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though many potentially important details are omitted (such as what kind of day you were having, who was involved in the situation, etc.).
NOVACO ANGER SCALE*
1. You unpack an appliance you have just bought, plug it in, and discover that it doesn't work
2. Being overcharged by a repairman who has you over a barrel
3. Being singled out for correction, when the actions of others go unnoticed.
4. Getting your car stuck in the mud or snow
5. You are talking to someone and they don't answer you
6. Someone pretends to be something they are
not.
7. While you are struggling to carry four cups of coffee to your table at a cafeteria, someone bumps into you, spilling the coffee.
8. You have hung up your clothes, but someone knocks them to the floor and fails to pick them up.
9. You are hounded by a salesperson from the moment that you walk into a store
10. You have made arrangements to go somewhere with a person who backs off at the last minute and leaves you hanging.
11. Being joked about or teased
12. Your car is stalled at a traffic light, and the guy behind you keeps blowing his horn.
13. You accidentally make the wrong kind of turn in a parking lot. As you get out of your car someone yells at you, "Where did you learn to drive?"
14. Someone makes a mistake and blames it on you.
15. You are trying to concentrate, but a person near you is tapping their foot.
* This scale was developed by Dr. Raymond W. Novaco of the Program in Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, and part of it is reproduced here with his permission The full scale contains eighty items.
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16. You lend someone an important book or tool, and they fail to return it.
17. You have had a busy day, and the person you live with starts to complain about how you forgot to do something that you agreed to do
18. You are trying to discuss something important with your mate or partner who isn't giving you a chance to express your feelings
19. You are in a discussion with someone who persists in arguing about a topic they know very little
about
20. Someone sticks his or her nose into an argument between you and someone else
21. You need to get somewhere quickly, but the car in front of you is going 25 mph in a 40 mph zone, and you can't pass.
22. Stepping on a gob of chewing gum.
23. Being mocked by a small group of people as you pass them
24. In a hurry to get somewhere, you tear a good pair of slacks on a sharp object.
25. You use your last dime to make a phone call, but you are disconnected before you finish dialing and the dime is lost.
Now that you have completed the Anger Inventory, you are in a position to calculate your IQ, your Irritability Quotient. Make sure that you have not skipped any items. Add up your score for each of the twenty-five incidents. The lowest possible total score on the test would be zero. This would mean you put down a zero on each item. This indicates you are either a liar or a guru! The highest score would be a hundred. This would mean you recorded a four on each of the twenty-five items, and you're constantly at or beyond the boiling point.
You can now interpret your total score according to the following scale:
0-45: The amount of anger and annoyance you generally experience is remarkably low. Only a few
percent of the population will score this low on the test. You are one of the select few!
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46-55: You are substantially more peaceful than the average person.
56-75: You respond to life's annoyances with an average amount of anger.
76-85: You frequently react in an angry way to life's many annoyances. You are substantially more irritable than the average person.
86-100: You are a true anger champion, and you are
plagued by frequent intense furious reactions
that do not quickly disappear, You probably harbor negative feelings long after the initial insult has passed. You may have the reputation
of a firecracker or a hothead among people you
know. You may experience frequent tension
headaches and elevated blood pressure. Your anger may often get out of control and lead to
impulsive hostile outbursts which at times get
you into trouble. Only a few percent of the adult population react as intensely as you do,
Now that you know how much anger you have, let's see what you can do about it. Traditionally psychotherapists (and
the general public) have conceptualized two primary ways to deal with anger: (a) anger turned "inward"; or (b) anger turned "outward." The former solution is felt to be the "sick"
one—you internalize your aggression and absorb resentment like a sponge. Ultimately it corrodes you and leads to guilt and depression. Early psychoanalysts such as Freud felt that internalized anger was the cause of depression. Unfortunately, there is no convincing evidence in support of this notion.
The second solution is said to be the "healthy" one—you express your anger, and as you ventilate your feelings, you presumably feel better. The problem with this simplistic approach is that it doesn't work very well. If you go around ventilating all your anger, people will soon regard you as loony. And at the same time you aren't learning how to deal with people in society without getting angry.
The cognitive solution transcends both of these. You have a third option: Stop creating your anger. You don't have to
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choose between holding it in or letting it out because it won't exist.
In this chapter I provide guidelines to help you assess the pros and cons of experiencing anger in a variety of situations so you can decide when anger is and isn't in your best self-interest. If you choose, you can develop control over your feelings; you will gradually cease to be plagued by excessive irritability and frustration that sour your life for no good reason.
Just Who Is Making You Angry?
"People!
Shit!
I'm fed up with them!
I need a vacation from people."
The woman who recorded this thought at 2:00 A.M.
couldn't sleep. How could the dogs and noisy neighbors in her apartment building be so thoughtless? Like her, I'll bet you're convinced it's other people's stupid, self-centered actions that make you angry.
It's natural to believe that external events upset you. When you're mad at someone, you automatically make them the cause of all your bad feelings. You say, "You're annoying me! You're getting on my nerves." When you think like this, you're actually fooling yourself because other people really cannot make you angry. Yes—you heard me right. A pushy teenager might crowd in front of you in line at the movie theater. A con artist might sell you a fake ancient coin at an antique shop. A "friend" might screw you out of your share of a profitable business deal. Your boyfriend might always show up late for dates in spite of his knowing how important promptness is to you. No matter how outrageous or unfair others might appear to you, they do not, never did, and never will upset you. The bitter truth is that you're the one who's creating every last ounce of the outrage you experience.
Does that sound like heresy or stupidity to you? If you think I'm contradicting the obvious, you may feel like burning this book or throwing it down in disgust. If so, I dare you to read on, because—
Anger, like all emotions, is created by your cognitions. The 139
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relationship between your thoughts and your anger is shown in Figure 7-1. As you will note, before you can feel irritated by any event you must first become aware of what is occurring and come to your own interpretation of it. Your feelings result from the meaning you give to the event, not from t
he event itself.
For example, suppose that after a hectic day you put your two-year-old child to sleep in his crib for the night. You close his bedroom door and sit down to relax and watch television.
Twenty minutes later he suddenly opens the door to his room and walks out giggling. You might react to this in a variety of ways, depending on the meaning you attach to it. If you feel irritated, you're probably thinking, "Damn it! He's always a bother. Why can't he stay in bed and behave like he should? He never gives me a minute's rest!" On the other hand, you could be delighted to see him pop out of his room because you're thinking, "Great! He just crawled out of his crib on his own for the first time. He's growing up and get-Figure 7.-1. It is not negative events but your perceptions and thoughts about these events that create your emotional response.
EXTERNAL EVENTS: (not
INTERNAL EVENTS: (within
within your control)
your control)
The actions of other people.
Thoughts
"It's unfair!"
`That damn jerk!"
"I won't stand for it!"
Behaviors
Emotions
You tell the other guy off or with-
Anger, frustration, fear, guilt.
draw icily. You scheme to re-
taliate so as to even the score.
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ting more independent." The event is the same in both cases.
Your emotional reaction is determined entirely by the way you are thinking about the situation.
I'll bet I know what you're thinking now: "That example with the baby is not applicable. When 1 get angry there's a justifiable provocation. There's plenty of genuine unfairness and cruelty in this world. There's no valid way I can think about all the crap I have to put up with each day without getting uptight. Do you want to perform a lobotomy and turn me into an unfeeling zombie? NO THANKS!"
You are certainly right that plenty of genuinely negative events do go on every day, but your feelings about them are still created by the interpretations you place on them. Take a careful look at these interpretations because anger can be a two-edged sword. The consequences of an impulsive outburst will frequently defeat you in the long run. Even if you are being genuinely wronged, it may not be to your advantage to feel angry about it. The pain and suffering you inflict on yourself by feeling outraged may far exceed the impact of the original insult. As a woman who runs a restaurant put it, "
Sure—I have the right to fly off the handle. The other day I realized the chefs forgot to order ham again even though I had specifically reminded them, so I exploded and threw a cauldron of hot soup across the kitchen floor in disgust. Two minutes later I knew I'd acted like the biggest asshole in the world, but I didn't want to admit it, so I had to spend all my energy for the next forty-eight hours trying to convince myself I had the right to make a jackass of myself in front of twenty employees! It wasn't worth it!"
In many cases your anger is created by subtle cognitive distortions. As with depression, many of your perceptions are twisted, one-sided, or just plain wrong. As you learn to replace these distorted thoughts with others that are more realistic and functional, you will feel less irritable and gain greater self-control.
What kinds of distortion occur most often when you are angry? One of the greatest offenders is labeling. When you describe the person you're mad at as "a jerk" or "a bum" or
"a piece of shit," you see him in a totally negative way. You could call this extreme form of overgeneralization "globaliz-ing" or "monsterizing." Someone may in fact have betrayed 141
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your trust, and it is absolutely right to resent what that person did. In contrast, when you label someone, you create the impression that he or she has a bad essence. You are direct-ing your anger toward what that person "is."
When you write people off this way, you catalog in your mind's eye every single thing about them you don't like (the mental filter) and ignore or discount their good points (
disqualifying the positive). This is how you set up a false target for your anger. In reality, every human being is a complex mix of positive, negative, and neutral attributes.
Labeling is a distorted thinking process that causes you to feel inappropriately indignant and morally superior. It's destructive to build your self-image this way: Your labeling will inevitably give way to your need to blame the other person. Your thirst for retaliation intensifies the conflict and brings out similar attitudes and feelings in the person you're mad at. Labeling inevitably functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy. You polarize the other person and bring about a state of interpersonal warfare.
What's the battle really all about? Often you're involved in a defense of your self-esteem. The other person may have threatened you by insulting or criticizing you, or by not loving or liking you, or by not agreeing with your ideas. Consequently, you may perceive yourself in a duel of honor to the death. The problem with this is that the other person is not a totally worthless shit, no matter how much you insist! And, furthermore, you cannot enhance your own esteem by denigrating someone else even if it does feel good temporarily.
Ultimately only your own negative, distorted thoughts can take away your self-respect, as pointed out in Chapter 4.
There is one and only one person in this world who has the power to threaten your self-esteem—and that is you. Your sense of worth can go down only if you put yourself down.
The real solution is to put an end to your absurd inner harangue.
Another distortion characteristic of anger-generating thoughts is mind reading—you invent motives that explains to your satisfaction why the other person did what he or she did. These hypotheses are frequently erroneous because they will not describe the actual thoughts and perceptions that mo-142
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tivated the other person. Due to your indignation, it may not occur to you to check out what you are saying to yourself.
Common explanations you might offer for the other person's objectionable behavior would be "He has a mean streak"; "She's unfair"; "He's just like that"; "She's stupid"; "
They're bad kids"; and so forth. The problem with these so-called explanations is that they are just additional labels that don't really provide any valid information. In fact, they are downright misleading.
Here's an example: Joan got hot under the collar when her husband told her he'd prefer to watch the Sunday football game on TV rather than go with her to a concert. She felt miffed because she told herself, "He doesn't love me! He always has to get his own way! It's unfair!"
The problem with Joan's interpretation is that it is not valid. He does love her, he doesn't always get his way, and he isn't intentionally being "unfair." On this particular Sunday the Dallas Cowboys are locking spurs with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he really wants to see that game! There's no way he's going to want to get dressed and go to a concert.
When Joan thinks about her husband's motivations in such an illogical fashion, she creates two problems for the price of one. She has to put up with the self-created illusion that she's unloved in addition to missing out on his company at the concert.
The third form of distortion that leads to anger is magnification. If you exaggerate the importance of the negative event, the intensity and duration of your emotional reaction may get blown up out of all proportion. For example, if you are waiting for a late bus and you have an important appointment, you might tell yourself, "I can't take this!" Isn't that a slight exaggeration? Since you are taking it, you can take it, so why tell yourself you can't? The inconvenience of waiting for the bus is bad enough without creating additional discomfort and self-pity in this way. Do you really want to fume like that?
Inappropriate should and shouldn't statements represent the fourth type of distortion that feeds your anger. When you find that some people's actions are not to your liking, you tell yourself they "shouldn't" have done what they
did, or they "
should have" done something they failed to do. For exam-143
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ple, suppose you register at a hotel and discover they lost the record of your reservation, and now there are no rooms available. You furiously insist, "This shouldn't have happened!
Those stupid goddam clerks!"
Does the actual deprivation cause your anger? No. The deprivation can only create a sense of loss, disappointment, or inconvenience. Before you can feel anger, you must necessarily make the interpretation you are entitled to get what you want in this situation. Consequently, you see the goof-up on your reservation as an injustice. This perception leads to your feeling angry.
So what's wrong with that? When you say the clerks shouldn't have made a mistake, you are creating unnecessary frustration for yourself. It's unfortunate your reservation was lost, but it's highly unlikely anyone intended to treat you unjustly, or that the clerks are especially stupid. But they did make an error. When you insist on perfection from others, you will simply make yourself miserable and become immobilized. Here's the rub: Your anger probably won't cause a room to appear magically, and the inconvenience of going to another hotel will be far less than the misery you inflict on yourself by brooding for hours or days about the lost reservation.
Irrational should statements rest on your assumption that you are entitled to instant gratification at all times. So on those occasions when you don't get what you want, you go into panic or rage because of your attitude that unless you get X, you will either die or be tragically deprived of joy forever (X can represent love, affection, status, respect, promptness, perfection, niceness, etc.). This insistence that your wants be gratified at all times is the basis for much self-defeating anger. People who are anger-prone often formulate their desires in moralistic terms such as this: If I'm nice to someone, they should be appreciative.
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