How many of us acknowledge our feelings? We think about how we feel, sure. We have mental conversations like, “Oh, jeez, my hairline is starting to look like my father’s,” or “I’m acting just like my mother.” We continually bombard ourselves with negative thoughts like, “I just know that guy is checking me out. I wonder if he thinks I’m too fat.” But that’s all thinking stuff.
How often do we actually stop to consider what is causing these negative thoughts? How often do we acknowledge our unmet needs and fears? How often do we really understand why we feel angry? Until we are clear what motivation lies behind our thoughts, how can we be sure that our needs are being met? Try the next exercise to find out how you handle your feelings.
EXERCISE
How Do I Handle My Feelings?
Think of something that made you happy or mad and ask yourself the following questions about the situation.
1. Was I aware that I was feeling something?
2. Can I assign a name to what I was feeling?
3. Can I now agree that I had the right to this feeling? Was what I felt legitimate?
4. Can I acknowledge that how I felt might have come not only from the present circumstances, but also from something that happened in the past?
5. Did I have the appropriate reaction or take the appropriate action?
Here’s an example of how these underlying emotions can have an effect on us. “LeAnn” came for a consultation because she was extremely angry. Her husband “Dan” had left the front door open when he went out to the store and left her alone for a few minutes. Nothing unusual happened while he was out, but when LeAnn discovered he’d left the door ajar, she went ballistic. When he returned home, she started a huge fight with Dan, ranting that he was inconsiderate and didn’t care about her. During the therapy session, she said she felt as though she had overreacted, but she just couldn’t stop being mad at him— didn’t want to be near him, in fact—and she couldn’t figure out why.
I asked LeAnn to name the feelings behind the anger she was feeling and what needs were affected? Was it her need for physical safety that was threatened, or did what happened challenge her sense of self in some other way? Did her husband’s action evoke some anxiety-creating feeling from her distant or near past? Did her reaction make sense? Was her reaction appropriate to the situation in kind and intensity? Lastly, I asked LeAnn to look at how she was feeling about what happened and whether or not her feelings about the situation changed since then?
It turned out that LeAnn remembered that when she was a little girl, her dad had left her home alone and an intruder had gotten into the house. She was smart enough to hide in a closet while her house was ransacked. Even though she was okay, she carried that memory of vulnerability and fear with her. Her frightening emotions translated into anger at her father that, at the time, she was not allowed to explore. Those were the emotions she transferred to Dan. Dan just got the brunt of LeAnn’s childhood anger and fear. Tracking her underlying feelings back to their origin allowed LeAnn to look at the current problem in a new way. She was able to let go of her anger at her husband. She was further able to explain to Dan why she was behaving in what appeared to be an unreasonable way and ask that he be more careful about closing the door in the future.
Trying to determine your layers of feelings can be tough. Think about a situation that made you angry and then complete the following exercise. This exercise will help you make strides toward identifying and controlling your anger.
EXERCISE
Identifying and Controlling My Anger
Why did I get angry?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
At the time, how did I interpret what the other person did to me?
______________________________________________
How did I feel about it at the time?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
What kind of threat did I feel (physical, self-esteem, etc.) or what need did I fear I would be prevented from satisfying?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
Looking back on it now, was my interpretation of the situation accurate and rational? Yes /No
If “no,” why not?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
Was my reaction to the perceived threat appropriate? Yes /No If “no,” what would have been a better way to react to the situation?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
How can I avoid reacting in an inaccurate, irrational, or inappropriate way in the future?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
By using this exercise to analyze your past perceptions and reactions to threatening situations, you can come to a new understanding of your reactions to such situations. Use the exercise each time you encounter a situation that angers you to help you understand your layers of feelings as you work toward healthier anger-management skills.
Learning the ABCs—Only You Can Make You Angry
Psychological research has shown that it’s not so much what happens to you in life, but the way you look at it that largely determines your satisfaction and happiness. Now this may sound a little sugarcoated to you, but it is largely true. There will always be situations that threaten you physically or emotionally, making you angry. However, with time and effort, you will learn that many situations you perceive as angering at first can be reframed using safer constructs. We can do some pretty amazing things with our belief systems—for good or for ill.
Originally, psychologists believed that we experienced emotions as the consequences of events. This relationship was viewed as causal—as things happened to us, we reacted with some type of feeling or emotion. Now it is widely believed that there is a whole lot more to emotional reactions. Look at it this way. Say, for instance, that (1) something happens to you, but even before you feel something, you have a (2) thought about that something that happened. A nanosecond later you establish some (3) belief about what happened. And it’s only after you have evaluated the event according to your belief system that you have a (4) consequent emotion about what has occurred. Your belief system acts as a kind of filter through which all information about the world has to pass.
In this way of thinking, the belief stage becomes critical in determining how you perceive (and feel about) your universe. It follows that you have to accept most of the responsibility for determining the emotional outcomes of your interactions. In many circumstances, you have the say over how you are going to react, based upon your beliefs regarding the event. When you can check yourself for irrational beliefs, you can change your tired ways of thinking and dump the wind out of the sails of your anger boat. In other words, only you can make you angry.
Personal Responsibility
Acknowledging that you are in charge of your emotional life is a great first step. In order to continue on the path to overcoming your anger, there are other types of anger-related behavior that you must understand.
When you’re in pain, you tend to blame others. Pinning your blame on someone else allows you to feel justified in your anger. Once freed from responsibility for your problems by placing blame elsewhere, you can wallow in self-pity. By choosing to wallow, you give up your power and get only resentment in return. Anger costs too much. However, by accepting personal responsibility for your problems, you are empowered to try new strategies in order to satisfy your needs.
Maybe you can imagine a situation like this one. Say you’ve been feeling overwhelmed at work and that you believe your boss hasn’t been giving you the credit you deserve. Remember, you have a choice about your reaction to this situation:
• Negative: You’re angry and hurt, but you figure that you can’t do anything about how you’re feeling so you suck it up and try to keep your feelings to yourself. That’s not a very satisfying thing to do, so to get even, maybe you sabotage a project or two and eventually you get fired.
• Positive: You decide to approach your employer and explain how you’re feeling about things. Your boss can, of course, then ignore your input, but perhaps she’ll do something that makes you feel better, who knows? In this scenario you may at least have a chance of getting your needs met.
You decide which solution is in your best interest.
Hot Thoughts
Hot thoughts are subconscious negative thoughts that may influence the way we perceive a situation. Hot thoughts can work for you or against you, depending on the situation. For instance, if you’ve been having some hard times, these subtle (or maybe not so subtle) thoughts may take the form of put-downs and “not good enough” messages.
You can learn to identify some of your own internal “hot talk.” By taking note of your personal themes, you can begin to stop your negative thoughts and replace them with healthier, more self-affirming blandishments. In doing so, you will improve your self-image and become better at managing your reaction to anger-provoking situations. Some of the most common hot thoughts are listed in the next section and will be explored further in Chapter 8.
Types of Hot Thoughts
There are a few classic types of hot thoughts that you may be using when you get angry. You also may be using these in your self-talk or in your interactions with others.
Labeling
When you label, or pigeonhole, the source of your anger, it becomes easier to rage over. Once you’ve smacked a “bad” label on something, you’ve decided how you feel about it—no ifs, ands, or buts—and it is no longer necessary for you to analyze, interpret, or understand it. If you allow yourself to see things as only black and white, then it becomes easier to escalate your anger.
When possible, try to avoid black-and-white thinking. Try not to decide that things are either all good or all bad, all right or all wrong. Look for shades of gray. That goes for labeling people as well. It’s all too easy for us when you feel wronged by someone to slap a label on that person based on his or her conduct. Generally, it’s what a person is doing that causes you grief, but you wind up labeling the person a “jerk” or a “racist” or a “slob.” Classifying someone in this way makes it easier to see the whole person as despicable and therefore more deserving of your anger.
Mind Reading
Mind readers believe that by reading subtle signs they can discern what’s going on in other people’s—especially their partners’—minds. (This type of interpretation goes beyond the ability to understand nonverbal communication or body language.) A woman who believes she can read minds may incorrectly attribute this skill to her partner, too, and then become incensed when her mate behaves as though he doesn’t have “the sight.”
Here’s an example of how believing in mind reading can lead to problems. “John” came to therapy to work on his relationship. He was frustrated and wanted to know why it was that when his wife was upset, she thought he should be able to feel it and should be able to anticipate her needs and give her a hug or take her out or buy her something. He said that eventually his wife would let him know what she wanted from him and he’d comply, but his efforts never seemed good enough for her. He felt his wife seemed to think he should know in advance what was needed. I was guilty of this, myself—I confess. When I was upset, I just knew that my husband should feel it, that he should, in fact, anticipate it and give me a hug. But as I have been trained to know better, to understand that only I can get my needs met, I go ahead and ask for the hug. He complies. (He’s a nice man.)
Fortune-Telling
Somewhat akin to mind reading, fortune-telling is based upon supposed “knowledge” of what is happening in someone else’s life. Fortune-tellers behave according to what they believe will happen and not according to the actual reality of the situation. They act on assumptions that haven’t been verified. The next example is based on an actual situation in which fortune-telling caused a misunderstanding.
“Jennifer” got into a pique and decided to throw out the lavish dinner she made for her husband because he was twenty minutes late for dinner. She immediately assumed the worst, guessing that he had gone to a bar with his friends and wouldn’t come home until very late. In a rage, she dumped the entire dinner into the garbage disposal. Jennifer’s husband came home shortly thereafter—he had been stuck in traffic with no cell phone. Despite her mistake, she ranted at him in an attempt to justify her behavior based on her false projection regarding his actions. Jennifer’s husband was in a no-win situation.
Obviously, this type of thinking can be quite disastrous. Communication is squelched. Fortune-telling leads to more and more dysfunctional communication because it compounds misunderstanding. Utilizing his or her erroneous belief system, each party gets farther and farther away from knowing what is really going on.
Catastrophizing
Catastrophizing occurs when someone takes a rather mundane occurrence and blows it out of proportion. Looking at situations from the perspective that they are truly awful can crank up your sense of victimization (and importance), making you feel deeply wronged. This type of hot thought may be somewhat gender specific—specific to women, that is. Here’s why: When women describe things, they tend to use more superlatives and grander language than men do. It’s probably just a matter of style. For example, “I have the most horrible headache. I think I may die,” or “You never want to kiss me anymore, I guess you hate me,” and so on.
This type of intensity simply confounds men. The facts just don’t fit! Stunned by such statements, men frequently fail to react appropriately, if at all. Women can all too easily interpret men’s state of bewilderment as a lack of commitment or caring. This conclusion further contaminates the system of communication while giving neither participant a clue as to what the other person needs. This perceived disregard for the other’s needs often leads to a lack of satisfaction with the relationship and, not surprisingly, big problems. However, regardless of your gender, avoiding exaggeration as much as you can and working on being more direct will help improve communication with the people you must interact with every day, be it family, friends, or coworkers.
Shoulding
Watch out for shoulding on yourself—you know, phrases like, “I should have known better,” or “I should be thinner,” or “I should have gotten new tires on the car and I wouldn’t have gotten in the accident.” Such self-punitive “should” statements can be very demoralizing and serve only to exacerbate guilt and fire up self-anger. Look at these shoulds squarely, see if there is any reality in any of them, and refute the rest if you can. If somebody else is shoulding on you, short circuit your anger with inquiry. Ask the other person what it’s all about. Remember, you’ll stay angry just as long as you accept the truth of any angry belief.
Distorted Thinking Patterns
In addition to being hot thoughts, shoulds can also cause you to operate under a system of wrong or negative thinking that contributes to self-angering. Try the next exercise and begin to get rid of some of the unnecessary shoulds in your life. Spend a little time to think through your answers.
EXERCISE
Getting Rid of My Shoulds
What irrational should do I want to dispute and then surrender?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
Can I rationally support this belief in my present circumstances?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
What evidence exists of the falseness of this belief?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
Does any evidence exist of the truth of this belief?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
What are the worst things that could happen to me if I did not believe this or I did not get what I believed I must have?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
What good things could happen if I no longer held this belief?
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
Many of our negative interpretations are rather arbitrary at best. They are ideas assigned at some time in the past but which no longer apply. By deciding if such beliefs are still influential in your life and refuting and then discarding those that are unnecessary, you go a long way toward managing, rather than being managed by, your emotions. Once you accomplish this, you will be able to focus on developing your ability to communicate assertively. (Managing your emotions is covered in Chapter 5, and learning communications skills is covered in Chapter 9.)
If you don’t cast out unnecessary shoulds, it’s easy to fall prey to negative patterns of thinking. There are five negative patterns of thinking that you should try to identify within yourself.
Personalization
Teenagers are especially prone to this negative thought pattern. My teenage daughter, for example, exhibited personalization on a regular basis. She was convinced that people were looking at her “funny.” She was sure that the entire world was just waiting to ogle her or label her in some way—fat, thin, weird, the list goes on and on. She had fallen prey to personalization, which means incorrectly referring external events to herself. She was the victim of a wacky solipsism, so self-absorbed (like most kids at that age) that everything was all about her.
Polarized Thinking
Simply put, this is dichotomous either/or thinking, often setting up conditions for an assumption. In its way, polarized thinking seems logical. It is the premise that’s the problem. Here’s an example: “If my husband really loved me, he wouldn’t come home late for dinner. He’s late, so he must not love me.” The problem is that one part of the syllogism is defective to begin with. That is to say, coming home late does not necessarily prove a lack of loving.
Inference
A kissing cousin to polarized thinking, inference is a kind of distortion that’s even more far out. Inference usually consists of jumping to an arbitrary conclusion in the absence of any corroborating evidence. For example, thinking, “George didn’t smile at me today when he came to work. He always smiles at me. He must have gotten fired and he probably thinks it’s because of me.” When you catch yourself thinking in this way, it’s best to stop and check yourself for inconsistencies in your logic.
Selective Abstraction
Selective abstraction is a very common distortion between couples. It occurs when you focus on a detail while ignoring the context in which it is occurring. Say, for example, “Betty” dresses to go out to dinner with her husband and thinks she looks pretty darned good. She says to her husband, “How do I look?” He smiles and says, “Good, but you have a run in your stocking.” She goes nuts. This isn’t what she wanted to hear. Her husband was just stating the facts, being helpful, but that doesn’t matter: Now she doesn’t even want to go out anymore. “Betty” has succumbed to selective abstraction.
Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization means arriving at some sweeping conclusion based on a single experience, particularly if you’ve had a bad day. For example, resolving never to drive again after getting into a small fender bender is an overgeneralization. In every conflict, you have the task of communicating your needs and trying to understand the other person’s point of view, even if the two of you don’t agree. Chapter 9 on communicating will provide you with more communication tools to better deal with these types of distorted thinking patterns.
Fight the Good Fight
Life is a two-way street. People are constantly evaluating you, just as you are constantly evaluating them. Your appraisal of them may be based upon several things: how a person looks or smells, what kind of car the person drives, how much money he has, or how she is dressed. Any negative or positive assessments are based upon your own set of rules about how others should behave and under what circumstances.
However, assuming that other people are working with the same set of rules that you are can lead to incorrect interpretations and conclusions. Instead of assuming, try to look at why the other person acts in the way that he or she does and understand that his or her rules may be different from yours. The more you understand the conceptual and experiential framework and assumptions under which others act, the better you will be able to understand where someone is coming from.
Of course, just because you understand the reasons for another person’s behavior doesn’t mean that you will approve of it or that it will be acceptable to you. However, as you analyze that person’s behavior, you can learn to see it in a more objective cause-and-effect framework. This enhanced perspective not only helps you to regulate your own reaction to the interaction, but also even helps you attain greater mastery over the situation.
As Don Miguel Ruiz reminds us in his book, The Four Agreements (Marin County, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997), “Nothing others do is because of you. What others do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” Sometimes we get caught up in entitlement fallacy—the belief that just because we want something very much or just because we believe we need something very much, we ought to have it and anyone who gets in our way is doing it on purpose! This kind of belief is quite normal for three-year-olds—it’s a normal stage of ego development. But for an adult, it’s a reaction that must be laid to rest.
Believing in the entitlement fallacy can lead to self-angering thoughts and behaviors. For example, you might have thought, if my girlfriend loved me, she’d answer her phone by the third ring. She didn’t, so evidently she doesn’t love me anymore or she’s out screwing around. Just because you want something to be a certain way doesn’t mean it will be. We need to recognize this fact and not give some funky belief the power to make us mad.
Anger Management Tools for Dealing with Others
In your relationships with others, viewing anger in someone else as a response to some type of personal pain will help you to take your own feelings out of the situation. In focusing on the other person, you have a better chance of getting a clear, nondefensive picture of what the person needs. You may even be able to provide it and thus avert an escalating anger situation. Try to begin to use the following tools in your interactions with people, and watch your anger mastery skill grow.
1. Inquiry is a good management tool for you to practice. Be sure to ask questions of the other person about the potentially angering situation. Inquiry helps your communication skills, and it can deescalate potentially volatile situations while at the same time allowing you to make note of your own responses to anger-provoking situations. Asking questions helps you evaluate your ability to accept personal responsibility for your feelings. Things may not be as they seem and there may actually be no real cause for anger. For instance, if someone storms into the room, try not to immediately become defensive and assume he is angry because of something you did. Ask; he might just be having a lousy day.
2. Take responsibility. Make sure you are responsible for your own actions. Blaming others just makes things worse as you set up a system for yourself of labeling others in negative ways. Ultimately, blaming others is counterproductive. The person being blamed will eventually give up trying to meet any positive expectations you may have, believing it’s probably impossible to do so. Being eternally damned as an idiot or a failure, this person doesn’t stand a chance.
3. Become aware of your body. Scan your body for stress. Physical tension creates stress and stress predisposes you to anger. Because anger shows up somatically, patients in therapy are taught to survey themselves for evidence that their bodies are showing clues of discomfort, which can lead to anger. They learn to recognize where they carry tension in their bodies. A twitching jaw, a changed breathing pattern, a hard-beating heart can all be indicators that your body knows, maybe even before you are consciously aware of it, that you’re experiencing discomfort. Look for some of these anger clues in yourself. By taking on the role of aware self-observer, you can gain a bit of objective distance, which will give you more time to decide how you wish to respond in the situation.
4. Stay on track. You don’t need to let provocation get the better of you. If somebody provokes you by bringing in old material, ignore it and stay in the here and now. Try not to get your anger hackles up, thinking about how you’ve been wronged in past situations. Give yourself the basic message that you are in charge and that you do have the skills to manage most every situation. Supply yourself with good healthy self-talk and watch your esteem grow.