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 practicesIf anger in your home has become frightening for anyone, self help is not the right tool. Please reach for real help.
The person you love and the person who frightened you are one person, and you are not obliged to decide which of them is the real one. Both were in the room.
People tend to collapse this in one direction or the other. Either the frightening one is the truth and every kind thing was an act, or the kind one…
Hurting yourself is not always about coping. Sometimes it is aimed at somebody else, and until you know which it is you cannot know what would help.
This is uncomfortable to ask about and it is not an accusation. An act can be a way through an unbearable hour, or a message to someone who has…
Before anything else, take seriously what self-injury is doing for a person. Pain in the body can be easier to hold than pain in the mind, and a hurt you chose yourself can feel like control coming back.
There are other honest reasons too. It can switch the world off for a while, or hold up a kind of armour: nobody can hurt me worse than I already do,…
See what you made me do to myself. When self-harm is carrying a message like that, naming the message is not dismissing it, it is looking for the thing that could be said instead.
The question can be asked kindly and straight. Do you ever get angry enough with them to want to hurt yourself so that they feel it. People often say…