When you angrily condemn another person as ‘useless', ‘no good' or ‘idiotic', you make a gross overgeneralisation. The other person isn't a thoroughgoing idiot just because she's acting idiotically - she surely acts in different ways in other situations, just like you do.
The critical point here is also a practical point: putting down other people makes respecting others difficult. You need to sustain a level of respect for others in order to be able to consider behaviours objectively and act appropriately assertive.
The alternative to putting down others is to accept them as FHBs - fallible human beings - who may act in objectionable ways (to you). When you consider others as FHBs, you can appropriately condemn the behaviour but not the person. This acceptance is critical in helping you to keep a level head and master your angry feelings.
Accepting other people is the other side of the coin to accepting yourself. You can eventually accept yourself because you're essentially applying the same philosophy to everyone.
Accepting yourself
Sometimes, people default to unhealthy anger because they have a fragile sense of their own worth. If someone treats you poorly, insults you or seems to hold a negative opinion of you, you may be reminded of how low an opinion you have of yourself. In order to protect your self-worth, you may attack the other person. Think of the rationale as: ‘If I can put you down, then I can avoid putting myself down.'
By believing that you're an unrateable, complex, ever-changing, fallible human, you may see that you can never be less worthwhile, even when people treat you poorly. In Chapter 14, we offer more guidance on self-acceptance.
Developing high frustration tolerance
Frustration occurs most often when something or someone gets in the way of you achieving your specific goals and aims. The more important your goal is to you, the more angry or annoyed you're likely to feel when something blocks your attempts to reach that goal.
People who frequently experience unhealthy anger tend to have a low tolerance for frustration. Their low threshold for tolerating hassle, mishaps or obstruction from others is echoed in statements like these:
‘I can't stand it!'
‘It's intolerable!'
‘I just can't take it anymore!'
Increasing your tolerance for frustration helps you to experience appropriate levels of healthy annoyance in response to goal obstruction. Having a high frustration tolerance (HFT) makes you more effective at solving problems. So, your anger doesn't get in the way of you seeing possible solutions to everyday hassles and setbacks. High frustration tolerance is present in statements such as:
‘This is an uncomfortable situation but I can stand the discomfort!'
‘This event is hard to bear but I can bear it - some difficult things are worth tolerating.'
‘Even if I feel like I can't take it anymore, chances are that I can.'
To increase your tolerance for frustration, ask yourself these kinds of questions when life pulls a fast one on you:
‘Is this situation really terrible or is it just highly inconvenient?'
‘Is it true that I can't stand this situation or is it more true that I don't like this situation?'
‘Is this situation truly unbearable or is it really just very difficult to bear?
Being less extreme in your judgement of negative events can help you to have less extreme emotional responses, such as unhealthy anger.
Most of what you think is intolerable isn't as bad as it seems. Many things are difficult to tolerate but are tolerable, hard to bear but bearable, unpleasant and inconvenient - but you can stand them!
Doing your ABCs
Practise writing down your unhealthy angry thoughts on paper and replacing them with healthier thoughts. Refer to Chapter 3 to see how to use an ABC form to tackle toxic thoughts and replace them with realistic renderings, pertinent preferences, additional acceptances, self-acceptance and high frustration tolerance.
To underscore the point, imagine getting stuck in traffic on your way to the airport and then missing your flight. Deeply annoying! However, you getting angry and screaming at the traffic isn't going to make the cars move any faster. Of course, becoming healthily annoyed about the traffic doesn't change the situation either. But your healthy anger is less likely to cause you such extreme discomfort and is more likely to help you create a contingency plan. Rather than using up your energy swearing and bashing your mobile against the dashboard, you can focus your efforts on phoning the airline and trying to get yourself bumped on to the next available flight.
Pondering the pros and cons of your temper
Believing that you're right to be angry and steadfastly sticking to this perception is one of the more common obstacles to conquering unhealthy anger.
You certainly have the right to feel angry. You may even be right to be angry, in the sense of objecting to something you don't like. However, you may feel better and behave more constructively if you have healthy anger rather than unhealthy anger.
To commit more fully to changing your anger, review the costs and benefits of your current anger, and of a healthier alternative. Refer to Chapter 8 for some pointers on completing a cost-benefit analysis, which can help you to facilitate this change.
Imparting Your Indignation in a Healthy Way
Expressing your feelings readily when they occur can be a good antidote to bouts of unhealthy anger. On the other hand, bottling up your feelings can mean that you allow your emotions to fester until they bubble up to the surface and you explode.
People who talk openly and appropriately about their emotional responses to events are less prone to unhealthy feelings like anger and depression. The following sections offer tips and techniques to improve your communication skills and to deal with dissatisfaction in a healthy manner.
Asserting yourself effectively
Assertion involves standing up for yourself, voicing your opinions and feelings, and firmly ensuring that your basic rights are considered. Assertion differs from aggression, in that it doesn't involve violence, intimidation or disregard for the rights of others.
Using assertion rather than aggression is more effective in getting you what you want. When you're being assertive, you're still in control of your behaviour, but when you're unhealthily enraged much of your behaviour is impulsive. People with unhealthy anger frequently regret their fury-fuelled actions later on once the red mist has cleared.
People are likely to respond to your wishes when you're being assertive simply because you're making yourself clear - not because they're afraid of your anger.
Often, your aggression is about winning an argument and getting the other person to back down and agree that you're right. Assertion is not about winning per se. Rather, assertion is about getting your point across but not insisting that the other person agrees with you or backs down.
If you have a tendency to get angry, and become verbally or physically aggressive quickly, give yourself time out and go and count to ten (or as high as you need to feel calmer). You can then consider your next thinking and behavioural steps. Removing yourself from an inflammatory situation is often a sensible first step in adopting healthy assertion.
Assertion is a skill that you can practise. Many people with anger problems benefit from breaking down assertion into the following steps:
1. Get the other person's attention. For example, if you want to make a complaint in a shop, wait until you have the shop assistant's attention rather than shouting at them when they're busy with another task. If you want to talk to your partner about a specific issue, ask for some of her time.
2. Be in the right place. The best time to assert yourself may depend on where you are when you get irked. If your boss makes a comment that undermines you during a board meeting, you're probably best to bring it up with her a bit later in less public surroundings.
3. Be clear in your head about what you want to say. If you're new to assertion, but more familiar with the shouting and screaming thing, give
yourself time to really think about what you want to get across.
4. Stick to your point and be respectful. Don't resort to name-calling or hurling insults.
5. Take responsibility for your feelings of annoyance. Don't blame the other person for making you feel angry. Use statements like ‘I feel angry when you turn up an hour late for our appointments', or ‘I felt let down and angry that you didn't invite me to your wedding reception'.
Assertion doesn't always work. Simply because you make the superlative effort to stop yelling your lungs out and to stop battering other people about the head, doesn't mean that you're always going to get what you want. No, siree! In fact, some people may even meet your assertion with their own aggression. So, strive to maintain your healthy anger and to behave assertively, even when other people don't. Remind yourself that other people have the right to choose to behave badly and that you have the right to remove yourself from them rather than responding in kind.
Before you assert yourself, decide whether the situation's really worth your time and energy. Ask yourself whether the problem merits you being assertive. Is the issue more trouble than it's worth? If you're a former unhealthy anger junkie, you're probably not used to just letting things go. You can practise deciding when asserting yourself is in your best interests and when you're wiser to simply not respond at all.
Coping with criticism
Criticism isn't always intended to anger or undermine the receiver. Well-delivered specific criticism can provide useful information and need not cause offence. Most people like to hear positive feedback - it's the negative stuff that really gets under your skin.
People who demand perfection from themselves, or expect approval from significant others, can often take criticism badly. They tend to take criticism overly seriously and personally. They often assume that any form of negative comment means that they're less than worthy. If you're this sort of person, a comment from your boss such as ‘I'm not entirely happy with this report you've written' gets translated in your head as something like this:
My boss thinks my report is rubbish = All my reports are rubbish = I'm rubbish at my job = I'm rubbish
You may even become unhealthily angry in an attempt to defend your self-worth, and launch a counteroffensive on the person you feel has attacked you.
You can take the sting out of criticism by keeping these points in mind:
Criticism can help you to improve your work performance and your relationships.
You can assess criticism, decide how much of it you agree with, and reject the rest.
Criticism is something pretty much everyone experiences from time to time. You cannot reasonably expect to always avoid being criticised.
If someone criticises you in a global way - for example, your sister calls you an incompetent loser - try asking her to be more specific: ‘In what specific ways am I an incompetent loser?' Asking questions can make the criticism more useful to you. Or, if the person cannot be more specific, your question can disarm her. The following section discusses disarming in greater detail.
Using the disarming technique
Okay, not all the criticism that you get is well-intended. Sometimes, another person may bombard you with a load of negative remarks or insults. What are your options? You can get unhealthily angry and shout at or otherwise attack your antagonist. Or, you can keep your annoyance in the healthy camp and try non-defensively disarming your critic. The disarming technique works on the following principles:
Look for a grain of truth in what the other person is saying and agreeing with her on that specific point
Show your critic some empathy
Ask your critic for more information about her point of criticism.
Express your own point of view as ‘I feel' statements
For example, Heidi's friend criticises her for being late to meet her for coffee. She says angrily: ‘You're always late, Heidi. You're just so disorganised!' Heidi would usually be defensive and hostile about criticism, resulting in many past arguments. Instead, this time Heidi uses the disarming technique and replies, ‘You're right! I'm not the most organised person in the world' (partial agreement). ‘Are you feeling really annoyed?' (empathy/asking for more information). This takes the heat from her friend's anger, who then goes on to say how frustrated she's feeling in general.
Using the disarming technique, you come out on top by keeping your cool. You also gain the satisfaction of having managed a critical comment well. Who knows - you may even improve your relationship with your critic.
Acting Assertively in the Workplace
Keeping your cool at work is an important issue for many people. After all, you spend a lot of your waking hours at work and you probably really need a regular income. Sometimes unhealthy anger can lead to unnecessary work life strife or even put your job in jeopardy.
Maintaining good relationships with your colleagues and managers can make working life a lot more pleasant. Work environments are often a trouble spot for people with a history of unhealthy anger. If you think about it, work typically involves encountering criticism, dealing with authority, coping with stressful deadlines, living up to achievement expectations and collaborating with others on projects. If you have fragile self-esteem or a fundamental intolerance of other people's poor behaviour, you'll potentially be going off like a firecracker.
The same attitudes and strategies associated with healthy anger (previously outlined in this chapter) apply to the workplace. However, we offer you some additional specific pointers to help you remain healthily assertive whilst you work:
Desire, but don't demand, success. Success in your job is an understandable goal to have (see Chapter 8 for more on goals and goal-setting). However, when you strive for a degree of professional success but resist insisting that you have to get it, you can safeguard your mental health and avoid unhealthy anger. Unfortunately success is never guaranteed, even with hard work and dedication, so keep your high standards by all means, but be sure to build in a margin for error and failures.
Set realistic performance standards. Yes, aiming high is fine but you also need to allow for the possibility of failing to meet those standards from time to time. Being a humble human equipped with mere human ability and stamina may mean that you sometimes fall short of your professional performance standards.
Be a team player. No person's an island. At work, try to share the load with your colleagues when appropriate. Working with others is a skill and it may take practice to develop. You might not agree with everything fellow team members suggest or with the way they do things. But if you avoid working with others for these reasons, you deprive yourself of the chance to grow. Developing confidence in your ability to disagree with others respectfully and offer your own ideas politely will make you less prone to bouts of unhealthy anger.
Make allowances for other people's personal interaction style. Simply because you're working hard to overcome unhealthy anger doesn't unfortunately mean that all your work mates are doing the same. Some people will be rude; sometimes your boss may speak to you in a less than courteous manner. Rather than letting other people's rudeness throw you into a rage (or eat you up inside), stick to your own standards of courteous communication. You don't have to condone poor behaviour from others but you do need to remember that how they behave is their choice. Resist sinking to the same level and instead rise above it.
Differentiate between professional and personal comments. When someone at work makes a negative comment about an aspect of your performance, they don't necessarily mean anything unpleasant about you as a person. Even if the comment is tactlessly delivered, you've got a choice about whether or not to feel personally attacked. Try to differentiate clearly between remarks about your work-related performance and those about your character. This may help to diffuse a situation because you're not misinterpreting other people's intentions as deliberately malicious.
If someone at work does level a personal criticism at you, think first and respond l
ater. The other person is probably behaving unprofessionally and you don't have to respond in kind. Give yourself time to cool down before taking any action.
Strike a work-life balance. Sometimes tempers fray in the workplace because people are overworked; they may be pressurised into putting in long hours, for example. If you have your own business, you may find it difficult to justify taking much time off. Striking a balance between working life and home life is very important. Not making time for yourself outside of work can leave you burnt out and short of patience. Build in time to recharge your batteries and enjoy yourself.
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