Friday, August 3, 2012

Stop fueling the fire

Do you believe that your inner bully is caused by anger?  Psychology has ignored problems with anger, but clinically many therapists will admit to this being a major focus in sessions.  Chronic anger problems can cause behavioral habits that harm yourself and many times other people as well. 

The old style of anger management taught us that we needed to unleash the anger.  Many people were taught to take it out physically through exercise or throwing a pillow.  The problem with this technique is it raises your heart rate.  So how can you cool down if you are stimulating the body?  You can't!  The only real way to calm anger is to alter the mind (counseling), retrain the body (relaxation), and learn new habits. 

A great book to read up on effective anger strategies is Anger: This misunderstood emotion by Carol Tavris.  The author teaches some great strategies for rethinking the problem with anger.  When we think in a blaming way, "it's your fault" you will fuel anger further, but if we retrain our thinking into something like "some of this may be my problem too" you calm anger by accepting a small part of the responsibility.  If you can not accept that, you can minimally reduce the intensity of the statement. 

If you want to feel better, you can!  What you put into managing your anger has to be different than what you have done before. 

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