- Hey everyone, today's video,
I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about,
argh, anger management!
So stay tuned.
(gentle music)
So, like I said, today's topic is about anger management,
and I decided that I would talk about this topic
because it's something that affects us all,
and today this is gonna be one of those, like,
I will get back to this later,
and I'll do more videos on it as time goes on,
because I was going through this workbook that I utilize.
I use this a lot in my practice,
because it has some great tools.
And I was trying to figure out what to do in the video,
and I already felt like the video was getting so long,
and I was already on page 10,
and this book has 240 some pages,
so you can see why it's a process, it's not perfection.
Okay, so, today I'm gonna talk to you
a little bit about anger management,
and the first step that I take with my clients
when we're discussing this topic is
identifying your anger.
Now, we all have it, and anger is something that is,
honestly, in my practice, it's the most common emotion
that any of us experience,
and that is for two reasons,
number one being that we live in a world that isn't perfect,
and we're not perfect, and things happen,
and people are rude, and things don't go as planned,
and people cut us off, and they cut in line,
and they don't make our drinks right,
and they forget about us, and they
make plans and don't tell us, and yada, yada, yada, right?
So, things are gonna make us angry.
And number two, the main reason we feel anger so frequently
is because anger is a primary emotion.
Now, what I mean from that is that,
when we actually feel something,
so let's say someone cuts me off
and I have to slam my brakes and it really scares me,
being scared and fear is my actual emotion,
but my primary, the one that comes out quickest, is anger.
And the reason that I think that actually is is because
it's a protective emotion, right?
When we're angry, we're like, "Watch out, I'll hurt you,
"don't get near me!"
Right, it protects us, we're almost like puffer fish
and we stick our spines out like pew!
And we keep everybody away.
And so, those are the two reasons that I feel that we
deal with anger the most, and we experience it a lot.
Now, that being said, everyone
experiences anger differently.
I know when I say, "Oh, we're talking
"about anger management," all of you imagine,
like, that red-faced cartoon character
with steam coming out his ears, and he's like,
"Oh, I'm just gonna," right, and they might
throw things or yell,
but not everyone experiences anger the same.
And that's the first task, really,
within this anger management thing
that I work with my clients on,
is defining your anger.
How do you express anger?
And I'm just gonna read you a couple options
from the inventory that they list in this workbook,
so that you can kinda get a sense
for what I'm talking about.
So, one of the first options within the inventory says,
"When I'm displeased with someone,
"I may shut down any communication or withdraw."
So you can see that, when someone
experiences their anger, if they check that box,
yes I do that, that means that they
don't like confrontation, right?
So then, the opposite of that would be,
"When discussing a controversial topic,
"my tone of voice is likely to become persuasive and loud."
So that would be someone who is fine with confrontation,
they may actually get louder
when they talk about something that's controversial,
or if they're trying to confront a friend about an issue,
they might raise their voice and, you know,
be more aggressive that way.
Also, there are people who say,
"I don't easily forget when someone does me wrong,"
and they may harbor resentment,
and they may ruminate about the anger.
You know, you can see how these
are all a little bit different.
Some people withdraw and don't like confrontation,
some people prefer confrontation
and may even instigate an argument
or something that could stir up anger,
and some people ruminate inside, right?
So, there's all sorts of different ways
that anger can be felt and expressed.
Now, from there, okay, so we've done this inventory,
I want you to consider what ways that you do it most.
So, I know that you don't have this book.
If you can grab this book, that would be helpful,
or any other anger management book that has kind of
a similar setup like this.
But you check off the boxes, or you start to think,
do I prefer confrontation, do I avoid confrontation,
do I internalize the anger,
is it work and expectations that,
(electronic beeping)
you've gotta be kidding me.
Sorry, my video's now uploaded.
Capture.
So, you have to start to think about
which way your anger is expressed.
And from there, figure out what in your daily life
actually causes that the most.
So is it work, is it family, is it your friends,
is it just daily life, like the stresses of your commute,
or try to think about where you see it most.
And as you consider the ways that
your anger could be aroused in your daily life,
I want you to, and this is gonna be
the final task of this portion of the video,
what message is beneath the emotion?
So you know how I said that
anger is a primary emotion, right?
So, something happens and I'm hurt,
but instead of being hurt, I get angry.
Ugh, I lash out, because I don't want you to know
that I feel vulnerable.
Instead, I wanna protect myself,
'cause you've wounded me, right?
So, underneath that, underneath the anger is hurt,
and once we kind of figure out,
I know this is getting really difficult,
but once we figure out what it is that causes it,
okay, so I'll give a personal example
from the beginning to the end,
so you can kind of see how it plays out.
So let's say I get really angry when
my mom doesn't take into consideration
my plans and my schedule when she books a family vacation.
Okay, so she calls me and she's like,
"Hey, Kati, we're all going to Hawaii
"this day to this day.
"I booked you a room, so you just have to
"get your flight in order, and we'll see you there."
Click, right?
Yay, Hawaii!
Crap, I have a conference,
I have some collaborations I'm doing,
and I have all my clients already booked,
because she's only given me
two week's notice or something, right?
Let's imagine that that's what happened.
So, what is my response?
I'm gonna be angry.
I'm gonna be like, "Goddammit, mom, why did you do that?
"Why didn't you even think about?"
I get really aggressive and really angry,
but because it's me, I probably
would try to talk to her about it first,
but I would also kind of avoid,
because I'm one of those people that's like, ugh,
I don't really like aggression,
I don't wanna argue, lalala, I don't like it.
So, if I was working through this workbook,
I would've noticed that my way of
expressing anger is withdrawal,
and that I would think about
the reason that I'm so angry,
and that would be my mom planned this trip
and she didn't take into consideration my schedule
or anything like that,
and so the underlying emotion behind the anger
would actually be hurt,
and I would feel like my mom
isn't considering my self-worth,
like she doesn't find what I'm doing important.
Do you see how I could kind of draw the parallel along?
I could go down the line?
So, from her not considering my plans,
means she doesn't consider me at all,
and she doesn't take into consideration how busy I am,
and she doesn't really care.
Right, so that's the hurt.
Now, once we've figured that out,
then we know more about ourselves and our anger,
and we can actually process through it,
and we can find a way to express that anger,
which can be many things.
In the moment, it can be screaming into a pillow,
it can be kicking a soccer ball into a cement wall
over and over and over again,
it can be singing an angry rock song
in your car really loud,
it can be calling a friend and venting.
Right, those are all things we can do in the moment
when anger is still what we feel most.
But once we've slowed down and we've done all this thinking
and we've figured out what it really is,
at that point, we're usually
better able to have a conversation
with the person who has hurt us,
and move past it.
And this is just the beginning steps,
so there'll be many videos to follow.
But you can see how, as we break it down,
we figure out where our anger's coming from,
we're better able to either have that conversation,
or process it through on our own.
'Cause let's say the person isn't someone that
we're in communication with a lot,
it just happens to be something that happened
that really set us off,
and it may be someone within work,
and we can't actually tell the person, you know,
"You did that and it really hurt my feelings,"
because they're our superior or something like that.
But, once we've figured out what it is,
we ourselves can think, how can I better prepare next time
to let them know what my expectations are,
or what's important to me,
and I can better assert myself?
So those will be things that we'll get down to
as we do more videos on this, but for today,
remember, I want you to help identify your anger.
How do you express it?
Remember, do we withdraw, do we like to fight,
what do we like to do?
What is it in your daily life that's causing it,
and then what is the underlying emotion
within that scenario?
And I hope that, as we work with this
and our anger management,
we will be better able to manage it
in a healthy, happy way as we work
towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.