Trauma-Informed

Chris Rock Just Gave us an Important Lesson, Let's Not Miss It

We need to stop talking about that other guy and start talking about how Chris Rock handled the situation

Dr. Kat
Thoughts And Ideas
Published in
4 min readMar 28, 2022

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Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-in-black-leather-jacket-standing-behind-red-theater-seat-7991492/

After last night, it would not surprise me at all if I found out that Chris Rock had been trained in trauma-informed practices. His reaction to getting assaulted was a lesson in de-escalation. If you rewatch the footage of Will Smith marching onto the stage, and smacking Chris Rock, Rock initially leans back as if he is going to strike back. But he doesn’t. Instead he amazingly calmly states, “Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me”.

If Chris Rock had reacted in a different way, this whole ugly thing could have gotten much uglier.

Instead, when Smith yelled at him, “keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” Rock again, amazingly calm, replied, “Wow, dude, it was a G.I. Jane joke”. Trying to calm the situation down. And when Smith yelled “keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” again, Rock very calmly said, “I‘m going to’”. That was the exact right response.

If you haven’t seen the footage, I highly recommend you watch it, and if you have already watched it, watch it again. If you have ever wondered what someone looks like in a…

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