Anger management for Everyone: Tafrate and Kassinove

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

 

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.