This is an extract from one of my Training Manuals I wrote for the prevention of Work Place violence:

Anger Management

Understanding Anger

Anger is a universal experience. We all get angry from time to time and this workshop is not about teaching you to never become angry, or to hide your anger.   It really is about managing your anger.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that managing our anger is something we need to do well. Research tells us that those who do manage their anger at work are much more successful than those who don’t.

This is really what we want to do: have a new type of relationship with our emotions, a relationship where we manage them rather than letting them manage us.

Many of us are alarmed at how anger is controlling our lives. However, anger is a learned response, and the anger response can be unlearned, with commitment and effort.

Self-awareness is a key element for managing your own anger, because the use of anger management skills presupposes that you know when you are angry and recognize that anger as a cue that something is wrong.

To understand and develop the skills associated with anger management, think of anger as five interrelated dimensions, all operating simultaneously. These dimensions are:

·         Our thoughts when we are angry

·         The emotions that our anger arouses

·         The ways we let others know that we are angry

·         How we experience the world when we are angry

·         How we act when we are angry

For example, what you think when you are angry influences how you feel; how you feel when you are angry influences how you communicate; how you communicate affects how you think; how you think affects how you behave.

Think of your own anger. Can you identify those things you normally think, feel, say, and do when you are angry? How does the world look to you when you are angry?

 “Out of control, you are at the mercy of your anger…you need a new kind of relationship with your emotions, one where you run them instead of them running you.”  Maria Arapakis

There once was a little girl who had a very bad temper. Her mother was a wise woman.

One day she gave her daughter a bag of nails and told her that every time she lost her temper, she must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the girl drove 37 nails into that fence. It was hard work and over the next few weeks, as she learned to control her anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. She discovered it was easier to hold her temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the girl didn't lose her temper at all. She told her mother about it and the mother suggested that the girl now pull out one nail for each day that she was able to hold her temper.

The days passed and the young girl was finally able to tell her mother that all the nails were gone.

The mother took her daughter by the hand and led her to the fence.

She said, "You have done well, my daughter, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one." You can put a knife in a person and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.”

Family and friends are very rare jewels, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us.” At the end of today, ask your friends and family to forgive you if you ever left a hole in their fence.

In addition to its cost to your relationships, anger can also be bad for your health. Think of a garden hose. Let’s say you have two of them, a ¼ inch and a ½ inch hose. If you hook the ½ inch up to the outside water faucet you get a stream of water. However, if you hook up the ¼ inch hose, you get a much stronger stream of water, because the pressure has been raised. When we get angry our blood vessels constrict and it’s just like we switched from a ½ inch to a ¼ inch hose.

It isn’t the anger that is the problem, it’s how we express our anger. If we let it out, and explode in anger, we run the risk of high blood pressure and a heart attack. If we hold our anger in, on the other hand, and don’t learn how to tell others what we are feeling, we are at risk for a stroke. Either way, we lose.

So we want to find other ways to deal with this emotion. At least in part, our anger is learned. We’ve learned how to cope with our frustrations and our hurts this way. And it has worked, at some level.

There is usually some sort of pay-off for us: people do what we ask them to do, our tension is released and for a brief moment we feel better, we feel we’ve gotten revenge. One thing you should try to do is figure out what your pay-off is.

However, there is a link between stress and anger. Stress creates physiological arousal or tension. Anger discharges that arousal—just for a minute. Right after a blow-up, people often feel like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders. They can breathe again. And even though that tension soon returns, that little sense of relief can be very reinforcing, because for just that brief period of time you get a break from all that frustrates and overwhelms you.

However, there is a downside to using anger to reduce your stress. The stress comes back with a vengeance!! Studies show that anger creates more anger. Blowing up makes it more likely that you will blow up again soon. And the next outburst will be that much easier and that much stronger…and harder to control.

Not only does your anger get worse, so does the anger of those around you. They get hurt and defensive. They counterattack. And they become less and less concerned with your needs and your feelings. You pay dearly for your anger in broken relationships.

Hide emotional pain

Anger does hide emotional pain. Anger is a good defence against fear, loss, guilt, shame, and feelings of rejection or failure. It puts a tight lid on painful emotions. We learn that we can cope with just about any pain if we get mad enough. (Dad is ashamed so he yells at the kids. Mom is depressed so she yells at the kids.)

But once again, short-term gain is long-term pain. First of all, when we get angry, we may not let ourselves experience emotions that may be important signals for us, telling us what we need to do, or to stop doing in our lives. Maybe there is a good reason for you to feel guilty and you should face it and do something about it. Maybe you need to deal with your depression, take some responsibility and make some changes in your life.

Using anger as a way of dealing with our feelings don’t make the feelings go away either. They come back stronger than ever. You have to crank up your anger to cope.

Finally, using anger to deal with your pain becomes a habit, and you “go off” about everything. After all, it is a lot easier to blow up at your wife/husband for spending money on something the family doesn’t need than it is to sit down and have a serious talk about your finances, for example.

Getting attention

Anger does get people’s attention. Sometimes it seems like nobody listens to you unless you yell. People may get alarmed and they may try to please you. But once again, the immediate pay-off may have long-term outcomes you don’t want, and that can hurt you.

Some may indeed sit up and take notice when you yell. But eventually they will begin to tune you out. Others will run. They may start to avoid you or become very resentful.

Punish

You can punish and get revenge by becoming angry too. Someone lets you down, or seems careless, and this great wall of rage may rise up inside you. You want to punish them and teach them a lesson.

You want them to feel as much pain as you do. This will to harm is so powerful that it’s all you care about. The trouble is, when you punish other people, they become your enemies, and your enemies then want to punish you.

Sometimes these are the people you love and need the most.

Change the Behaviour of Others.

Anger can help you change the behaviour of others, and get people to do what you want.

We coerce people into doing what we want by threatening to blow up at them if they don’t. It is tempting to use anger as a club because it often will force people into giving you what you want, short-term. However, in the long-term they turn off and turn away from you. They resent being controlled by fear. But worst of all is what it does to you.

Using your anger to change others leaves you feeling hopeless. The only way you know of to get others to do your bidding is to make them afraid of you.

Your anger itself is a two-step process.

First there is the pain. It might be emotional, like a feeling of loneliness, or loss, or of rejection. Or it might be physical, like a headache or a pain in your stomach. This is the fuel of anger. It’s like a can of gasoline sitting there.

The second part of anger is the trigger, the match that sets the can of gasoline on fire.

Our Responses to Anger

Our physical reactions when we are angry include: our heart beats faster, our pupils dilate, we breathe faster, our face may redden and our legs might turn to jelly. Our body is preparing for “fight or flight.”

Our emotions when we are angry: We often feel pain, the pain of being ignored or treated badly, or being misunderstood.

Our behaviour when we are angry: We may swear, talk loudly, hit or break things, or call people names.

Usually the trigger is the thoughts that are going around in your head. Trigger thoughts can make your anger worse. They can create quite a bonfire. What are some of those thoughts?

At the root of all these themes is the notion that people are behaving in ways they shouldn’t be, and you have a right to be angry at them for it. Anger-triggering thoughts almost always have the perception that you’ve been harmed or victimized, the belief that the other person harmed or provoked you deliberately and that the person was wrong and bad to harm you, and should have behaved differently.

But what if that weren’t true? What if people are only doing the best they can, given their own needs, fears, pain and personal history? What if people are behaving based on what they know and don’t know, their skills, and their physical and emotional limitations?

What if they are only doing the best they can with the resources they have available?

The Problem with Trigger Thoughts

All trigger thoughts assert that you’ve been harmed, deliberately and wrongly. And here is something else that is implied: Not only did the provoking person cause you pain, but they ought to change so the pain can stop. They are both responsible for the harm and they are required to fix it.

The problem with this thinking is that it leaves us feeling very helpless. The pain you experience is out of your control. Someone did this to you and you won’t feel better until they see the light and change their behaviour. However, people rarely change. They keep doing what feels good to them.

Your anger may distress them briefly but then they return to their old habits. The whole time you are angry, waiting for them to change—you are stuck.

This feeling of angry helplessness starts a vicious cycle. You are hurting, the other person doesn’t change, and you feel stuck and unable to escape the pain. That feeling of helplessness can make you feel even angrier, and even more frustrated because that the provoking person won’t change.

Breaking the cycle requires you to take responsibility for changing what is painful. You can’t wait for the other person to do it. Instead of asking yourself, “Who is responsible for my pain?” ask yourself, “What can I do about it?”

It is easy to buckle under to pressure by attacking and condemning others, but keeping one’s cool under fire and stress and making an effort to understand a problem require both strength and professionalism.

By his action, Karl has hurt his credibility, not only with his national sales manager, but with a new employee.

Karl’s negative communication with the employee undermined Rita’s management authority and hurt her effectiveness in developing her staff.

2) What might have been a more effective approach for Karl to take?

• Be more aware of his own anger triggers and used some techniques for defusing his own emotions after he was chewed out by his boss.
• Given himself some time to calm down and think more rationally before raising the issue of the report with either Rita or Ebins.
• Asked clarifying questions to check out the situation, rather than immediately jumping to conclusions about an employee’s guilt.
• Speak to those involved in the problem to see if there are things to be learned from the errors, and if there are other problems that need to be addressed.

3) What would you have said to Rita, if you were in Karl’s place? If you were Rita, how would you feel now? What would you do?

For Rita, she might wish to speak with Karl after he has had some time to calm down.

She may say something like, “When you become angry and accuse me of incompetence, I feel humiliated and concerned about my effectiveness as national sales manager. I would appreciate it if we could sit down and discuss my performance and that of my staff in a calm and forthright manner. Can you see some merit in that?”

If Karl were in agreement, Rita might suggest they meet again to clarify Karl’s expectations and her performance.

Is Anger the Best Response?

Anger affects your thinking. Memory, creativity, and concentration weaken. Your thoughts become accusatory, exaggerated and rigid. You treat assumptions as facts; you may become irrational.

Sometimes we find ourselves responding to particular events with anger, and because we always respond with anger, we begin to think it is the event itself that is making you angry. However, the culprit isn’t the event but how you interpret the event that makes you angry.

When might anger be an appropriate response?

When would anger be an inappropriate response?

To help you determine whether anger is your best response, ask yourself: Is my anger helping me or hurting me?

If the answer is “hurting” it’s a message that your anger is needless; it is making the situation worse. In these instances it’s time to respond differently.

The art of anger management—being able to transform anger from a negative experience into a positive one—is learning how to use your thoughts and feelings and behaviours so they work for you, not against you.

Distorted Thinking  

We know that how we think about things determines to a large degree what we experience, and this is particularly true about anger. Sometimes, when you are angry, your thinking gets distorted in many ways, the most common of which are:

• Magnifying
• Destructive labelling
• Imperative thinking
• Making assumptions about what other people are thinking

Magnifying

This type of distortion turns the consequences of a negative event into a catastrophe.

For example, if you usually get angry when you are two minutes late for a meeting or miss a particular call, you are a magnifier. You are actually making a mountain out a molehill.

In fact, this is more than making a mountain out of a molehill. This is a tendency to take something that is unfortunate and turning it into the worst possible situation.

However, there are some things you can do to control your tendency to magnify a bad situation. These three steps can help you neutralize your anger:

• Make a realistic assessment as to how bad things are. How bad is it really?
• Be very precise and accurate in the language you use to describe the bad situation.

For example, this wasn’t the worst restaurant you’ve ever eaten at. The soup was cold and service was slow.

• Look at the whole picture, not just the annoying piece.

Coping thoughts:

• Yes, this is frustrating but it’s not the end of the world.
• By next week, none of this will matter.
• It’s a setback; it’s not worth getting all bent out of shape.

Destructive Labelling

This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. When you use destructive labelling, you broaden one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. Examples may include calling your boss a jerk, your girlfriend a bitch, or your colleague a loser.

Destructive labelling creates and perpetuates anger because it forces you to focus on only the negative characteristics you find irritating in another person. Sometimes we label others in an effort to protect our own self-esteem. However, when you hear yourself labelling someone, step back and describe the annoying behaviour with precision.

Coping thoughts:

• Why am I swearing?
• I feel frustrated and things aren’t going the way I’d like them to, but I can cope.

Imperative Thinking

This is when you have a list of inflexible rules about how you and others should act. For example, “You should have called me back right away if you weren’t interested.”

Imperative thinking creates anger because it implies that we are entitled to get what we want in a specific situation, or that people should be the way we want them to be. Then, when our imperatives are violated we think an injustice has taken place.

Violating our own self-requirements (thinking, “I should have done a better job”) also creates anger because we perceive the violation as failure. Usually what this means is that we have unrealistically high expectations. This is a trait we often see in a chronically angry person.

Mind Reading

Rarely do you bother to check out your presumptions, acting instead as if they were ultimately true. (For example, you may think, “If my co-worker respected me, he would have asked for my opinion. Since he doesn’t, I will ignore his input too.”)

Unfortunately, we don’t have the power to read someone else’s mind. Instead we go by our assumptions, which we rarely bother to check out. Then our presumptions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Most of what we’ve been doing is looking at your behaviour over the long term, and making you aware of what has been going on in your own mind—the thoughts that trigger your anger, the distorted thoughts that can fuel your anger, and the thoughts we can use in place of these.

If you can get a handle on the type of self-talk or inner dialogue that goes on in your head all day, and have some different coping strategies, you will have made a big start toward getting your anger under control.