Words of Power

A Guide for Ordinary People to Calm and De-Escalate Aggressive Individuals

By: Ellis Amdur

Narrated by: Dan Levy

Aggression touches all of our lives. Whether it is a customer or angry coworker, an upset family member, a fellow student at school or college, or a stranger we bump into on the street, all of us, at times, must deal with aggressive people.

Ellis Amdur has become well-known for his series of profession-specific books on dealing with aggressive and emotionally disturbed individuals. These books, however, are for specialists: police, hospitals, fire/EMS, and social services, to name a few. Words of Power is different. It is written for ordinary people who may, on occasion, have to deal with an angry, even enraged person.

This book was written with the help of a unique cadre of critical readers. Rather than specialists, they are people from ordinary walks of life. They share several things in common: Their professions do not require them to interact on a regular basis with aggressive people; their family lives are healthy; they are not experts at self-defense or martial arts; and they lead happy lives, largely untouched by violence. Their job was to read through the original manuscript and highlight all the things that they felt they did not need to know. What remains is the information that ordinary people need: no more, no less.

The book is simple without being simplistic. It is a comprehensive guidebook on how to de-escalate angry people and how to use verbal control tactics to manage the behaviors of enraged people. Words of Power also teaches how to develop your intuition, so that you become aware and can react before something has truly become dangerous. Most importantly, this book teaches how to calm and center yourself so that you have access to your best, most powerful qualities. You have the best chance of achieving peace when you embody peace.

©2018 Ellis Amdur (P)2021 Ellis Amdur

Practical but nothing groundbreaking

Practical but nothing groundbreaking. I wanted to love the book, but don't feel that I took much away that will really help keep me safer.

I did like his frameworks for understanding the levels of anger, but this is more of a primer that should send you to deeper levels of study.