Anger Management For Dummies. W. Doyle Gentry

Thus, in addition to understanding your anger triggers, knowing exactly “where” you usually express your anger is helpful. If there’s a mismatch between where your anger starts and where it ends up being expressed, you have something to work on. Part III provides you with a plethora of tools for more effectively managing your anger where it really begins.

      Common anger situations or contexts include the following:

      ✔ Home: Sadly, many people save up their anger to express with their loved ones. They seem to believe that it’s safe to do that. What they don’t realize is that such behavior can be abusive and frequently causes emotional scars, divorces, marital strife, and even charges of abuse.

      ✔ Work: People in power have a tendency to express excessive anger, generally at those who have less power. People on the bottom of the hierarchy either stuff their anger in or explode and get fired.

      ✔ Crowds, noisy places, and traffic jams: Even people without major anger problems sometimes become irritable and frustrated in these contexts. Think about people who have gotten into fist fights on airplanes over 2 inches of legroom or instances of road rage that result in bodily harm. (See Chapter 23 for specific ideas about dealing with road rage.)

      ✔ Social settings: Parties and family functions can provide a tinder box for igniting anger. Sometimes that’s because of alcohol, which can disinhibit people’s anger expression. Other times, it’s because of long-standing histories of hostility between friends and family.

      Expressing Anger

      Everyone gets angry. After all, anger is one of those universal emotions – along with sadness, joy, and fear – that people throughout the world recognize when they see or hear it. But everyone experiences and expresses anger a little differently. The following sections describe many of the ways people show their anger or, alternatively, hold it in. Understanding your strategies for anger expression can be helpful before you work on changing how you show your anger.

Keeping your cool

      Yes, keeping your cool can be one way of expressing anger. Of course, if you’re reading this book, keeping your cool probably isn’t your primary method of anger expression. Keeping cool means that you don’t respond impulsively. You may take a slow, deep breath or two before saying anything. Then you directly express your feelings while trying to solve the issue or problem. See Chapters 4, 8, 9, and 10 for more ideas on how to keep your cool.

Verbal bashing

      Verbal bashing includes yelling, arguing, put-downs, and threats. Hurting people with words sometimes works at the moment, but it usually leaves a trail of resentment, anger, and bad feelings. For example, parents who frequently yell at their kids sometimes get momentary compliance but usually end up with rebellious, resentful kids in the long run.

Nonverbal bashing

      Yes, you can clobber people without saying a word. Examples of nonverbal bashing include unfriendly gestures, such as pointing, clenched fists, and “flipping the bird.” Facial expressions of anger include dismissiveness, hostility, and contempt (through sneers, prolonged angry stares, and snarls). We don’t know quite how to explain dirty looks, but you know one when you see one! Purposely ignoring and not speaking when spoken to also convey anger and hostility. Body language includes aggressive, puffed-up poses.

Suppressing anger

      People who suppress anger feel mad but work hard to hold it in. Usually, close friends and family members pick up on the anger that these people feel. However, some folks are masters at suppression, and no one truly knows how much hostility they hold inside.

      Unfortunately, this type of anger often comes with common physical costs, such as high blood pressure, digestive problems, and heart disease. Chronic tension, unhappiness, fatigue, and distress frequently occur as well. Therefore, suppressing anger doesn’t constitute a good anger-management strategy. See Chapter 3 for more information about the costs of anger and anger suppression.

Passive-aggressive anger

      People who express their anger in a passive-aggressive manner try to find “safe” ways of showing their anger. They like for their behaviors to have plausible deniability of their actual angry feelings. In other words, they make excuses and claim that their motives were excusable. Examples of passive-aggressive behaviors include

      ✔ Chronic procrastination of promised tasks to get back at someone

      ✔ Chronic lateness

      ✔ Subtle sulking or pouting

      ✔ Purposely performing a task for someone poorly

      ✔ Purposely forgetting over and over to do a promised task

      ✔ Indirect verbal expressions such as subtle sarcasm

      Here’s an example of passive-aggressive behavior:

      Nic, a passive-aggressive fellow, was married to Sonya. Nic often felt irritated and upset with Sonya but rarely, if ever, expressed his feelings directly. One day, he decided that their house would look better in a different color. So he brought home samples of about 30 different paints to splotch on the walls throughout the house to see what color he preferred. Somehow, he failed to get around to actually painting the house for over two years. He always told Sonya, “I’m so sorry; I promise I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”

      When confronted, passive-aggressive people always have an excuse in hand and inevitably deny that they feel any anger at all. People living with passive-aggressive partners get pretty tired after 500,000 instances of “I’m sorry,” and/or “I forgot.”

Complaining and gossiping

      This strategy, like passive-aggressiveness, generally feels safer than directly confronting someone with anger. Complainers and gossipers find sympathetic listeners that will hear their frustrations, woes, and anger about someone else. That way, they avoid actually confronting the person they’re angry with. And, not surprisingly, little gets resolved in the process.

Physical aggression

      Slamming doors, punching holes in walls, and throwing dishes all fall under the category of physical aggression against objects. This type of aggression can feel very intimidating to those who witness it. Furthermore, these behaviors sometimes precede physical aggression against persons. Assaults can take the form of pushing or shoving, punching, and slapping, and they can even include the use of weapons. Obviously, physical aggression is almost always abusive to both recipients and witnesses.

      

Physical aggression with anger is only adaptive when you’re actually under attack from someone else, and it’s necessary for your own survival. Physical aggression doesn’t lead to solutions.

Displaced anger

      As noted in the section “Finding Anger in All the Wrong Places,” earlier in this chapter, sometimes people feel great anger toward someone. However, because of differences in power or fear, they don’t feel safe in expressing their anger. Unfortunately, these people may take their anger out on innocent victims, such as a spouse, children, pets, or friends. This type of anger is known as displaced anger.

      Exploring Anger Feelings: Frequency, Intensity, and Duration

      To understand how much of a problem you have with anger, you need to look at how frequently you experience the emotion, how long it lasts, and how intensely you feel it. Obviously, if you feel frequent, intense, and long-lasting anger, you have a problem, and your anger likely interferes with your life and relationships. Ask yourself the following questions:

      ✔ How frequently do I feel