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
5 practicesBefore you practise something exposing with someone, say out loud what is not at risk. I will not think less of you, and nothing between us changes here.
It sounds obvious and it does a great deal of work. If the relationship really is on the line, then the discomfort is not symbolic and no amount of…
Whatever line you plan to use on yourself in a hard moment, say it in your own words rather than tidy ones. Polished phrasing tends to evaporate exactly when you need it.
If your inner voice is blunt, let the line be blunt. A therapist working this way will sometimes ask for the crude version of a coping phrase instead…
Before anyone does something exposing, let them check their own conditions and give them a clean way to say no. A public yes given under pressure is not really a yes.
It can be as ordinary as asking someone to consider whether they have the privacy, the time and the state of mind for this today. Ask it first and…
Call the practice whatever fits you. Stress inoculation, rolling with the punches, a Teflon mind, the art of not giving a damn: the name changes nothing about what you do, and a name you can stand makes you likelier to do it.
People come to this with different histories and some of them have been lectured before. If the language sounds like a self help poster to you, use…
Treat these as experiments rather than instructions. You are not obeying a programme, you are finding out what happens, and that difference changes how it feels to do them.
People who are quick to anger are often also quick to bristle at being told what to do, and a challenge sits far better with that than a homework…