When Things Go Wrong

Everyone Deserves Dignity and Respect

The Puja Principle

In tantra, there’s a ritual called the puja—a practice of worshipping each other as gods and goddesses. The idea is to see the divine in each other and yourself.

For many people, this is the first time they’ve ever been treated with such reverence, appreciation, and dignity. It’s profound. It’s awakening. And afterward, many decide:

“This is how I want to be treated for the rest of my life. I’m going to have boundaries and only allow people into my life who treat me as divine.”

This isn’t arrogance. It’s self-worth.

The Principle to Carry

We’re all powerful creators, even if we don’t recognize it yet. We’re all valuable. We’re all worth being treated with dignity and respect.

None of us should be treated like crap.

This isn’t just a nice idea. It’s a core value that should govern how you run your container—and how you allow yourself, your staff, and your participants to be treated within it.

The Myth of the Always-Agreeable Facilitator

There’s a common story among facilitators and staff:

“I’m here to serve the participants. If a participant is upset with me—even if they’re being completely disrespectful—I should just take it. I shouldn’t confront them. I shouldn’t set boundaries. I’m staff, so I absorb whatever they throw at me.”

This is wrong.

The Divinity Doesn’t Turn Off

Remember the puja—the practice of worshipping each other as divine. You recognized your own worth. You decided you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

That divinity doesn’t disappear the moment you put on a staff shirt. It doesn’t turn off when you’re in service. It doesn’t evaporate when someone gets angry. Your worth is 24/7, all circumstances, no exceptions.

If you act like your worth goes out the window when one participant is mad—that’s not what you taught everyone else. And if you abandon the lesson under pressure, you betray the very thing you were trying to transmit.

What Fawning Teaches

When a participant attacks you—treats you without dignity and respect—and you appease them instead of holding your ground, here’s what happens:

What you show yourself:

• “I’m to be treated with dignity and respect until things get hard. Then it doesn’t count.”
• “My boundaries are negotiable when someone’s angry enough.”
• “The puja was pretend. When it actually matters, I don’t believe it.”

What you show every participant watching:

• “Dignity and respect is for easy moments. Not for conflict.”
• “If you’re angry enough, you can treat people however you want.”
• “The facilitator doesn’t actually believe what they taught us.”
• “Standing up for yourself is optional. When pressure comes, you fold.”

This is the opposite of walking your talk. You’re showing everyone that your values were just for funsies—not for when things actually get hard.

The Exception That Destroys the Rule

You cannot say “everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect” and then add a silent exception: “except me, when someone’s upset.”

That exception destroys the rule.

If you don’t deserve dignity when things are hard, then nobody does. You’ve just taught every participant that the principle doesn’t really hold. And they’ll take that lesson into their own lives—not standing up for themselves, not expecting respect when it counts, folding when pressure comes.

This Is the Hardest Lesson

Standing up for yourself when someone is attacking you—especially when you’re in a role that’s “supposed to serve”—is one of the hardest things there is.

“One of the biggest lies we were ever told is that it is supposedly easy to be selfish, and that self-sacrifice takes spiritual strength. People sacrifice themselves in a thousand ways every day. This is their tragedy. To honor the self—to honor mind, judgment, values, and convictions—is the ultimate act of courage. Observe how rare it is. But it is what self-esteem asks of us.”
— Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

It’s much easier to appease. To let it slide. To tell yourself “I’m being the bigger person” when really you’re just scared. Self-sacrifice is common. Honoring yourself is rare.

But this is exactly where the teaching matters most. The moment someone treats you without dignity is the moment your response teaches everyone what you actually believe.

Embody the Identity, Not Just the Idea

Here’s what makes standing your ground actually work:

You can’t just intellectually know you deserve dignity. You have to embody it. The divinity has to be your identity, not just a thought in your head.

Ask yourself: How does the divine receive someone’s anger? How is the divine to be treated? How is this person speaking to me, and how does it deviate from that?

If you embody the identity of someone who is worthy—truly inhabit it—the actions follow naturally. Setting boundaries becomes automatic because it’s simply what you do. You don’t have to remember to do it. It flows from who you are.

But if your divinity is only intellectual—if underneath, your identity is still “small,” “helpless,” “not worth it,” “not worth being treated with respect”—then even if you say the right words, your animal body will betray you. Your energy will communicate that there’s legitimacy in what the angry person is saying. You’ll set the boundary verbally while crumbling emotionally. And everyone watching will feel it.

Show, don’t tell. Your participants learn what you do, not what you say. And your body shows what you really believe about yourself.

If you hold your ground—firmly, without aggression, with clear boundaries—you show:

• Dignity is non-negotiable, even for staff
• The puja principle applies in hard moments, not just easy ones
• You believe what you teach
• It’s possible to stand up for yourself without becoming an attacker

That’s the lesson your participants actually need. Not the comfortable puja in a candlelit room. The puja that holds when someone’s screaming at you.

When Someone Attacks You

Here’s where it gets hard.

Someone is angry. They’re doing character assassination. They’re calling you names—predator, abuser, whatever. They’re crying victim loudly. They might be threatening your reputation.

Make no mistake: they are using the power that comes with being wronged to inflict consequences that don’t match what happened.

The temptation—especially for facilitators and staff—is to fawn. To appease. To let them treat you badly because:

• “Facilitators are supposed to stay calm”
• “I don’t want to escalate”
• “They might write hate mail”
• “Maybe I deserve this”

This is wrong.

The Appropriate Response

If someone is speaking to you without dignity and respect, you don’t fawn. You set a boundary.

For participants and assistants:

“I can see you’re angry, and I’m open to having a conversation about what happened. But I’m not available for being spoken to this way. Until you’re willing to speak to me with dignity and respect, you’re going to have to handle your emotions on your own.”

Then disengage. You don’t owe them your presence while they attack you.

If you’re at a retreat and can’t leave, talk to the facilitators. Set a boundary that this person doesn’t interact with you unless they can treat you with dignity and respect.

For staff:

The same applies. Being staff doesn’t mean you forfeit your right to be treated with respect.

If you model “staff don’t defend themselves,” you’re teaching participants that they can treat you like shit and nothing will happen. You’re showing that your values are negotiable.

That’s not the lesson you want to teach.

The Facilitator’s Dilemma

Lead facilitators face a unique challenge.

You’re responsible for the container. You’re supposed to hold space for everyone. You’re supposed to stay calm. There’s an expectation that you’ll be the adult in the room.

But that doesn’t mean you accept abuse. Everything in When Someone Attacks You applies to you — the Puja Principle, the boundary setting, the refusal to be treated without dignity. Being the lead doesn’t exempt you from standing up for yourself. It makes it more important, because every participant is watching how you handle it.

The difference is structural: you can’t just leave the room. You’re responsible for the container. This is why the promise needs to be made by the entire facilitation team. If you’re the one being attacked, your co-facilitator steps in and enforces the agreements. The promise decides — not the popularity of the accusation, not the volume of the attacker, not your fear of what they’ll write about you afterward. Your co-facilitator doesn’t have to be brave or make judgment calls under pressure. They just follow the promise you both committed to at the beginning. (See: When the Facilitator Is the Target)

Threats of Violence Must Be Stopped Immediately

This is non-negotiable.

If a participant is making threats of physical violence—whether verbal (“I’ll hurt you”) or through physical intimidation (getting in someone’s face, implying “if you disagree with me, I will assault you”)—you must handle it immediately.

Not after the sharing circle. Not when things calm down. Immediately.

Why Immediate Action Is Critical

Here’s what happens if you don’t act:

Scenario: A participant gets angry. They storm up to someone who disagreed with them, getting within inches of their face. Their body language screams violence. A facilitator eventually steps in—but everyone saw that if they’d decided to throw a punch, the facilitators probably wouldn’t have stopped them in time.

What you just showed everyone:

• If you upset the angry person, we won’t actually protect you
• Threats of violence are tolerated in this container
• The angry person has more power than the facilitators
• Your safety depends on not disagreeing with aggressive people

What happens next:

The container is no longer valid. People don’t feel safe. Every share from that point forward is filtered through fear. The sharing circles aren’t real shares anymore—they’re performances designed to not upset the person who might hurt them.

You’ve lost the container. The angry person is now running your event.

The Standard

Someone who creates a source of unsafety for other participants, staff, or facilitators must be:

1. Given an immediate, clear boundary: “You cannot threaten people here. If you continue, you will need to leave.”
2. Removed if they continue: Not tomorrow. Not after they calm down. Now.

You cannot let someone making threats of violence—whether implied or explicit, whether “just” intimidation or actual death threats—stay in your environment.

If you do, you are:

• Allowing them to run your container
• Showing everyone that fear wins
• Demonstrating that your boundaries are negotiable
• Creating an environment where no one feels protected

This Is Not Optional

Some facilitators think: “But they’re activated. They’re just scared. They don’t mean it. I should hold space for them.”

No.

Holding space does not mean tolerating threats of violence against other participants. Their activation is their responsibility. Your responsibility is the safety of everyone else in the container.

You can have compassion for someone’s pain AND remove them from the space. These are not mutually exclusive.

What You’re Showing

Your actions in this moment define whether your container is real or theater.

The Emergency Exception

The promise says participants are protected as long as they follow the rules. But there are rare situations where a facilitator must act before rules are broken—or must remove someone who isn’t the one breaking them.

This is not a loophole. It’s acknowledgment that safety sometimes requires action that doesn’t fit neatly into the framework.

When This Applies

Imminent danger that hasn’t crystallized into rule-breaking yet:

Someone is escalating. They haven’t made an explicit threat, but their energy is volatile. They’re dissociating in a way that feels dangerous. They seem like they might hurt themselves or someone else. Your gut is screaming that something is very wrong.

You don’t have to wait for them to actually break a rule before acting. Your job is to keep the container safe—not to be a courtroom that requires proof before intervening.

Tactical removal for someone’s protection:

Person A is making threats. Ideally, Person A leaves. But what if you’re genuinely concerned that asking them to leave will trigger violence right now, in this room?

In that case, you might need to get Person B—the potential victim—out first. Not because they did anything wrong, but because their immediate physical safety matters more than the principle of “the rule-breaker should leave first.”

Once Person B is safe, you handle Person A.

Example:

A participant is becoming increasingly agitated. They’re pacing, clenching fists, muttering. They haven’t threatened anyone yet, but you’ve worked with enough activated people to know this is heading somewhere bad. Another participant—the one they’re focused on—looks frozen.

You quietly approach the frozen participant: “Hey, let’s step outside for a minute.” You get them out of the room. Then you return to address the agitated person, now without a target present and without an audience that might escalate things further.

The frozen participant wasn’t being punished. They were being protected. You explain this to them afterward.

Example:

Someone arrives at your event and something feels deeply off. They haven’t broken any rules. They’re technically following the agreements. But something in their eyes, their affect, their energy—you can’t name it, but every instinct says this person is not okay to have in this container.

You pull them aside: “Hey, I’m noticing you seem like you might be going through something intense right now. I don’t think this event is the right place for you today. I’d like to talk about rescheduling for another time.”

You’re not accusing them of anything. You’re not punishing them. You’re making a judgment call that this container cannot safely hold whatever they’re carrying right now.

What This Is NOT

This exception is not permission to:

• Remove someone because you don’t like them
• Remove someone because another participant is angry at them
• Remove someone because their presence makes people uncomfortable (discomfort isn’t danger)
• Remove someone because you’re scared of how it will look if you don’t
• Remove someone for breaking social norms rather than safety concerns

The emergency exception is for genuine safety emergencies—situations where waiting for a clear rule violation would put people at unacceptable risk.

How to Handle It

If you need to use this exception:

1. Act decisively — Hesitation in emergencies creates more danger
2. Explain afterward — The person deserves to understand why, once it’s safe to explain
3. Distinguish it from punishment — Make clear this doesn’t affect their standing for future events (unless their behavior afterward warrants it)
4. Document what happened — Write it down while it’s fresh, including what you observed and why you made the call
5. Debrief with your team — Talk through whether it was the right call and what you learned

The Underlying Principle

The promise protects participants from arbitrary removal—from being kicked out because someone’s mad, or because a mob pressured you, or because you made an honest mistake.

The emergency exception acknowledges that your primary job is safety, and sometimes safety requires acting before rules are technically broken.

These aren’t in conflict. Both serve the same goal: a container where people can trust that they’re protected—from unfair treatment AND from genuine danger.

When You See Someone Fawning

Sometimes you’ll witness a dynamic where one participant is being belligerent—attacking, accusing, name-calling—and the other is just… taking it. Appeasing. Not defending themselves.

They’re fawning.

As a facilitator, you have a choice. You could just watch. Or you could help.

The Intervention

If you see someone fawning to an aggressor, consider stepping in—not to fight their battle for them, but to support them in fighting it themselves.

What this might look like:

• Quietly: “Hey, I notice you’re not being spoken to with respect. You can set a boundary here. I have your back.”
• More directly: “It looks like you might be appeasing right now. You don’t have to accept being treated this way. What do you actually want to say?”
• To both parties: “Let’s pause. [Fawner], I want to make sure you’re able to speak freely here. Do you feel safe to say what you actually think?”

Why This Matters

The lesson you’re teaching is one of the most important ones:

I’ll protect you from what’s happening. But the safety that lasts — the kind your body carries with you after you leave this room — only comes from learning you can protect yourself.

Until someone learns to stand up for themselves, they’ll continue to be treated badly. They’ll continue to receive punishment they don’t deserve. They’ll continue to create situations where they’re the victim—because they won’t set boundaries.

By prompting them to set a boundary—and backing them up when they do—you’re helping them learn to protect themselves. That’s more valuable than protecting them yourself.

Considerations

• They might not be ready. You can prompt and support, but you can’t force someone to stand up for themselves before they’re able. If they can’t do it yet, that’s okay. The seed is planted.

• Don’t put them on the spot. A quiet word of support is often more effective than announcing to the room “I think you’re fawning.”

• Timing matters. Sometimes you need to de-escalate first, then coach afterward. Sometimes real-time prompting is exactly what they need. Read the situation.

• Model what you’re asking. If you’re asking them to set boundaries with someone being aggressive, make sure you’re doing the same. Show, don’t just tell.

What You’re Showing

When you help someone recognize their fawning and support them in setting boundaries, you model:

• Self-respect can be learned
• Facilitators aren’t here to rescue you—they’re here to empower you
• You have the right to be treated with dignity, and the responsibility to enforce it
• The container supports people standing up for themselves

This is the Coach dynamic, not the Rescuer dynamic. You’re not saving them—you’re empowering them to save themselves. You’ve got their back, and they know it. But the boundary is theirs to set.

What to Do When Someone Reports

When a participant comes to you and says something happened, this is Before You Judge and Appropriate Response in action. Listen. Get the other side. Talk to witnesses. Then assess severity and type based on what actually happened — not based on the reporter’s emotional intensity, not based on the labels they’ve already assigned, and not based on your Rescuer instinct to rush in and fix it.

The reporter’s pain is real. Their account is data. It’s not the full picture. Acting on one side’s story without hearing the other side is how witch hunts start.

De-escalation

When someone is activated—screaming, accusing, panicking—you need tools to bring them back to a state where communication is possible.

Groundedness Is Contagious

Your first tool is your own state.

If someone is screaming “predator!” and you’re calm, centered, and certain the situation is being handled—not dismissive, not minimizing, but genuinely grounded—it creates a force that makes them question their certainty.

Anyone ever been around somebody that just believes balls-to-bones something that you think is batshit crazy? So much so that you start to question what you believe? That’s what real conviction does.
— Alex Hormozi

This works in reverse too. If you believe—with deep, embodied conviction—that the situation is not what they think it is, that calm conviction transfers. They feel it. It doesn’t argue with their story. It just sits there, solid, and their certainty starts to waver.

This isn’t about being dismissive or pretending nothing happened. It’s about being so grounded in your assessment of the situation that your presence itself communicates: I hear you. I see what happened. And this is not the emergency you think it is.

Most of the time, this is enough.

When Calm Makes It Worse

Sometimes your calm makes an activated person feel more unheard. They’re screaming, and you’re calm, and to them it feels like you don’t understand the severity. Like you’re not taking them seriously. Like nothing is wrong and nobody cares.

Here’s what happens in their head: “Nobody is hearing me. Nobody recognizes the urgency. I need to communicate louder.”

So they escalate. They get more volatile. More demanding. More desperate. They’re going to communicate urgency until they feel like their message has been received. And if it’s not being received, they’ll just communicate it more loudly. They won’t stop until someone demonstrates that they actually get it.

Telling them to calm down makes it worse. Being calm makes it worse. Everything that signals “this isn’t urgent” makes them feel more alone and more desperate to be heard.

When this happens, switch tools: emotional mirroring.

This is a de-escalation technique commonly used in emergency rooms when a patient is so activated that nothing else works. The principle: when someone’s fight-or-flight response has taken over, logic doesn’t reach them. Commands don’t reach them. Calm doesn’t reach them. What reaches them is someone matching their emotional state—meeting them where they are—so their nervous system registers: someone is with me.

Match their energy. Not to agree with their story—to show them you feel the intensity of what they’re going through.

This doesn’t look polished. It doesn’t sound like a facilitator. It sounds like a human being who’s had enough.

It looks like stepping completely out of your normal facilitator tone and yelling back:

“I’VE BEEN HERE SINCE 7AM. I’M EXHAUSTED. I DON’T WANT THIS SITUATION ANY MORE THAN YOU DO. BUT I’M HERE AND I’M FUCKING DEALING WITH IT.”

You’re not angry at them. You’re expressing your own genuine frustration and intensity at the situation. You’re meeting them where they are emotionally—not from above, not from calm facilitator mode, but from the same raw, human place they’re in. When they see that someone is at their level of intensity—that someone is actually feeling the weight of the situation—their nervous system can start to settle. They’re no longer screaming into a void. Someone received them.

Once they feel received, the energy can come down naturally. Not because you told them to calm down—but because the message finally landed. They don’t need to keep escalating because someone heard them.

A Warning on This Tool

You might think raising your voice at a participant will just make things worse. Often it would. This tool requires attunement.

The question to ask: Does this person need to be emotionally matched right now? Or would raising my voice make them feel attacked—like the facilitator just became another threat?

If someone’s in full Rescuer urgency mode—oh my god, no one is safe, harmful action needs to happen NOW—matching their intensity can snap them into the present moment. It breaks through the wall that calm can’t penetrate.

But if someone is fragile, collapsing, or already terrified—yelling could shatter them further. Read the person, not just the volume.

This is a last resort, not a first move. Use it when you’ve tried groundedness and it’s not working. When nothing else will get through. When you’re attuned enough to judge that the probability of it landing is significant—not just rolling the dice.

And it’s a deliberate tool, not a loss of composure. When it works, everyone in the room should be able to see that it was intentional—that you raised your voice to reach someone who couldn’t be reached any other way. Not that you lost your temper.

After the situation is resolved and things have calmed down, acknowledge it. Something like: “I raised my voice earlier because I felt it was the only way to get through in that moment. I’m glad we were able to work through it together.” This signals to everyone—the person you mirrored and every other participant watching—that it was a choice, not a breakdown.

The Sequence

1. Start with groundedness. Your calm conviction is your strongest tool. Most activated people will settle when they encounter someone who is genuinely grounded.
2. If they escalate because they feel unheard, switch to emotional mirroring. Meet their energy, show them you take it seriously.
3. Once they feel received, guide the energy down gradually.
4. Only then begin the actual conversation about what happened.

Related

• Guiding Public Repair — When conflict needs to be resolved in front of the group
• Handling Threats of Violence — When it escalates past repair
• Fawning — What you’re doing when you appease
• Power Dynamics — Participants have power over you
• Appropriate Response — Don’t let anger determine severity
• Before You Judge — Verify before acting