You Can be Great If You Really Want To

Anger counseling is a many splendored beast. Ever heard that old AA phrase or acronym HALT, for example? The acronym means that we are at greater risk for relapse when we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

Hunger, loneliness, fatigue, closed head injury, ADD, ADHD, family of origin, addiction and recovery, grief, forgiveness and reconciliation, automatic negative thoughts, stress, our response to facial expressions, all can play a part in the emotional experience of anger.

We are supposed to have anger by the way, it is the energy we use to solve problems. And it is also a secondary emotion, usually following another emotion like hurt or shame.

However, if we use anger to justify violence I think we subvert the purpose of our emotions.

The one thing that no other anger management program that I am aware of talks about is the speed of the Central Nervous System (CNS).

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi,Ph.D., author to the book FLOW written in 1993, estimates that the CNS processes packets of non-verbal communication consisting of seven bits of data per package every 1/18th second.

That is 2x as fast as I can blink my eyes, which takes 1/10th second.

So you have to have your anger counseling tools in a place where they can be recalled very quickly.

Paul Ekman,Ph.D. who has worked for decades to develop a systematic catalog of human facial expressions says that all humans no matter what culture they are from, respond to a look of contempt in 1/25th second, and what that means is usually first hurt, then anger.

Any of you who are parents can remember how you felt when your children looked at you with a look of contempt. Even the memory of that look can bring back the hurt/anger emotions.

Michael Merzenich,Ph.D. of the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program says that Senior drivers need to prepare for changing road conditions in 1/45th second, which is about 4.5 times as fast as I can blink my eyes.

I also like to help folks in anger counseling understand that their internal chemistry or hormones change with each thought they have, and that we as human beings have on average about 200 thoughts per day which change our chemistry toward irritation and that we need to be prepared to name our feelings, their intensity, and to make some decisions about changing them much more frequently and much faster than perhaps we thought we did.

Sounds like mindfulness, doesn’t it?

Mindfulness, or awareness of what I am feeling coupled with deep breathing gives me a powerful tool to calm down if I am getting to hot.

John Gottman,Ph.D. and his wife, Julie Schwartze-Gottman talk about something they call Diffuse Physiological Arousal, or PDA, in their excellent workshop called The Art and Science of Love, which is for couples.

Their antidote for the awareness or mindfulness issue around strong feelings?

Take your pulse, and if it is over 100 beats per minute, take at least 20 minutes, especially for men, to calm down. Repeat that process as often as necessary.

Another tool that I teach for the awareness and mindfulness aspect of anger counseling in a biofeedback tool, called HeartMath, which trains the ability to regulate the time between heart beats.

When you learn Heartmath, you can feel good on demand, on any given heart beat. Your heart beat is actually a little slower than your CNS, but it is a much shorter intervention time than most of us are used to.

Heartmath is based on research in the recently discovered field of neurocardiology, which is the study of the heart’s own nervous system. The heart sends a great deal of data to the brain about how we are feeling, much more than the brain sends to the heart, and the heart’s brain is an affiliative and cooperative brain, which is good brain to use in dealing stress.

Heartmath works for your golf score and your brain fitness too.

Anger counseling involving Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) will involve recognition of automatic negative thoughts and disputing them in the case of REBT or creating a flow chart of evidence supporting your hot thought and evidence contradicting your hot thought in the case of CBT.

Once again, awareness will be a key piece of the anger counseling puzzle, but this time of thoughts, not just physiology or pulse.

When I do my anger management workshops, I frequently teach the Karpman drama triangle, or victim-rescuer-persecutor tool, and I teach about the grieving process using the Kubler-Ross model of grieving which includes a frequent movement between sadness and anger during the non-linear grieving process.

It is amazing to me that our culture teaches the grief process so poorly.

So many of my clients have a life time of ungrieved losses and perceived abandonments which impact their ability to trust, and if their CNS is overwhelmed by the physiology associated with a memory, their body may be moving before they can think about taking a pulse.

PTSD fits in this category, along with family of origin issues like physical abuse or child abuse or even witnessing violence.

Anger counseling always involves accountability, and to teach that I routinely ask my clients where they see me, and most of them are flummoxed by my question until I explain that they see me in their visual cortex, hear me in Broca’s area, feel the chair they are sitting on in the sensory motor cortex, smell in the limbic brain, ect.

In other words, their entire experience of life is inside their head, and their thought about that sensory experience is what brings the feelings, and we know that thought happens really fast.

No one can make me mad, my thought about things is what makes me mad.

Most of my clients have a hot spot when I call them on this over the course of the workshop, because being accountable moves them out of the very powerful victim spot.

Are their any tools that make your brain more effective for this awareness and choice process?

Yes, a very effective tool to use is taking your pulse.

If you find yourself getting excited, stop and take your pulse. If your heart rate is over 100 BPM, then take a time out for 20 minutes, which is very important for the guys.

Or learn to manage your physiology breath by breath by counting your breaths from one to one hundred, focusing only on the in and out of your breathing.

Focusing on the breath will leave you feeling relieved, aware, attentive, and relaxed.

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Well, this is the final article of a three-part series on the role of anger in the occurrence and perpetuation of panic attacks and anxiety. In the first two installments we defined anger within two theoretical perspectives, and took a look at how anger presented in my life as an anxiety sufferer. I’d like to wrap-up the series by discussing what I did, and still do, to keep my anger in check.

The first technique came to life as I gained the insight to identify the relationship between my thinking, feeling, and behavior, and the obvious presence of anger. I can’t stress enough the importance of matching untoward mental, emotional, and physical sensations to what’s going on in and around you at the time; as well as the goings-on in the past when you experienced similar sensations. As you detect troubling mind, spirit, and body sensations, take a moment and ask yourself if you’ve felt the same phenomena in other situations, past and present. And try to recall the emotion involved. This little technique, which I call Symptom Identification and Association (SIA), will help you identify the feelings behind many of your special little internal quirks. And that can be incredibly helpful.

I became ready to see my anger for what it was and allow it, under supervision, to play itself out. When the feeling and symptoms arose, I didn’t run. No, I hung in there and opened my mind in an effort to examine as many contributing factors as I could. And this scrutiny always included looking beyond who or what was about to wrongly become a target. Usually, in time, the true sources of the agitation (often me) were revealed and action plans could be drafted and implemented. Please don’t ever forget about the potential for displaced anger, which I discussed in part two.

Now, while the anger processing was taking place, I’d support its deliberate work by doing anything I could to sustain a presence of calm and management. Activities such as exercise, journaling, guided imagery, and relaxation techniques were employed; as well as becoming involved in some sort of positive project. No doubt, anger equals energy; so why not use this energy to feed something constructive, as opposed to feeding mismanaged and destructive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. All of these activities provided an environment of perspective and just enough diversion to inhibit the potential for becoming overwhelmed, while not losing focus on the work at hand. And I’d try to find a trusted party with whom I could talk and use as a sounding board, and from whom I could gain some perspective.

Heck, I just let myself be what my emotions were dictating, within the context of self-awareness and management. I would identify and acknowledge what I was feeling, said it was okay to feel that way, and dealt with it accordingly. And that included constructively expressing my feelings to anyone with whom I was in conflict. And if my anger was as a result of a situation over which I had absolutely no control, I did all within my power to process it and let it go. And, man, that sure wasn’t, and isn’t, an easy thing to do. Dang, it’s just so natural for us to harbor anger and become so traumatized by it, not to mention traumatizing others along the way. But, why go absolutely mad, and bring so much pain to others, over something that could possibly never change?   

I remember feeling a lot of stress and anger one steamy summer day several years ago, and taking a walk in a local forest preserve. While strolling about, I found the biggest stick I could physically manage and started cracking every tree and rock I could find in a selected isolated area of woods. When I started, the stick was about five feet long. When I finished it was down to about the size of a baseball bat. But, it didn’t end there. I took that stick home and it became my “anger stick.” To this day, when dire frustration and anger knock upon my door, I’ll reach under my bed, grab my anger stick, and beat on a pillow or my bed, verbalizing my frustration as I strike.

Another great anger management technique is screaming. Now, you may be saying, “Bill, how am I going to do that without my neighbors calling 911?” Hey, scream into a pillow or while you’re driving your car. I’m telling you, it works. Here’s another one. Go to your local dollar store and buy a set of drinking glasses and head for the woods or your garage. Throw those babies at a tree, a rock, or a wall as you express your anger (please be sure to clean up the mess). Or how ‘bout an anger-venting exercise using something as simple as a towel? Yes, grab a hand towel with one hand at each end. Now just start twisting like crazy, grunting and groaning while you’re at it. If you’re so moved, verbalize some thoughts and feelings.

Well, that’s all “he” wrote regarding anger’s role in the generation and perpetuation of panic attacks and anxiety. Hopefully, you’ve not only seen the relationship, but you’ve gained some insight and learned some techniques to help you identify and manage your anger experience. Finally, I can’t stress enough that I never let myself believe that feeling anger is wrong or bad. It isn’t. However, displacing, mismanaging, stuffing, and abusively displaying anger will only lead to misery for you and those with whom you interact.

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