Areas › Anger
Anger
Almost nobody wants to be the person who says the thing they cannot take back. The window between the surge and the words is short and it can be widened. That is most of what this area is about, along with the fear or hurt that anger is usually protecting.
What works for this
Anger control, with distress tolerance
Anger has a runway, and the earlier you step onto it the less force you need. The work is in the seconds before, not in the explosion, and it starts with the body rather than the thought.
One move, today
Name the first physical sign you get. Jaw, chest, hands, heat in the face. That sign is your only warning, and noticing it is the whole skill.
What matches
4 practicesAsk what has been done to this person, not only what they have done. Old harm decides which ordinary things now register as a threat.
Reactions that look wildly out of proportion usually are not, once you know what the moment resembled. A hand raised near a face, a certain tone,…
Set the terms of a break while nobody is angry: what you will say, how long you will take, where you will go, and that you will not drive. Then it is a shared arrangement rather than something you do to the other person.
Leaving can be used as a weapon. Two days of silence, walking out while someone is crying, driving off into the night: all of that can wear the…
In a bad moment your attention, your seeing and your remembering all narrow onto the threat. So your memory of the row is a partial recording, and so is theirs.
Worth holding on to before you go back over who said what. Neither of you is necessarily lying when the two accounts differ. Starting with here is…
Your family had its own rules about anger, quite apart from anything cultural. Those are the ones that shaped you, and they can be renegotiated.
Name two of them plainly. Nobody leaves the table. Whoever shouts loudest wins. We do not mention it the next day. Then ask which you still want.…