Anger management for Everyone: Tafrate and Kassinove
Contents
Chapter 1 2
Chapter 2 2
Triggers 3
Evaluations 3
Personal experience 3
Expressive patterns 3
Outcomes 4
Chapter 3: Motivation 4
Chapter 4: Avoid\Escape 4
Avoid and escape 4
Which, when and how 4
Avoidance 4
Escape 4
Distraction: 5
Chapter 5: Problem Solving 5
Social problem-solving skills 5
Social problem-solving styles 5
Steps for social problem solving 5
Chapter 6 6
Chapter 7: forgiveness 7
The process of forgiving 7
Chapter 8: Relaxation 8
Chapter 9: Exposure 9
Chapter 10: Assertiveness 11
When to be assertive 11
Balancing rights 11
Practice assertiveness 11
Chapter 12 11
Chapter 1
Is your anger helpful, is it proportionate, does it help
with life’s problems?
Functional Aspects of Anger: Lets us know there’s a problem,
lets others know this is important, provides energy to deal with the problem
via aggression
Anger phenomenon:
Thoughts= I’m right, they are wrong, they threaten me and
its unfair.
Body: knotted stomach, tight shoulders, sweating, your body
feels energized.
Behavioural desire: how do you express your anger?
There is blame from the angry person to the transgressor
that you have done something wrong, and cause me to be angry.
You learn to be angry over many years, connecting the
stimulus to your response.
Anger gets learnt by operant conditioning and modelling.
Behaviours rewarded in the short term become habits.
The big lie: you cause my anger
Rather
You learn to be angry
How you think
triggers anger and your thoughts may be distorted. The anger thoughts are
I’ve been treated unfairly
You’ve acted wrongly and could and should have acted
differently
Anger is your
evolutionary response to threat and supported by current culture
Men and women are equally prone to anger but there may be
cultural difference in how they express it.
Chapter 2
Anger seems to come from nowhere but there is a chain of
events. Understanding this gives better control.
The big mistake, the other person is responsible for my
anger.
You have learnt to have patterns of thoughts, emotions,
physiology and behaviours that construct your anger.
Anger episode analysis
Trigger
Evaluation
Personal experience
Expressive patterns
Outcomes
Triggers
Behaviour of others\things that threaten your status,
resources or world view. The most common others are those you love or like.
Objects of anger: self, others, events or objects. The human
object of your anger may feel shame, guilt or sadness.
Evaluations
People tease each other to strengthen relationship, flirt to
pass the time and play with each other to resolve conflicts and bad feelings.
So teasing people can be a playful gesture, or can be used
to diminish status and can be evaluated as both. How you judge the intentions
of the others is crucial to if you become angry, were they trying to be playful
or were trying to humiliate me.
Thinking errors that lead to anger
Awfulizing: exaggeration
Low frustration tolerance, thinking I can’t cope with the
threat increases it. Likewise seeing that problems shouldn’t be part of life
fuels into this. If you think a situation is awful you are less likely to
tolerate. You fear your own exaggeration.
Demandingness: My views are rules for others. We might
desire others behave according to our desire but when we think they should
that’s demandingness.
Negative global rating of others: condemn a person’s
existence based on a few actions.
Personal experience
What is your sensation of anger, how strong, how long, what
behaviours, rate it on a scale
Expressive patterns
Do you
Hold it in: have a grudge
Let it out indirectly:
displace, gossip, sabotage
Express it verbally: shout, sarcasm
Express it physically: barge, push, hit
Express it bodily: stare, finger wag
Avoid: watch tv, listen to music
Substance misuse
Problem solve
Outcomes
Short term positive: keep it going
Short term negative: the cost
Long term positive: the benefit
Long term negative: the cost
Chapter 3: Motivation
Motivation to change=seeing current approach isn’t working
+ imagining the solution
+ imagining the solution
The big mistake is to focus on the bad behaviour of others.
Reasons to change
Reason to stay the same
Importance of change: whys it not one
Readiness to change: whys it not one
Chapter 4: Avoid\Escape
Avoid and escape:
confronting the problem whilst still angry can be unwise as you create more
problems if your anger is disproportionate
Which, when and how
Which problem needs to be dealt with, one, more than one or
all, or indeed none, does the. salesperson need to be told off. Does address
the problem angrily achieve anything?
When does it need to be dealt with: when my anger reduces
How: using social problem-solving skills, or acceptance and
relaxation if the problem will remain
Avoidance
An immediate way to work with anger, if you can’t, or
putting the above skills into practice is difficult is to avoid the triggers,
although only so much as you can prepare how to deal with them, if they are
repeated and predictable.
Avoidance can either be total, i.e. avoid the trigger, or do
it when the trigger is less, or put in a time delay so deal with the trigger
when less angry, or engage with the trigger indirectly e.g. never talk about
politics with partner, go to supermarket when not so busy, leave it an hour
before talking to kid who broke vase, get someone else to bear the message or
send an email.
Escape
Give yourself a time out when your anger rises: I upset now,
can I come back to you about this
Step 1: When you say something based on anger, then say
something and leave the conversation
Step 2: Notice your own anger levels through build-up of
your internal sensation and leave the conversation before you say anything
Step3 Work on more elegant ways of leaving the conversation
and always get back to deal with the problem
Time limits: Once people become angry they spend a lot of
time showing how they are right and you are wrong and its an awful situation.
This doesn’t help resolve anything so set a time limit around the conversation
to manage it.
Distraction:
Thinking over and over a problem might make you angrier but
doesn’t improve your ability to problem solve. So, do something enjoyable
rather than dealing with the problem and come back to it after relaxing.
Chapter 5: Problem Solving
Social problem-solving skills
Problems are part of life, struggling with them helps you
grow. Some people want a problem free life. Some people grow from their
misfortunes, some don’t. Those that don’t become stuck with anger about the
situation
Social problem-solving styles
Negative problem solving:
see life’s problems as threatening and overwhelming. Belief in your inability
to find problems restricts the search. This can either be impulsive or avoidant,
Positive problem solving:
Problem as a challenge to be overcome, a growth opportunity.
Steps for social problem solving
1.
Clearly identify the problem and possible
solutions
a.
Use a when then format, when you did x they did
y. This isolates problems and reduces any excess
b.
Think of a wide range of solutions. Anger
(Strong emotions) narrows your attention. Notice the variety of extremes you
have: too much, too little then look for options in the middle
2.
Assess probable outcomes
a.
Short and long term
3.
Choose and Action
a.
Aim for best long-term solution. Apologies can sometimes help in terms of
common problem solving
4.
Implement and evaluate
a.
Notice how the solution effects yourself and
others, what its long-term effects might be
Chapter 6
How do you think about misfortune and inconvenience? Most
anger incidents threaten a little time, money or dignity not life. You start
thinking, you repeat your thinking, it becomes a habit and inflexible. The big mistake my anger is caused by others.
How to work with your thoughts
Step 1
Develop awareness and scepticism about your thinking
You have a lot of thoughts, it’s hard to tune into them. You
think you think the truth but what you think is a result of your learning
history and experiences.
Step 2
Identify what you think when you feel angry
1.
Awfulizing
2.
Low frustration tolerance
3.
Negative Global other statements
4.
Negative Global self-statements
5.
Demandingness
6.
Distortion
Awfulizing: you use words that describe everything as having
been lost and it reduces your desire to face the misfortune as its too
terrible.
LFT: Underestimates your ability to sit with the emotion
Demandingness: the world must be as I want it, you move your
preferences into rules which are imposed on others. Bad behaviour depends on
culture, learning history, recent events demanding people must act in certain
ways ignores this reality.
You must eat, sleep and breathe, but apart from that if your
bright why must you go to college, if you drive why must you always be
considerate. If you think people must adhere to your rules, you will face a lot
of disappointment
Negative global other statements. You condemn the whole
person for one thing they did, but the reality is everyone does good and bad
things. This breaks down your
relationship with the other, and causes anger, sadness, and guilt in them,
which will then get passed on.
Negative global self-statements: when you use these
statements to yourself you feel blame, sadness, shame and guilt, and less
motivation to fix things. It also takes your focus away from the problem.
Distortions: you may misinterpret the intentions of others.
Step 3
Think differently
Awfulizing: start developing a range of words to describe situations
and where you most want to use them. Terrible should be used when? So, use
softer language
LFT: say to yourself saying I can’t manage will make it
harder, you might want to say it’s difficult or frustrating instead, and you
may want to notice the things you can do to handle things.
Demandingness: change shoulds to prefer, would like
Labels: change the label into including both previous
positives and the current negative
Distorted thinking: look for alternative evidence as to
their motivations, if you haven’t any don’t jump to conclusions but think the
alternative thought, I’m not sure why.
As you are more accepting of the fallibility or yourself so
you will be of others and vice versa.
Step 4
Practice! Choose one and repeat
Changing thinking styles can help with everyday difficulties
for the major stuff forgiveness can be useful.
Chapter 7: forgiveness
Major events lead to anger that lasts a life time. Can the
problem be remedied? Forgiveness builds on changing thinking styles and aims to
help you reduce your anger.
If you don’t forgive, you ruminate, hold a grudge to get
even/justice, feel angry and want revenge. Grudges suggest a desire to show
power, to dole out retribution and to retaliate. Avoidance Le
It’s not easy to forgive and let go but it helps.
Forgive the others to encourage allowing people to be
imperfect, and allowing yourself to be imperfect. I guess this understands that
if you had been in the other persons shoes, had their experience you could
\would have done the same thing too.
There can be grades of forgiveness
1.
Forgiving when the other person repents
2.
Forgiving when the other person doesn’t repent.
It requires empathy for the transgressors positions and their action.
The process of forgiving
It doesn’t happen immediately, it involves a slow mental
shift to understand the other person and results in a reduction of anger. It
can involve doing a good deed to the person who harmed you. To reduce your
anger, to help the offender will make you stronger.
1.
Uncover your anger
2.
Deciding to forgive
3.
Defining forgiveness
4.
Understanding why others behave badly
5.
Giving something of value to the wrongdoer
1.
Uncover you anger
a.
Fully appreciate how angry you feel, how it has
affected you over the years.
2.
Decide to forgive
a.
Accept that being angry is causing more problems
for you and forgiveness can be a benefit
3.
Define forgiveness
a.
Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting
b.
Forgiving doesn’t mean excusing, justifying or
not making effort to make things better
c.
Forgiving doesn’t mean condemning, labelling
them and being morally superior.
d.
Forgiving means
i.
developing a better understanding of the other
and their action
ii.
Letting go of anger (It was an unjust thing that
happened but I don’t need to hang on to it, like WW2) so that it doesn’t define
you
iii.
Taking the unjust as one event that happened
with this person amongst others
iv.
Understanding that the other did a bad thing and
desiring that relationships with them will improve, desiring that the bad thing
not happening again.
4.
Work to understand why others behave badly
(understand without accepting)
a.
Understand the childhood and history of the
transgressor and what led to the act
b.
Understand the context of the act
c.
Aim to empathise with the transgressor
5.
Do some good to the perpetrator
a.
This allows you to take control of the
situation, to give, what and when. As oppose to be being out of control with
your anger
b.
If you follow an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth you
will end up with a lot of toothless blind people: ghandi. You can get revenge,
compensation but it doesn’t right the wrong.
Forgiveness is a long-term process. It’s an act of
understanding.
The thing happened, it was bad, but no amount of money can
undo it, it happened. If we stay angry about it, it’s a present concern we
have. It happened it was bad, but we can let it go and if we want put energy
into ensuring it doesn’t happen again.
Chapter 8: Relaxation
Fight or flight is a fast response system developed for
physical threat to fight or flight, but when we feel emotions we are not under
physical threat and there are a lot of ways to respond apart from fight or
flight. If there’s a disagreement between two people finding a fair solution
takes time. Relaxations helps you think more clearly and not act impulsively
Progressive muscle relaxation: Helps understand when your
muscles are tensed and relaxed. 5 second tense, 10 -15 relax Start with calming
breaths
Breathe. Breathe in and out say 1: repeat 15 minutes
Anger breathing: rapid and shallow, calming breathing slow
and deep. Diaphragmatic breathing, lie on floor with book over abdomen:
Chapter 9: Exposure
Expose yourself to anger triggers and use relaxation to
respond thoughtfully. Don’t use exposure when 1. No commitment to change
yourself only to change the other 2. Substance use. 3. Depression 4.
Uncontrollable aggression.
Exposure happens after cognitive restructuring the original thoughts.
Anger just comes over me as outcome of reinforcement, so you
repeatedly get the benefit, when faced with the need for the benefit you feel
angry.
Exposure works as
1.
Reinforcement breaks
2.
Emotion weakens due to habituation
3.
Gives more skills
4.
Think about things differently, in moment plus
medium term
Three types of exposure
1.
Imaginal
a.
Write out the angry scene is as much detail as
possible
2.
Verbal
3.
Real life
Work up each on to real life. Imaginal pairs stimulus with
relaxation, verbal challenges cognitions then real life puts it together
Imaginal situational
1.
Prepare
a.
Write angry scene
2.
Expose
a.
PMR
b.
Imaginal exposure
c.
PMR
3.
Coping statement
a.
What thought out of awfulizing, LFT, negative
global self\other statement, demandingness or intention distortion do you have
i.
Look to make it more appropriate, realistic
1.
Awful=soften
2.
LFT notice how you have coped before and the LFT
isn’t helping
3.
Global, look for contradicting evidence
4.
Demandingness, notice you can have a preference
but otherwise you will be very disappointed,
4.
Imaginal exposure and add in the coping statements
Verbal barbs
1.
Prepare
a.
Return to angry scene above
b.
Create 3 statements that would anger you and
their tone of voice
c.
Record the statements with pauses between
2.
Expose and relax
a.
Deep breaths
b.
Expose
c.
Relax a set of muscles
d.
Repeat
3.
Expose and coping statements
a.
Deep breaths
b.
Expose
c.
Coping statement
Real life
Treatment
5.
Understand anger
a.
Triggers
b.
Evaluation
c.
Reaction
d.
Short term effects
e.
Long term effects
6.
Treating
a.
Escape avoids
b.
Problem solving
c.
Challenge thoughts
d.
Forgiveness
e.
Relaxation
f.
Expose
g.
Express anger in other ways
Chapter 10: Assertiveness
One common pattern, is not known how to express your angry
feelings, bottle them up then explode, proving your previous fear.
When to be assertive
Not all problems need to be fixed or can.
Assertive: directly, honestly and appropriately: When you
did x, I felt y, what I would like is z (specific, no exaggeration, not taking
control)
Aggressive: I’m right, you’re wrong, they contain self-centeredness,
blame and threat. Aggression leads to be people being angry and trying to
defend themselves.
Unassertive means you value yourself less and build less close
relationships.
Balancing rights
I want x and you want y. Assertiveness looks at mutual
acceptable solutions.
Empathise, describe the problem from their perspective.
Practice assertiveness
When you did x I felt y
I like, I don’t like
Describe without exaggeration
Be specific when you talk not general
Accept\give compliments
Practice taking the others perspective: reflect, help the
other feel heard, helps defuse anger
Practice agreeing, sometimes people disagree just to show
their power and they don’t believe what they say
Practice disagreeing. I hear what you say but I was
thinking. Have you thought of, I’m wondering that?
Practice agreeing when you’re given negative feedback.
Practice giving negative feedback: slow soothing voice in
private
Chapter 12
Random acts of non-reciprocal kindness helps happiness, as
does humour, and expressing gratitude and appreciation.
