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To make matters worse, angry people tend
to seek relief from the ill-moods caused by anger through other
health-endangering habits, such as smoking and drinking, or through
compulsive behavior such as workaholism and perfectionism.
Laboratory experiments have shown that
even subtle forms of anger impair problem-solving abilities and general
performance competence. In addition to increasing error rates, anger
narrows and makes rigid mental focus, tending to obscure alternative
perspectives. The angry person has one "right way" of doing things,
which, if selected in anger, is seldom the best way. There is nothing
you can do angry (resentful, irritable, grouchy, impatient, chilly) that
you can't do better not angry.
Because it acts on the entire central
nervous system as an amphetamine, anger always produces a physiological
"crash," often experienced as depression when the issues causing the
anger remain unresolved. Think about it. The last time you got really
angry, you got really depressed afterwards. The angrier you get, the
more depressed you get. And that is merely the physiological response,
even if you keep from doing something while angry that you're ashamed
of, like hurting the feelings of someone you love.
What is an Anger Problem?
A dangerous myth about an "anger-problem" restricts its definition to
aggression, abuse, hurting people, or destroying property. But this
describes only one of a great many forms of anger. You have an anger
problem if some subtle form of anger - that you may not even be aware of
- makes you do what is not in your best interest or keeps you from
performing at your highest potential. This could mean something subtle,
like putting a chilly wall between you and others or a continual
impatience or low frustration tolerance that interferes with problem
solving and performance competence.
Whatever the form of anger, in persistence
you run the risk of becoming a reactaholic, with your thoughts,
feelings, and behavior totally controlled by whoever or whatever you're
reacting to. The more reactive you are, the more powerless you feel;
anger is ultimately a cry of powerlessness.
Self-Compassion and Compassion for Others
Mastery of the three steps of self-compassion and compassion for others
makes us virtually immune to the ill-effects of anger. The first step of
self-compassion is seeing beneath the symptom or defense (anger,
anxiety, manipulation, obnoxious behavior) to the cause, which is some
form of core hurt (feeling unimportant, disregarded, accused, devalued,
guilty, untrustworthy, rejected, powerless, unlovable). Second, the core
hurt must be validated (this is how I feel at this moment), and, third,
changed (this behavior or event or disappointment or mistake does not
mean that I'm unimportant, not valuable or lovable.) Compassion for
others is recognizing that their symptoms, defenses, and obnoxious
behavior come from a core hurt, validating it, and supporting them while
they change it. Compassion does not excuse obnoxious behavior. Rather,
it keeps us from attacking the already wounded person, which allows
focus on changing the undesired behavior.
Anger Regulation versus Anger Management
Regulation of anger means healing the hurt that causes it by internally
restoring the core personal value that seems diminished by the behavior
of another. In contrast, anger management requires enduring the hurt
that causes the anger but redirecting its effects to avoid aggression
and trouble. Anger regulation employs the principles of emotional
intelligence: awareness of internal experience, the ability to control
the meaning of one's emotional experience, and empathy for the emotional
experience of others. An excellent regulation technique, called HEALSTM,
obviates the powerlessness of anger by providing the sense of internal
power, well-being, self-compassion, and compassion for others necessary
for optimal health and problem-solving. HEALSTM is a technology that,
with practice, automatically invokes a response of self-compassion and
compassion for others whenever anger and other symptoms and defenses are
stimulated, keeping the focus on solutions to the problem, rather than
attacking the person. More than 90% effective in lowering anger to
problem-solving and performance-efficient levels, HEALSTM can be learned
in three or less sessions of training.
Anger at Your Children: Who Has the Power?
Every parent since the beginning of time has been painfully aware that
children can do a great many things to irritate, frustrate, and
otherwise turn the pleasant feelings of their caretakers into moods from
hell. Those same creatures who look like little darlings when they sleep
can almost at their whim produce headaches, upset stomachs, jangled
nerves, strained muscles, aching bones, and overloaded emotional and
sensory circuits.
But there's one thing that even the most exuberant or obstinate of
children cannot do: They can't make us angry. They cannot force us to
give up internal regulation of our emotional experience. To understand
this scientific fact that seems to fly in the face of common sense,
consider the psychobiological function of anger.
Why Anger is a Problem in Families
An automatic response triggered whenever we feel threatened, anger is
the most powerful of all emotional experience. The only emotion that
activates every muscle group and organ of the body, anger exists to
mobilize the instinctual fight or flight response meant to protect us
from predators. Of course, our children are not predators. For the vast
majority of problems in family life, anger constitutes overkill and
under-think. Applying this survival-level fight or flight response to
everyday problems of family living is like using a rock to turn off a
lamp or a tank to repair a computer.
Is anyone really stupid enough to turn off a lamp with a rock? When
angry, everybody is that stupid. The problem has nothing to do with
intelligence, it has to do with how hurt we are. Anger is always a
reaction to hurt. It can be physical pain, which is why, when you bang
your thumb with a hammer while trying to hang a picture, you don't pray.
Far more often, though, anger is a reaction to psychological hurt or
threat of hurt, in the form of a diminished sense of self. Vulnerability
to psychological hurt depends entirely on how you feel about yourself.
When your sense of self is weak or disorganized, anything can make you
irritable or angry. When it's solid and well-integrated, the insults and
frustrations of life just roll off your back.
For instance, if you've had a bad day, if you're feeling guilty, a
little bit like a failure, or just disregarded, devalued, or irritable,
you might come home to find your kid's shoes in the middle of the floor
and respond with: "That lazy, selfish, inconsiderate, little brat!" Yet
you can come home after a great day of feeling fine about yourself, see
the same shoes in the middle of the floor and think, "Oh, that's just
Jimmy or Sally," and not think twice about it.
The difference in your reaction to the child's behavior lies entirely
within you and depends completely on how you feel about yourself. In the
first case the child's behavior seems to diminish your sense of self:
"If he cared about me, he wouldn't do this; if my own kid doesn't care
about me, I must not be worth caring about." The anger is to punish the
child for your diminished sense of self. In the second instance, the
child's behavior does not diminish your sense of personal importance,
value, power, and lovability. So there is no need for anger. You don't
need a tank to solve the problem of the shoes in the middle of the
floor. Rather, the problem to be solved is how to teach the child to be
more considerate in his behavior; you won't do that by humiliating him
because you feel humiliated. His reaction to humiliation will be the
same as yours: an inability see the other person's perspective, an
overwhelming urge to blame, and an impulse for revenge or punishment.
Modeling
Anger Regulation for Children
Although their intellectual maturity is far less advanced than that of
their parents, children experience anger for the same reasons as adults,
mostly to defend the sense of self from pain and temporary diminishment.
At the moment of anger, both children and adults feel bad about
themselves. Making angry people feel worse about themselves will only
make things worse. Rather, children must learn from their parents that
the sense of self is internal and can be regulated only within
themselves. They must restore their own sense of core value while
respecting the rights of other people, which means regulating the
impulse for revenge through validation of the hurt causing the urge for
revenge, and through understanding the perspective of the person at whom
the anger is directed. They will only learn to do this by watching their
parents do it.
Self-Compassion and Compassion for Others
Mastery of the three steps of self-compassion and compassion for others
makes us virtually immune to the ill-effects of anger. The first step of
self-compassion is seeing beneath the symptom or defense (anger,
anxiety, manipulation, obnoxious behavior) to the cause, which is some
form of core hurt (feeling unimportant, disregarded, accused, devalued,
guilty, untrustworthy, rejected, powerless, unlovable). Second, the core
hurt must be validated (this is how I feel at this moment), and, third,
changed (this behavior or event or disappointment or mistake does not
mean that I'm unimportant, not valuable or lovable.) Compassion for
others is recognizing that their symptoms, defenses, and obnoxious
behavior come from a core hurt, validating it, and supporting them while
they change it. Compassion does not excuse obnoxious behavior. Rather,
it keeps us from attacking the already wounded person, which allows
focus on changing the undesired behavior.
Anger Regulation
Here are a few of the common activators of anger, which we call core
hurts: feeling disregarded, unimportant, accused, guilty, untrustworthy,
devalued, rejected, powerless, unworthy of love. Once activated, core
hurts put the sense of self at stake in solving the problem, which
greatly distorts thinking, blows the problem out of proportion, and
increases the emotional intensity of the response. Of course the child
is responsible only for his/her behavior, not your sense of self.
To regulate anger, we must reduce the sensitivity of these activators.
We must learn to view anger as a signal, not to assign blame to our
children for tripping the activator, but to look within the self to
reset the activated core hurt, i.e., to restore Core Value, a sense of
personal adequacy and worthiness. With the sense of self no longer at
stake, the problem, no longer a source of self-diminishment, can be
solved for what it is: a call for more attention/effort, an
inconvenience, disappointment, or mistake.
Emotional regulation skills can be learned fairly quickly in three
concentrated learning sessions, with consistent practice between
sessions. But whether learned through training or through personal
experience that internally regulates anger activators, successful
parenting, personal happiness, optimal work efficiency, physical and
psychological health, and the capacity to sustain viable attachment
relationships demands self-regulation of the impulse to anger and
resentment.
By: Steven Stosny
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