Managing Anger: Simple Steps to Dealing with Frustration and Threat

Simple Steps to Dealing with Frustration and Threat

Gael Lindenfield

Introduction

To most of us, the word ‘anger’ conjures up fearful and unpleasant images. In our minds, this is an emotion we generally associate with scenes of abuse, hurt, violence and destruction. But this dreadful reputation is very unfair to this natural, basic emotion. After all, it is actually designed to be a positive and constructive aid to survival. Its function is to provide us with vital boosts of both physical and emotional energy, just when we are most in need of either protection or healing.

But it is hard to remember the positive nature of anger today. Not only are we bombarded by media stories depicting the awful power of uncontrolled anger, we are also surrounded in our daily life by examples of people desperately trying to pretend that they have risen above this primitive animal emotion. This is not surprising when we consider that most of us were brought up to believe that anger was the response of the unenlightened savage to frustration, threat, violation and loss. As more civilized beings, we were urged, both directly and indirectly, to ‘keep cool’ and ‘turn the other cheek’. Our reward, we were assured, would be a place in heaven – plus fortune, power and happiness in this life as well!

But, many of us, newly empowered with self-awareness and the skills of confidence, are now challenging this myth. We realize that ‘gritting our teeth’ ruins our health, ‘grinning and bearing it’ destroys our relationships, and being ‘too nice’ inhibits our ability both to succeed at work and put right the wrongs of this very unfair world.

However, in making the attempt to reclaim the positive power of anger, I have noticed that disappointment and disillusionment are commonplace. The old habits sometimes seem impossibly hard to break. So, against our better judgement, many of us still find ourselves:

– unable to feel angry, even when we think we should, and so continuing to suffer abuse of our rights

– ‘going over the top’ with rage at the most inappropriate times and places

– taking out our frustration on our nearest or dearest or those least able to defend themselves

– crying when we would prefer to bawl and shout, or at least argue assertively

– rendered speechless and motionless with fury

– getting stuck in a depression when faced with loss instead of becoming angry and healthily completing our grieving

– being too cowardly and passive in the face of other people’s anger and then torturing ourselves with guilt and shame

– unable to control our own anger, even when those who irritate us may be too young, old or sick to handle our outbursts

– haunted by nightmares or daydreams of spiteful and violent revenge

– running to the doctor with headaches, ulcers and hypertension caused by holding in tight the steam boiling within us.

If the bells of recognition have started ringing, this is certainly the book for you!

Why I Have Written This Book

You may be comforted to know that I have a very personal interest in this subject because I am still struggling myself! I certainly don’t pretend to have completely mastered the art of managing anger well, though I know that am getting more and more skilful as the days go by.

In common with very many people I know, I was never taught the art of handling anger as a child – even though the adults around me knew that, because of neglect and injustice, I had plenty of reason to feel more than my fair share of it. So I found myself naturally locking my feelings defensively within myself. On the outside, I became predominantly ‘sweetness and light’, and as I grew up, I graduated from being a schoolgirl collector of ‘Good Conduct’ badges to an enthusiastic but basically cynical do-gooder. Then in my mid-twenties, a serious attempt to take my own life led me to the world of therapy, which mercifully released me from my depression by giving me the permission and space to feel angry.

But, with hindsight, I can see that this therapy was not enough. I needed guidance on how to handle this hitherto alien emotion. It is true that I was able to find some constructive outlets. I used my angry energy to battle on behalf of forgotten clients in the field of mental health but, more often than not, I displayed and vented my anger aggressively. I often obtained the results which I was seeking, but, needless to say, I found that both my personal and professional relationships suffered under the strain.

When, in my thirties, I experienced another major personal crisis in the shape of a marriage breakdown, I became even more aware of how my inability to handle my anger was hurting not just me, but my children as well. So once again I began to strangle and repress it, with the result that my physical health suffered almost disastrously. Luckily, however, in the course of my search for additional professional stimulation (to dull my personal pain), I discovered Assertiveness Training. At last I found a method of help which actually gave me alternative strategies to use in order to help me cope with my own and other people’s negative feelings. Motivated largely by my own personal needs, I began to adapt and expand the ideas of AT and integrate them into my counselling and self-help work. Using also my knowledge and experience of other therapies such as Transactional Analysis, Gestalt and Dramatherapy, I then began to formulate my own strategies under the heading of Assertive Anger. These became further tried and tested as I began to run courses on this specific subject.

More recently, I have become very aware that the mismanagement of anger is not just a problem for the small minority of people who may need the help of a therapist. As I began to expand my work outside the field of mental health, and specialize in helping with the more ‘everyday’ problems which face the majority of us in the daily course of our lives, I found that almost everyone I met seemed to have some degree of difficulty in handling anger!

Is this a problem of our age, I wonder? Many therapists and counsellors are beginning to think it could be and that, judging by the behaviour of many young people, there could be worse to come. The Director of the Samaritans in Great Britain has cited depression, resulting from unexpressed anger, as one of the most likely causes for the alarming rise in teenage suicides. Similarly, other professional social observers of the young are often heard to blame a build up of anger for the frightening outbreaks of riots and hooliganism.

If the problem is so widespread, we should all be very concerned because, as a society, it seems we have never been in greater need of the positive power of anger and, never under greater threat should this emotion be mismanaged. Mass anger about the injustices in our world and about the threats to our precious planet is, in my opinion, both appropriate and laudable. We should welcome it, because it could help motivate us to preserve what we value. However, if it is allowed to turn negatively inwards, it will weigh us down with disabling apathy and despair – and, if it is directed aggressively outwards, it could destroy us all.

What This Book Offers

While I am not suggesting that a change in the way in which we handle anger can be a cure-all for all the personal and social evils of the world, I do believe that it could dramatically improve very many people’s ability to cope with them. So in this book I have first explored some of the facts and fiction about anger, then introduced a model for managing it both positively and constructively. As I said earlier, I call this model Assertive Anger. A brief outline of its main features can be remembered easily by using the following mnemonic:

Assertive

Non-Violent

Goal-directed

Ethical

Responsible

The latter sections of the book offer practical guidance on ways in which we can work towards achieving this ideal!

In summary, the structure of the book is as follows:

 Part 1: Understanding more about anger is the theoretical section of the book and is designed to help you to understand more about how anger affects our bodies, minds and behaviour. It also explains what the philosophy underpinning the model of Assertive Anger is all about. You will find that there is considerable emphasis on the damage and hurt which both the passive and aggressive methods of handling anger can cause. I hope this will motivate you to read on and complete the practical work in the rest of the book!

 Part 2: Managing our own anger presents a six-step self-help programme which you can use to break old patterns and replace your conditioned responses with new behaviour. Through these exercises you can begin to learn how to express your anger without hurting yourself or others.

 Part 3: How to deal with other people’s anger offers guidelines and exercises to help you take better control of your own feelings when faced with outbursts from others. It also suggests ways in which you can help other people safely unbottle some of their repressed anger, which may be damaging your relationships with them.

 Part 4: Preventative strategies can help you plan ways in which you can alter your general patterns of behaviour and lifestyle, so that you can prevent a build up of unnecessary tension and frustration.

 Part 5: Further reading gives a list of other books which may be of interest and help.

Who Can Be Helped by This Book?

I think this book will be of particular help and interest to people who:

– have already completed some personal development work which has given them an awareness of the difficulties they have with anger

– have persistent relationship difficulties and find it hard to resolve conflicts without hurting themselves or others

– are suffering from health problems or addictions which they have been told, or suspect themselves, may be being caused, or made worse by, their mismanagement of frustration and anger

– are living or working under high levels of pressure and need to take particular care with the management of their emotions

– are bereaved and finding themselves ‘stuck’ in their grief

– are struggling with mental health problems such as depression, phobias, obsessions and eating disorders

– are trying to help others manage their stress and anger more constructively, e.g. managers, training officers, teachers, community workers, counsellors, nurses and doctors – not to mention millions of concerned and harassed parents!

As I indicated earlier, the ideas in this book have arisen in the main from my own personal experience and my work with people on ‘everyday’ problems at home and at work. I am very aware that a minority of people’s problems are so severe that their needs cannot be completely met within the scope of a self-help book such as this. For example, I would urge anyone who is prone to serious outbursts of violence, or suspects that they could be, to seek additional help from a professional therapist or doctor.

Similarly I would suggest that anyone who is living or working with someone with such difficulties, or anyone who has suffered serious abuse in the past, should not hesitate to request further professional guidance. A list of helping agencies can usually be found in any good library, social services or health department, or through the many confidential phonelines that now exist to help people living or working under such stress and threat.

How to Use This Book

Ideally this book should be read slowly, over a period of a few weeks, so that its contents can be thought about in the context of the practical experience of living with the issues and problems which it addresses. Alternatively, you could give it a quick read through first and then re-read at a slower pace later, concentrating on the particular sections which are of interest to you.

With regard to the practical work, I feel that this should be undertaken step-by-step, in the order which I have suggested. I have found that good foundation work in any personal development programme makes the learning of new skills so much faster and more secure.

The exercises have been designed for individuals to do in the course of reading this book, but they could easily be adapted for use in a self-help group or training programme.

Finally, feel free to alter and experiment creatively with any of my ideas and exercises. Never forget that this book is intended to be a self-help resource and not a Bible!

Introduction to the 2000 Edition

It’s hard to believe that it was only 10 years ago that I was advised (quite rightly!) that there was no mass market interest in the subject of anger. However, nowadays stories centring around the latest kind of ‘rage’ phenomena are part of the staple diet of many newspapers and TV programmes. In addition we are constantly being confronted by the rising temperature of feeling among so many groups of ‘ordinary’ people. Just think how freely the words anger or fury are seen in the headlines of features about traditionally ‘passive’ groups such as nurses, people with disabilities, and pensioners.

But I don’t believe that it is just concern and fear about these issues that is driving the growing demand for more enlightenment on managing anger. What is on the minds of most people I meet has much more to do with everyday concerns. Chiefly, they want to know how to control their own increasing inclination or tendency to be a slave to their own temper! They no longer want their anger to put pressure on their hearts, hurt their kids, ruin their relationships or threaten their careers.

This is great news for me. (And not just because it proves that there is, after all, a market for this book!) I believe that this open acknowledgement of people’s personal struggle with anger could be the first step towards two potential revolutions. First, it could radically improve the way we relate to each other – at home, at work and in the wider world. And secondly, it could revolutionize the way we manage our increasingly pressurized lifestyles.

Ten years ago, those people who are now openly asking for help might have felt hopelessly imprisoned and terrorized by their frustration and anger. They would probably have sunk into a state of chronic apathy and depression – and, in so doing, rendered themselves powerless.

One of the central messages of this book is that when anger is well managed it can do just the opposite: It can be an empowering and positive force. Under our control we can use it to energize ourselves into taking the kind of courageous and constructive action we should take if we want to have happier lives, more successful societies and a planet which will survive many more centuries.

But equally, as we are now witnessing, if we continue to lift the lid on our emotions before we have the tools and techniques to express anger safely, we risk unleashing the potentially deadly force of uncontrolled rage.

So, although I am pleased to see that in the last 10 years anger management has emerged from the shadows and is now seen as a credible way of helping ‘people with emotional problems’, it is still rarely discussed in schools, the workplace or at home. It is one of my dreams to see this happen. The alternative is to continue to leave people to learn the ‘hard way’. This hit-and-miss route is the one my own learning took. So I know first-hand what a trail of unnecessary hurt and devastated dreams it can leave in its wake. I do hope that you will find this new, revised self-help programme a much easier way to get to grips with the fire and passion inside you!