Anger management

Anger management is really all about mind over matter. It's about giving yourself adequate time to respond to your feelings, asking the right questions about your anger, choosing how to respond when you get mad, and deciding if you're willing to pay the consequences for outrageous behavior.

Just because you have the right to be angry doesn't mean you have to exercise that right!

• Acknowledge your anger as soon as you experience it.

• Use your anger to better understand yourself.

• Express your anger without venting

• Stop saying you're "fine" when you're not.

• Confess your anger on a daily basis.

• Think of anger as your ally rather than your enemy.

• Find healthy ways --- like exercise --- to let off steam.

• Think of anger as a legitimate emotion just like love and joy.

• Start saying "Excuse you!" to people who treat you badly.

• Let yourself off the hook by forgiving others.

• Live in the present, not the past.

• Forgo reciprocity --- there's no such thing as getting even.

• Come back and discuss the reasons for your anger after you walk away.

Anger is neither bad nor good

Anger serves a variety of positive purposes when it comes to coping with stress. It energizes you, improves your communication with other people, promotes your self-esteem, and defends you against fear and insecurity. (Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were all angry men --- but they turned that anger into social reform that made the world a better place.)

When it leads to domestic violence, property damage, sexual abuse, drug addiction, ulcers, and self-mutilation, anger is definitely not good.

You want to have emotions but you want to be in control of those emotions.

Quantifying your anger

Anger, is not the same as:

Hostility: An attitude of ill will synonymous with cynicism, mistrust, and paranoia

Aggression or violence: Various types of behavior that are always intended to inflict harm on others

How often do you get angry (episodic or chronic) and how intense is your anger on a scale from 1-10 (mild -- extreme)?

• 1 - 3 = irritability, annoyed

• 4 - 6 = anger

• 7 -- 10 = rage

Anger is in the eye of the beholder. It's not the things that happen to you that make you angry as much as it is the way you respond to those things.

Views that emphasize anger:

• Cynicism

• Everything is a catastrophe

• Everything in life is either black or white

• It's all about me

You're always asking the same question over and over: "Why aren't they treating me fairly?"

The question you should be asking is: "Why do I get so angry whenever I don't get what I want when I want it?" Anger is like a mirror --- your own personal mirror. Look into it and see what comes back at you. Maybe you're spoiled or you're a bit grandiose in what you expect of yourself and others at work. Maybe they're not the problem --- maybe you are.

Look around at the other people you work with. Are they as angry at work as you are? If not, and if they're doing the same work, you should ask yourself why. Why are you angry and they're not?

All that anger that you're spewing out over the years can rob your family of energy, make them ill, and ruin their careers as well.

Managing your anger today

Take immediate action

Anger, by its very nature, is meant to be short lived. It comes and it goes like a wave hitting the beach. For most people, anger is over within five to ten minutes.

How do you settle for just being annoyed?

• Don't think of the incident or situation as more serious than it is

• Don't take it personally

• Don't blame the other person

• Don't think about revenge

• Keep striving for a non-angry way of coping with the situation

  • Listen to nice music

  • Think about something pleasant

• Take some type of action to adjust to or correct the annoying situation.

Walking away but coming back

This is an alternative for flight or fight. The problem is that neither of these extreme options helps you manage anger. If you decide to stand and fight, you need to remain angry long enough to overcome the threat --- and the intensity of your anger may become accelerated in the process. On the other hand, if you retreat from the threat, you end up taking your angry feelings with you. You can outrun the threat, but not your own emotions.

You can disengage (walk away) initially ("Excuse me. Give me a minute. I'll be right back,"), but return later ("Okay, what was it you wanted to say?"), after you've calmed down sufficiently to discuss how to resolve the conflict. This is the most mature way to handle anger-provoking problems, but also the one most people are least likely to choose.

Stopping the rage

• Focus on your anger and the reactions to your anger rather than the source of your anger

• Respond rather than react

  • Your response is predictable (not unpredictable as when you are angry)

  • Thoughtful

  • Not impulsive

  • In control

• Repeat to yourself as many times as necessary, "This too shall pass."

• Breathe

  • Take a deep, exaggerated breath in through your nose.

  • Hold the breath for a count of one

  • Now, exhale in an exaggerated way through your mouth.

  • Repeat the exercise at least ten times

  • Think the word release with each exhale. This is your mind's command to the body to let go of this unwanted tension. Your body will follow the command.

• Just by being quiet for a few moments, while you continue to formulate your response to anger, you'll begin to calm down.

• Ask yourself 4 questions

  • Who am I really angry at?

  • Is this the right time and place to be angry?

  • Why am I angry?

  • Is the intensity of my anger consistent with why I'm angry?

• Come up with other alternatives as to why the other person did what she did to trigger your rage

  • Then pick the one that will produce the least adverse emotional consequences

• Say aloud to yourself, "Stop!" and shift your attention to something else.

• Engage in some positive rumination --- otherwise known as daydreaming (imagine something positive)

• Instead of imagining yourself in another positive situation, imagine yourself in the same situation that caused your anger, but without any feelings of anger.

• Imagine yourself in the same (or different) situation, but feeling a negative emotion other than anger (for example, sadness).

Speaking out in anger

Screaming at someone that he's a "@#\$%head!" communicates nothing but raw anger. It doesn't tell the person why you're angry.

You need to use your anger to educate, inform, and share that part of yourself that is hurt, sad, frustrated, insecure, and feels attacked with the person who tapped into these feelings.

1. Come up with a label to identify the intensity of your anger.

For example, are you annoyed, irritated, mad, irate, or in a rage? Start by saying, "I feel. . . ." Don't say, "I think. . . ." What you're going for here is your feeling, not your thoughts about how unpleasant the other person was.

1. Identify what really triggered your anger in the first place

2. Ask yourself what it would take to help you return to a non-angry state.

For example, "I would appreciate it if he would ask his friends to leave when I get home from work so we can have some one-on-one time."

When you're able to go through these three steps inside your head, see if you can actually have that conversation with the person you're angry with.

When speaking up in anger keep it short.

It is not what you say; it is how you say it:

• Keep pace slow and volume low

Preventing anger

Anger is the emotion of intolerance. Intolerance means you don't accept another person's viewpoint or behavior. Anger says that you think you're right and the other person is wrong. It can't be any simpler than that.

Anger defends the listener against any change in his way of thinking. Instead of accepting the challenge of an honest difference of opinion, the intolerant person resorts to intimidation, insult, or withdrawal --- all fueled by anger ---as a way of rigidly holding on to his beliefs.

Instead of being defensive (that's what intolerance is all about!), go on the offense. Say to the other person, "Tell me more about that. I'd like to understand how you arrived at that opinion. This is your chance to educate me."

Look for points of agreement

Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.

A Zen approach to overcoming anger

Anger is often an immediate but irrational reaction based on a notion we have in our heads.

Whether the event is trivial or significant, the cause of anger is always the same. There is a need that is not being met and that you expect to be met.

If you can pause to consider what your demand (or need or expectation) is when you feel anger arising, you will have gone a long way toward changing it. Whether or not you follow any of the other suggestions in this book, you will find this simple exercise to be of great value. In fact, certain types of anger may dissolve with no other effort.

One of the things that you realize when you see the nature of the self is that what you do and what happens to you are the same thing. Realizing that you do not exist separately from everything else, you realize responsibility: You are responsible for everything you experience. You can no longer say, 'He made me angry.' How could he make you angry? Only you can make you angry.

When confronted with someone else's anger, use these steps.

1. Make space before speaking or responding. Take some deep breaths.

2. Check the face and body of the person in front of you to understand what's going on. Observe physiological cues. When a person becomes more relaxed, their eyes will be open and they will lean slightly toward you.

3. Consider the consequences of not doing anything---whether something that might be helpful in the short run may lead to harm later.

4. Ask yourself: What assumptions am I making? Ask the person what the problem is. Consider your involvement in causing it.

5. Respect and empathize with both your own boundaries, values, and limitations and those of the other person.

A conflict may be the result of differing values, for instance, two family members disagreeing about whether to take care of a parent in a nursing facility or at home. One wants safety for her, the other wants her happiness. The safety-minded person might come clean and admit, "I can't be here all the time; I'm afraid she might hurt herself." The other might say, "I would always be upset with myself if I didn't support Mother's wishes." Then it becomes an argument about concerns instead of positions.

1. Speak from right attitude. Ask yourself, "What do I really need to communicate to this person?" and refrain from venting your feelings for other motives.

2. Deliberately, do not take revenge. In Buddhism, the basic vow is benefiting all beings, not everyone except this particular person.

If you don't like what just happened, you have the opportunity to change the next installment in the soap opera of your life in grand or subtle ways. Human intelligence gives you the power to react other than by instinct or habit. Intelligence is the power of choice. Anger cripples rational thought and therefore limits your choices.

Why we get mad?

Anger is good for you as long as you understand, manage, and use it in healthy ways. Like all emotions, anger exists in us because it offered our human and nonhuman ancestors a survival benefit. These brain structures, facial expressions, and body postures did not happen by accident. They happened through hundreds of millions of years of our ancestors surviving hostile forces of nature.

1. Anger alerts you to injustice.

2. Anger energizes you to confront injustice.

3. Anger communicates your status to others.

Anger is, pure and simple, an emotion. It is the feeling state that arises in us when we have our goals blocked or when we experience an injustice. Emotions are fundamentally separate from behaviors.

• Anger is a normal and often healthy response to a variety of situations.

• Anger can be understood, managed, and used in a way that is healthy, positive, and prosocial.

• Anger is an emotion, aggression and violence are reactions/behaviours.

  • People can get afraid seeing people acting aggressively due to anger

• Anger expressions are perceived differently based on the gender, race, and other characteristics of the angry person.

• The consequences of those expressions are very different based on the gender, race, and other characteristics of the angry person.

• Provocation

  a. Injustice

  b. poor treatment

  c. goal-blocking.

• Pre-anger state (tired, hungry,..)

• Appraisal (interpretation of the provocation)

  a. Anger increases if the precipitating source is perceived as intentional, preventable, unjustified, and/or blameworthy and punishable (i.e., judged as culpable and deserving to suffer).

  b. primary appraisal -> judge the precipitant to determine if anyone did anything wrong.

  c. Secondary appraisal -> decide how bad the situation is and whether we can cope with it

Was I treated poorly, unfairly, or otherwise wronged?

Is someone or something blocking my goals?

What might I have done to contribute to this?

Impulse control

Angry thoughts

• Overgeneralizing (he/she always does this, why always me?)

• Demandingness (he/she must do this, I have to do this therefore everyone should follow suit, other-directed should)

• misattributing causation (he/she did it on purpose)

• catastrophizing

• inflammatory labeling (calling names)

Self-control

Emotional freedom doesn't mean doing whatever we feel like doing; rather, it is doing what we truly want to do, despite our desires at the moment

Self-esteem stimulates the desire to invest in ourselves and provides the energy for self-discipline. When our self-esteem is low, our interest and attention shift from long-term to immediate gratification---if it feels good, do it, regardless of the consequences.

When people become upset they sometimes act aggressively,7 spend too much money,8 engage in risky behavior,9 comfort with alcohol, drugs or food, and fail to pursue important life goals.10 Anger is related to relapse for a number of addictive behaviors, such as alcoholism, gambling and drug addiction;11 and increased eating by chronic dieters12 and greater smoking intensity by smokers.13

Self-esteem

When we lack self-esteem, we push away the very people we so desperately want in our lives because we can't fathom why anyone would love someone as unlovable as ourselves. And whatever affection or kindness forces its way through to us, we hardly embrace it. Such overtures don't serve to comfort but, rather, to confuse us; and the ego's mandate is clear: reject others before they have a chance to reject us.

It should come as no surprise that anger is easily triggered when we focus on our own pain and how difficult life is for us. For instance, when faced with a present or impending loss, the egocentric person grieves less for the other, and more for himself. His loss. His guilt. His woe. The less the ego is involved, the less stuck we will become, because normal feelings of sadness are processed healthily rather than suppressed, masked, or channeled away from the healing process.

When a person suffers from low self-esteem, he takes what he needs in an attempt to make himself feel whole, which is why the last person you want trying to love you is someone who doesn't love himself. This person cannot really love, he can only control and take. The more self-esteem we have, the more complete we are. Receiving, after all, is a natural and reciprocal consequence of giving. When we only take, however, to fill a constant void, we are left empty, and are forced to continue taking in a futile quest to feel fulfilled, which only reinforces our dependency and exhausts us emotionally and physically.

Through this paradigm, we learn how to tell whether someone has high or low self-esteem; it is reflected in how he treats himself and others. A person who lacks self-esteem may indulge in things to satisfy only his own desires, and he will not treat others particularly well (a product of an arrogant mentality). Alternatively, this person may cater to others because he craves their approval and respect, but he does not take care of his own needs (a product of the doormat mentality). Only someone who has higher self-esteem can give responsibly---love and respect---to both himself and others.

Even a highly sensitive person who is seemingly void of ego can also be self-centered and selfish. He is absorbed in his own pain, filled with self-pity, and he can't feel anyone else's pain while drowning in his own. Such a person experiences no real connection to anyone outside of himself, despite his seemingly noble nature. Without genuine humility, he will not---cannot---burden himself unless he receives a larger payout in the form of acceptance or approval. His taking is disguised as giving. His fear is dressed up as love.

A person who is not self-centered feels humility and a connection to others. The wall of I am me and he is he is broken down, and where there is no ego, there is connection, a bond. A person who is not self-centered feels humility and a connection to others. The wall of I am me and he is he is broken down, and where there is no ego, there is connection, a bond.

Anger cannot exist where there is no separation, no "I" to get in the way, but when we are self-focused, the ego cuts the cord. Fundamentally, anger is a disconnection---to avoid pain, to inflict pain.

Confidence is how effective we feel within a specific area or situation, while self-esteem is defined as how much we recognize our inherent worth and feel deserving of happiness and good fortune. Self-esteem is shaped by the quality of our choices rather than by the assets at our disposal. A person who attempts to fortify his self-image by taking pride in a specific trait may exhibit signs of high self-esteem to the untrained eye, but, in fact, such an individual often suffers from low self-esteem, because all he has is an inflated ego.

Don't fall into the trap of believing that a person with an inflated ego likes himself; ego and self-esteem are inversely related. No matter how much a person appears to be happy with himself, if he is egocentric, that person suffers with feelings of inferiority.

How someone behaves toward you is reflection of his own feelings of self-worth and has nothing to do with your intrinsic worth---unless you (the ego) decide to make it about you.

When we suffer from low self-esteem, we're often afraid that something bad will happen to us after something good occurs in our lives. When fortune unexpectedly smiles on us, we feel anxious because of our sense of unworthiness. To alleviate our emotional tension, we might even sabotage our success so that we can fulfill our personal prophecy: The world is as we predicted. We feel secure because our beliefs---no matter how damaging and distorted---have been reaffirmed. We will be right, even if it kills us.

https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/resources/looking-after-yourself/self-esteem

Ego and fear

The ego is on the lookout for any situation that calls into question our worth, fearful that we are not lovable and may be rejected. Hence, the opposite of control---feeling vulnerable or even being stared at, let alone being disrespected or ridiculed, can send the egocentric psyche into overdrive. It becomes clear then why relationships, particularly with those closest to us, can result in unrelenting anger---it sets off so many emotional triggers. Take a simple scenario: a child does not listen to a parent.

•  Guilt (Maybe I've done a poor job parenting.)

•  Disrespect (How dare he not listen to me!)

•  Rejection (He doesn't love me.)

•  Embarrassment (If others are around, what do they think of me?)

•  Fear (What's going to become of him? What will become of our relationship?)

•  Injustice (After all I've done for him.)

Wisdom is a function of both intellectual and emotional clarity. To the degree that our ego is engaged, we unconsciously distort (or consciously ignore) reality and gravitate toward the less-responsible choice. Therefore, in any given situation, it's quite possible for a smart person to make an astonishingly poor decision while his less-intelligent counterpart will make the wiser, more prudent choice.

Those whose egos reign lack self-esteem and can't afford to question their own judgment, worth, or intelligence. Justification then binds them to the past and drags their mistakes into the future.

ANGRY PEOPLE BEHAVE STUPIDLY

Research finds self-regulation failure is central to nearly all the personal and social problems that currently plague the modern, developed world.

Control

The path to living anger free is paved not by circumstances, but by choice. An individual who controls himself recognizes that he doesn't control the world, and so he is not anxious. In fact, this understanding offers solace because all he has to do is exercise self-control, and God will take care of the rest. Conversely, one who cannot control himself falsely believes---courtesy of his ego---that he is, or should be, in control, and so becomes anxious in uncertain times and angry when reality unfolds against his expectations. His foolish quest to control that which is beyond his control will only lead him to lose more control over himself. This is a nuanced, yet critical, point. The more self-control we have, the more we see---and accept---what is within our control and what is not. Therefore we can, as the saying goes, let go and let God, because we know that when we have done all we can, God will do all we can't.