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
3 practicesIf anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
Harm that comes out of feeling threatened and harm that is done coldly, to get something, are not one problem wearing two faces. Before deciding what would help, work out which one you are looking at.
The first kind runs hot. A person feels cornered, the body goes off, and the damage is done inside a few seconds. The second is quiet and aimed, with…
Some of what a person does to a partner is not defence and not temper. It is a script they watched at home, absorbed as ordinary, and never once held up to the light.
The tell is that it does not feel like a decision. There was no rush of heat and no sense of crossing a line, because at some level this is simply…
If the harm has only ever happened when someone had been drinking, the drinking is not the background to an anger problem. It is the anger problem.
Families often know this long before anyone says it aloud: he is fine, except. Go through it honestly, every incident, drunk or sober, and if…