Do not you have anyone who rubs you in the wrong way? Does not your boss or your colleague always give you words, which upset you? Do not you wish to have a method to control your emotion and effectively counter these violent words? I found an interesting book touching upon countering conversational violence of words.
The title of this book is "Judo with words: An Intelligent Way to Counter Verbal Attacks" by Barbara Berkham.
The author is a psychotherapist in Germany.
She learned Japanese Martial Arts "Judo and Aikido" and took analogical explanation on how to cope with Verbal Attacks.
Her view is that the method to cope with Verbal Attack is nothing different from coping with physical attack.
Although I read it in Japanese, there is English version of this book.
Amazon.
com sells this book in their site, you can search the book title or the author, if you are interested.
Although I am not big fun of Know-how type of books, this time I am glad that I borrowed the book from the library.
I have been looking for a book talking about a way to build psychological strength.
She says even if one wanted to pick up a fight, the other did not take on the fight, it does not become a fight.
I think this is true to some extent.
It is relatively easy to catch a dog who tries to fight against you, but it is almost impossible to catch a dog who is running around and away.
It is very good idea to use martial arts techniques since there are a lot of useful guard techniques in martial arts.
As the author is writing, the purpose of Judo or Aikido is not defeating your enemy nor picking up a street fight.
They are the art to avoid unnecessary fight and defend yourself who try to pick up such a fight against you.
The one of episodes of this book reminded me the ultimate status of martial arts.
That is "winning without fighting" or "wining before fighting".
It sounds contradictory.
You may ask, "How come you can win without fighting or before fighting? It looks impossible.
" But it is not impossible.
To better explain, I introduce a historical episode of a Japanese steel art, Kendo, master.
His name is "Ryoma Sakamoto".
His time was end of Tokugawa era and there were constant fights and killings between pros and cons of existing government of Tokugawa Shogun.
Government hired an assassin group "Shinsen-gumi" to kill anti-government people.
Ryoma was one of their targets.
One day walking in the street, "Ryoma" and his friend encountered this killing machine group.
They were 20 or more Samurai Worriers.
Even Ryoma, being a master of Japanese Sword Art, 2 against 20 could never win.
Ryoma's friend being ready to pull out his sword and fight for death, Ryoma stopped him and walked toward his enemy group.
On his way, he picked up and held a cat.
He was singing, rubbing the cat, and continue walked toward the enemy group.
He did not even show a piece of fighting sign.
He said excuse me to enemy group people and walked through them.
His enemy group could not do anything and Ryoma with his friend were unharmed.
Later he explained that it is difficult for a person to harm the other, if the other did not show his intention of fighting.
The author of this book teaches you that it is important not to pick up a fight.
She also explains how not to pick up a fight, like Ryoma above, by using some verbal techniques which you can start to use today.