeveloped conscience. Likewise, you repress caring from the Love compass point. You mistrust others and shun feeling close to anyone, since loyalty and caring would inhibit your need to seduce and exploit.

The Rule-breaker pattern can be calculating, even cruel. This pattern shares with narcissists a sense of entitlement, but is more aggressive—streetwise, glib, and able to lie convincingly. 

The apostle Paul understood this pattern: “By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people” (Rom 16:18 NLT).

The Value of Healthy Guilt

To break the grip of the Rule-breaker pattern, it is vital that you learn to feel guilt as appropriate to the situation. Healthy guilt alerts you to the fact that you have exploited someone to your advantage. It tells you that you have used another person as a “thing” and dehumanized yourself in the process.

This helps you become aware when you are tempted to lie, shirk responsibility, or pull the wool over someone’s eyes. You stop and pray for God to help you see the situation from that person’s point of view. Empathize, letting yourself feel the discomfort of the potential consequences of your behavior.

Reversing roles with someone activates your social conscience. When you trade places with the dog you’re about to kick and anticipate the pain and fear you’ll inflict, you suddenly have the power not to kick the poor creature. There’s an inner shift—not to become a wimpy do-gooder, but to use your power constructively.

Buy a journal and write in it daily. Let your unconscious take you back in time. What are your memories of lying? Cheating? Do you recall feeling some remorse, tinged with excitement? How did the Rule-breaker pattern corrode your life, at the expense of healthy guilt? 

You can take comfort that many Biblical characters who came to be highly esteemed were originally Rule-breakers of some note. Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright. Abraham lied to Pharoah about Sarah being his wife. Miriam hatched a plot against Moses, was struck with leprosy, but after she confessed wrongdoing, she was healed and restored.  

The spiritual grace Jesus Christ offers meets us all in our trespasses and empowers personality transformation. 

For more, read: 

The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ

The Self Compass Helps Nurses Cope with Troublesome Patients

I've trained many therapists in Compass Therapy who naively assumed that people come to counseling to hear advice, and show appreciation when receiving it.

Wrong!

 
Therapy clients sometimes don't like hearing the truth about their part in the problems they are experiencing. They can quickly become defensive, irritable, and critical of the therapist who has much to teach them, if only they will listen.

Nursing is much the same, in that most nurses enter the profession because they care about helping people. And it is very shocking to meet the first few patients who are defensive about receiving nursing care, who are rude and incessantly demanding, and who act as though they know better than the nurse about how to get well. You try to give them their medication and they argue with you. Or you try to draw blood and they snap at you. Or they expect you to drop everything you're doing and focus exclusively on their needs at the moment, and get mad if you don't.

Have you encountered these personality patterns in your nursing career? If so, I want to help you preserve your self-esteem and longevity in nursing through the power of the Self Compass.

In brief, there are four universal compass points in every human personality, and patients are no exception. Love and Assertion form one pair of compass points, while Weakness and Strength form the other.

When people have developed personality health, they integrate Love and Assertion. They show their caring openly, and when needed, assert themselves with diplomacy. They also integrate Strength with Weakness by showing a degree of confidence balanced by a degree of humility. When you nurse patients like this, you know why you chose this profession. Their politeness, appreciation, and willingness to comply with your guidance is gratifying.

However, trouble comes for nurses when patients are stuck on the Strength or Assertion compass points.

Strength-stuck controllers lack Love and Weakness compass points, so they are neither warm nor teachable. Instead, they are full of demands of what you should or shouldn't be doing. From their view, they are right, you are wrong, and that's that! So what do you do with a compulsively controlling patient who keeps making demands on your time and energy, and finding fault no matter what you do?

• Recognize that perfectionist/judgmental patients get worse when you kowtow to them and need their approval. 
• Show them from the start that you know your job by calmly performing it. 
• Listen to their complaints without raising your anxiety level. 
• Refuse to be rushed by their impatience. 
• Relax and breathe when you're around them. 
• Step back and objectively see the pattern in action. This will help you deal with the pattern without feeling frantic or picked apart. 
• Be in charge of your own self-esteem.
• When you walk out of their room, relax your shoulders and find something pleasant to focus on.

Oddly, it is your calm and professional demeanor that often quietens a patient like this. They sense that their criticisms don't ruffle you and their infantile demandingness doesn't distract you. Once they have sensed these firm boundaries within the nursing care, they feel emotionally secure and surrender to their temporary discomfort of having someone else in charge of their lives.

Now for aggressive patients, who are chronically stuck on the Assertion compass point.

Your secret here is to predict the arguments they will start, the rude comments they will make, the mean glare they're going to give you. This is the power of the Self Compass, that it gives you X-ray vision into a patient's motivation, and keeps you in charge of your reaction to them.

The hostile, antisocial, or verbally aggressive patient is used to getting their way through blaming and attacking others. But you are not in nursing to take a verbal beating from an obnoxious patient. They are quite unnerved if you don't fear them and do everything to appease them.

• Again, don't be pushed into reaction behavior, where they pull your strings by escalating their aggression. 
• Keep the rule of engagement simple. 
• Keep your focus on what you are doing to provide competent treatment. 
• When they show anger in their voice and eyes, make full eye contact that shows you have no fear. 
• If they call you a name, take it in stride. 
• If they make threatening physical gestures, call for assistance.
• Keep providing your high standard of care, but take an attitude of nonchalance toward their antics. 

Strangely, aggressive patients will intuitively know that you are one of the few people they can't intimidate. And they will behave better once they respect you.

The key to dealing with both controlling and aggressive patients is to quickly recognize their rigid personalities, so you can disengage your emotions and deal with them firmly without feeling wounded. Keep a storehouse of the faces of positive patients and gratifying moments in nursing care. Keep your own Self Compass in good balance. And when you run across one of these troublesome types, handle it competently and let off steam in the break room!