Painting the six feet? This way you talk to someone | Right away

Keeping 1.5 meters wide is not always easy in practice. One prefers to keep it 3 meters away, the other is a little looser. There is a bit of a argument in the supermarket and on the street. What is the best way to address undesirable behavior in the Corona measures?

Roos Vonk, professor of social psychology at Radboud University, advises keeping it business-friendly and friendly when addressing others. “When you say something friendly, you’re not seen as an instigator,” she says. “The other day someone at the door came very close to me. Then I said, “Should we try to stay 1.5 meters away?””

He had a different idea of it than I did. It is better not to discuss these 1.5 metres, but to talk about ourselves. So I said, ‘That distance is good for me, is that okay?'”

React quickly

Nurse Henriette te Koppele (56 years) from Emmeloord is bothered by the youth near her jumbo supermarket”. When you approach them, they start laughing or scolding. Or they say things like, get corona,” she says. ‘It makes me angry and sad. I will talk to them. Then I make gestures from a distance or remind them of the rules. Sometimes I’m afraid of the ferocity with which people react.”

In general, people react defensively when asked to behave, Vonk knows. That’s why it often works well to communicate from an “I-message”. “Make it clear what’s hurting you and show your own vulnerability,” she says. However, the practice of corona measures is more unruly. “You have to react quickly when someone is already on the lip. I think at a time like that you would do well to step aside and scream, for example, 1.5 meters. That’s how you show that you’re scared.’

Bite your tongue

Truck driver Thijs van Lent (36 years old) from Oosterhout regularly gets annoyed in the supermarket. “Then I look for something on a shelf and someone immediately sighs after me because they have to be in this place,” he says. ‘I’m not someone who can be hunted quickly, but it happened three times last Saturday. Then I had to bite my tongue.”

As frustrating as the situation is, vonk says, we can park our emotions better at the moment. “Communication often responds to the fee and not to the content. So someone says something instead of what someone says.” Self-control is necessary. “We are now forced to train this ability. This is a positive side of the crisis,” says the professor. “When you give in to anger, it gets an escalating effect. Put your emotions aside first.”

Together, nodding and smiling

The joint safeguarding of the measures also leads to many positive reactions on the street, says speech therapist Annemieke Bloedjes (35 years) from Almere. “There are people who see and appreciate it when you keep your distance. For example, when I go into the grass to walk past someone, and then they smile or nod. Or if I take a step back to the store so that the employees can come by and they then thank me. It’s not necessary, but it’s nice to see that not everyone thinks it’s an exaggeration.’