How to Get Your Anger Under Control
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.21333
Summary
When you look back on the moments you regret most in your life, a fair number of them likely involve you being angry. And if these cringe inducing life and relationship damaging moments happen more often than you d like, then it s time to start thinking about how to get a handle on your anger. My guest today offers help in that process. Dr. Chip Trefady is a clinical psychologist, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and the co-author, along with Howard Kasanoff, of Anger Management For Everyone, 10 proven strategies to help you control anger and live a happier life.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast when you look
00:00:11.340
back on the moments you regret most in your life a fair number of them likely involved you being
00:00:15.440
angry and if these cringe inducing life and relationship damaging moments happen more often
00:00:20.100
than you'd like then it's time to start thinking about how to get a handle on your anger my guest
00:00:24.200
today offers help in that process his name is dr chip trefady and he's a clinical psychologist
00:00:28.280
professor of criminology and criminal justice and the co-author along with howard kasanoff of anger
00:00:33.000
management for everyone 10 proven strategies to help you control anger and live a happier life
00:00:37.480
chip walks us through what anger is how it's distinctive from aggression and how it can be
00:00:41.180
both destructive and healthy we then get into some of the strategies chip recommends for managing
00:00:46.040
your anger so it stays in that ladder zone including making changes to your lifestyle avoiding anger
00:00:50.700
inducing triggers reframing your thoughts and doing anger exposure therapy after the show's over check
00:00:55.640
at our show notes at aom.is slash anger chip trefady welcome to the show thank you it's great to be
00:01:13.160
here so you are a professor of psychology but you teach at a school of criminology and you ended up
00:01:19.660
co-authoring a book about anger management so how did a professor at a criminology school criminal
00:01:25.060
justice school end up co-authoring a book about anger management well i'm a clinical psychologist
00:01:30.380
by training so i've spent much of my career sitting across from people who struggle with the complexity
00:01:35.580
of making changes in their lives so the question is really how did a clinical psychologist end up in a
00:01:41.000
criminology department and the story is that i did my doctoral dissertation on the topic of anger
00:01:46.320
and this was based on the advice of my dissertation supervisor at the time his name is howard kasanoff
00:01:51.920
and he suggested that i explore an area that was understudied and at that time anger was under examined
00:01:58.360
and even today in psychology anger is still the forgotten emotion and so howie and i've been studying
00:02:04.660
writing and talking about anger issues for the last three decades i say we a lot and i usually mean howie
00:02:10.340
but in terms of the connection between anger and criminology the answer is pretty straightforward
00:02:15.760
and that anger problems drive all sorts of destructive and sometimes extreme behaviors and so most of the
00:02:22.200
listeners of your podcast i would predict that for many of them some of their most cringe-worthy
00:02:28.100
moments of their lives occurred when they were angry so even though anger is a common experience anger is
00:02:33.860
the emotion most likely to lead people to have problems with the criminal justice system it's not
00:02:38.460
anxiety and depression as many people think and the criminology department at central connecticut
00:02:42.580
state university is very behavioral so this line of research was a good fit well so let's talk about
00:02:48.200
anger i think everyone kind of understands what it is they've experienced it but as a clinician
00:02:52.600
is there a a definition of anger that you all use you know it's it's a bit untangible to define anger
00:03:02.620
it's hard to define anger without using a synonym for the word anger but maybe the best way to think
00:03:07.720
about it is that anger is really our built-in threat protective system and it's a complex reaction
00:03:14.920
to perceive threats so in modern life we can feel threatened by all sorts of scenarios such as when
00:03:20.340
our children are bullied by other kids maybe when a driver cuts us off on the road by our neighbors
00:03:25.740
driving too fast down the street and so on and on and on so anger emerges when we perceive threat
00:03:31.240
but anger is complex because we have thoughts that go through our minds there are physiological and
00:03:36.540
biological reactions to threat where our heart rate increases our muscles get tense we get ready to
00:03:41.100
react there are chemicals that energize us in the moment we'll also notice sensations in our body
00:03:46.720
there are urges to react in the moment and of course there are behaviors that we actually do they
00:03:51.040
include things like hand gestures verbal arguments screaming hitting pouting and withdrawing so anger is
00:03:57.860
part of our kind of evolutionarily useful fight flight reaction and so it's really built into the
00:04:06.200
fabric of human life so it's a physiopsychological experience both experienced in the body and in
00:04:12.000
the mind yes and i would also say that it occurs in a context of the environment that the person's in as
00:04:21.700
well yeah well i think this you talk about this in the book when you're kind of sussing out what anger
00:04:26.420
is i think we typically associate anger with aggression but you make the distinction there's actually a
00:04:32.760
difference between aggression and anger someone can be angry but not aggressive or aggressive but not
00:04:38.420
angry can you tell us about the distinction yeah i think that this is a common misunderstanding so
00:04:43.540
people think of the word anger and the next word that pops into their mind is aggression
00:04:47.500
and the difference between anger and aggression is that anger is primarily an internal response and we
00:04:53.420
know we're angry because we feel it inside we can be angry and other people may not know we're angry
00:04:58.780
on the other hand aggression is behavior that can be observed such as throwing things hitting kicking
00:05:03.700
and sneaky indirect actions such as vandalizing somebody's property but most people who become
00:05:09.420
angry do not become aggressive and i think that most often we just get angry another complexity is that
00:05:15.820
aggression can sometimes occur without anger at all so think for a moment about someone who snatches
00:05:20.920
purses on the street the person engaged in that behavior might grab the purse pull the victim to the
00:05:26.600
ground maybe even harming the person however the aggressor may not have any anger at the victim
00:05:31.200
he or she's simply doing it as a way to get money i think one way to think about this is that in a lot of
00:05:37.320
our anger training workshops we sometimes do this exercise and the workshops are comprised of practitioners
00:05:44.860
of different types and we ask the people in the room how many of you have experienced anger in the past
00:05:51.240
week and so i should say that it's normal for people to feel angry one or two times a week that's just
00:05:56.720
typical so when you ask a room full of people to let you know if they've experienced anger pretty much
00:06:02.100
all the hands in the room go up then we ask a second question okay how many of you have assaulted
00:06:07.020
somebody destroyed property punched a wall kicked somebody in the past week when you were angry and there's
00:06:13.720
almost no hands that go up in the room but the most interesting question is the next one how many of you
00:06:20.100
at some point in your life when you were angry have hit struck pushed or kicked somebody it's an
00:06:26.860
uncomfortable moment and there's a pause but almost all the hands in the room go up again and so what
00:06:32.440
i'm saying is that aggression is the least common response when people are angry and on studies where
00:06:37.780
they actually count and measure this aggression is the thing that is least common on these surveys
00:06:42.080
but the hands in the room exercise shows all shows that all of us kind of know the connection between
00:06:47.680
anger and aggression and most of us have been there and we understand this destructive connection
00:06:52.540
that can occur when we're angry and most of us have a couple of personal and ugly examples of that
00:06:58.940
yeah that anger induced aggression is what gets people in trouble what gets them involved with the
00:07:04.700
criminal justice system because they typically lash out in a violent way but okay so if you express your
00:07:10.860
anger through aggression that can get you into trouble it can cause you can go to jail it can cause
00:07:14.800
problems in your relationships but even if you don't express your anger through aggression
00:07:18.940
what are the harms of experiencing anger well there's a lot of negative outcomes connected with
00:07:25.400
anger so aggression is is one of the least common but more extreme examples but i think that what most
00:07:32.080
people do when they're angry is some kind of verbal behavior so we'll say nasty things we'll criticize
00:07:37.620
people we might sort of uh yell and scream and people damage their family relationships their intimate
00:07:44.900
relationships and their work relationships mostly through by what they say uh when they're angry the
00:07:51.500
other thing that sometimes occurs when people are angry is they'll withdraw they'll pout they'll pull away
00:07:56.020
from situations they won't engage and solve the problem and then there's a whole nother area that if
00:08:02.320
you're someone who experiences sort of chronic and and and strong anger reactions that you're more
00:08:09.060
likely to develop health problems like high blood pressure heart disease and strokes yeah so there could
00:08:15.680
be a physiological consequence of your anger again as you said it's a response to a threat it's a stress
00:08:20.280
response and if you have that over and over again that's going to have detrimental effects on your
00:08:25.620
physical health yeah absolutely we get activated when we become angry so our bodies are kind of
00:08:31.200
preparing to deal with a threat well is anger ever healthy yeah anger you can think of emotions like
00:08:40.420
an internal gps system so some mild and moderate anger can definitely be positive so operating like
00:08:46.820
an internal gps system anger can signal that something isn't right in your life anger might energize
00:08:52.480
us to face a problem that's being avoided or maybe stick up for ourselves in order to make
00:08:56.480
something better also anger can help us energize us to make important life changes also anger can be
00:09:04.000
a driving force for social movements i would say anger leads to zest excitement and passion and anger
00:09:10.760
at the mild or end of the spectrum is life enhancing and we would be impaired if we could never experience
00:09:15.840
any anger and we wouldn't want to live in a world without anger well so when does anger become a
00:09:22.220
problem like how does someone know they've got an anger problem well anger can get out of hand so
00:09:26.880
anger when it's too strong occurs too frequently or lasts too long it becomes a destructive force and
00:09:33.400
and i think for some people anger leads to significant loss and suffering and such negative outcomes are all
00:09:39.540
around us so think about how many family relationship conflicts and career disasters you've witnessed that
00:09:44.860
have resulted from anger or think about the marital and family violence that has followed anger and verbal
00:09:50.240
arguments i think we've all witnessed the destructive results of feeling angry or being the recipient of
00:09:56.160
someone else's anger but some of the negative outcomes include ruined relationships derailed careers
00:10:01.540
impulsive and destructive decisions road rage cardiovascular and medical problems and criminal justice
00:10:08.160
just to name a few i i think the advice to listeners of this podcast is to start paying attention to the
00:10:14.840
outcomes associated with your specific episodes of anger so this can be accomplished by asking yourself
00:10:21.640
you know what good came out of my anger in this situation did i improve a relationship did i damage a
00:10:26.780
relationship did i make a situation better or worse ask yourself what was not so good about my anger in
00:10:31.640
this situation and many people don't appreciate that their anger is usually more destructive for them
00:10:36.440
than for the person they are getting angry at and the negative parts of the world will always exist around us
00:10:41.800
but i think all of us can learn skills to reduce excessive anger to negotiate better outcomes and to
00:10:49.260
manage our personal environments in order to live a better life okay so when you when someone you're
00:10:54.420
working with someone who's got an anger problem because again anger can be healthy it becomes a problem when
00:10:59.020
it becomes a detriment to your life when you're working with this person what's the goal are you trying to
00:11:05.060
help them just not get angry at all are you trying to help them not express their anger like what is your
00:11:10.880
goal with someone when you're helping them with an anger problem well well first i think because
00:11:16.020
anger is sort of part of that useful threat protective system the goal of anger treatment is anger management
00:11:22.780
and not anger elimination and so we want to help people learn to experience anger in a more reasonable
00:11:28.720
manner and to develop skills to be able to navigate life's challenges and to manage the relationships more
00:11:35.300
effectively i think over time and with repetition our anger reactions become automatic and to change it
00:11:41.700
the trick is to get off autopilot so when your anger threat system gets activated recognize that you don't
00:11:48.580
have to go along with it and get swept up in the emotion so just take a moment to stop and ask yourself
00:11:54.260
the question where's my anger taking me and then try on some new behaviors that may seem unfamiliar
00:11:59.460
when you're angry act in a way that is patient maybe kind or compassionate try to search for a
00:12:05.340
solution that will not make the problem worse with practice this becomes easier and it kind of turns
00:12:10.100
into your new autopilot setting i think people are familiar with the phrase that practice makes perfect but
00:12:15.160
that's not really accurate so if you repeat something over and over again it becomes part of your
00:12:20.200
behavioral repertoire so what we kind of repeat in practice becomes automatic and so in terms of
00:12:27.240
treatment there's a lot of individual differences in people and the context of how anger emerges in
00:12:33.340
their lives and so i think in our program we have more of a kind of a menu driven choose and use
00:12:39.540
approach it's sort of like the way people make selections from a restaurant menu and so this means
00:12:44.540
that everyone can explore different strategies that might work within the context of the person's real
00:12:49.640
life so if one strategy is not bringing about a reduction in anger then move to the next one
00:12:54.280
and i should also mention that there's definitely reason for optimism there've been a handful of
00:12:58.660
meta-analyses just kind of large analyses of anger treatment and they all strongly converge around the same
00:13:04.420
conclusion that people who get anger treatment do better than people that don't so treatment generally
00:13:08.400
works and people can definitely make improvements in this area of their lives yeah and i want to dig in
00:13:12.900
some of these menu treatment options that people have that you use so okay the goal is not to
00:13:17.300
eliminate anger it's to manage it have a reasonable type of anger but on the flip side of this
00:13:22.120
this doesn't mean that you're trying to tell people like well one of the best options is to vent and
00:13:26.640
just express your anger unabashedly by yelling into a pillow or smashing something correct well correct
00:13:33.920
so that's one of the options that we don't recommend so that is an intervention that worries me a little
00:13:38.940
bit and i think that the treatment landscape right now in the united states looks a lot like the wild west
00:13:46.340
i think there's a mix of credentialed practitioners and there's a whole bunch of other practitioners
00:13:51.820
such as life coaches and then we have like all sorts of advice givers and influencers and anger is
00:13:58.960
understudied and there's a lot of myths in the anger area and some of the advice is just plain wrong
00:14:04.140
and so some of the things that are delivered to the public may not be helpful and the idea of venting
00:14:10.180
is one of those and so the problem with this intervention is that we're telling people to
00:14:16.720
practice the thing that will actually kind of make their lives worse and so brett i'd like to maybe
00:14:23.540
just make an analogy to other emotions right so all emotions have an action tendency so when people are
00:14:30.220
anxious and fearful they want to avoid and run away when people are depressed you know they want to hunker
00:14:36.780
down and and sort of give up and just sort of sit and and not do much and if someone is suffering from
00:14:45.240
anxiety we would never tell them hey go out and practice avoidance go with the tendency that that
00:14:51.720
emotion pulls for so with any emotional excess we don't tell the person to practice that thing we tell
00:14:57.260
them to push against it take depression for example we wouldn't tell someone who's like kind of sitting
00:15:01.980
there and they're like oh i can't get out of bed i don't really feel it today we wouldn't say hey go with
00:15:06.520
that practice that stay in bed and that's kind of what catharsis is we're telling people hey when
00:15:10.920
you're feeling angry yell and scream and hit something or punch something and this is a
00:15:16.660
problematic intervention because again what we repeat and practice becomes more automatic in our
00:15:22.500
lives there have been people who've studied catharsis it's the idea has been around for a long time and
00:15:27.780
people have studied in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s almost no one's studying it from the year 2000 and
00:15:33.540
beyond because we know the answer this makes people worse but yet it's kind of popular out there right
00:15:39.020
no yeah and i think because i think it makes intuitive sense to people i mean well i guess
00:15:43.360
it depends on what if your analogy of anger is that it's this emotion inside your brain that
00:15:49.920
it's like a a boiler that needs venting and if you vent it'll it'll reduce the pressure
00:15:55.460
in your psyche people like well if they make that analogy well that makes sense if you vent it then
00:16:00.360
you won't be angry but what the psychology is saying like i mean william james understood this
00:16:05.000
feelings follow action right so if you act angry you're just going to feel more angry you're just
00:16:11.700
going to habituate yourself to correct feeling angry yeah yeah the notion of of the boiler or that
00:16:18.960
something's building up inside your body is a simplistic idea that doesn't really make a lot of
00:16:24.800
sense we wouldn't say that about any emotion and so what we want people to do is to push back against
00:16:30.480
those those tendencies i think the reason that catharsis persists is that it feels right so when
00:16:36.260
you're angry you know you're activated to yell scream protect yourself in some ways and so it kind
00:16:43.420
of feels right and so when you tell people to practice this they come back and they feel good in the
00:16:48.560
moment but if you really sort of follow them along to see are they really improving and getting better
00:16:53.760
the answer is a pretty strong no for most people just the way if someone was socially anxious we
00:17:00.100
wouldn't tell them to keep walking out of the cocktail party or the room that they're in with other
00:17:04.600
people they might say they feel good in the moment but they're not learning how to improve themselves
00:17:10.260
in that type of environment we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
00:17:14.000
and now back to the show okay so catharsis doesn't work let's talk about what does so you mentioned
00:17:21.940
one of the first things that someone needs to do and they have an anger problem is to understand
00:17:25.900
what their anger patterns look like and you in the book and your co-author say that there's a six-step
00:17:32.300
pattern that most anger episodes follow briefly what is that pattern like what what are the steps of an
00:17:38.520
anger episode well i think that to get into understanding anger yeah you have to get into the fabric of
00:17:47.300
people's lives so so you're absolutely correct we do an in-depth analysis of individual anger experiences
00:17:51.760
and that's a starting point but here's what we avoid we avoid having fuzzy and philosophical discussions
00:17:56.840
about anger we also avoid having the person endlessly complain about poor treatment at the hands of others
00:18:02.540
and so we want to analyze anger as it occurs in the person's real life and when you initially ask people
00:18:10.280
about anger it's sort of a confusing mess it's made up of a swirling away of triggers and thoughts
00:18:15.160
and sensations and reactions and so anger does emerge in a predictable sequence and that's the
00:18:21.140
good news and so what we want to do is kind of look at the components of our own anger experiences
00:18:26.320
right and so anger as i've mentioned is is a complex network of components that includes triggers
00:18:32.180
thoughts sensations urges behaviors and outcomes and so i think that everyone who's listening to this if
00:18:40.280
if you are interested in doing better with your own anger experiences one of the first things to do is
00:18:46.680
to kind of examine a recent and strong episode of anger try to describe for yourself what what
00:18:52.280
triggered my anger in this situation and be specific what were some of the initial thoughts that went
00:18:56.980
through my mind when i encountered the trigger what did i notice in my body what was the experience like
00:19:02.160
how strong was it what sensations were there and what what did i want to do in the moment what was that
00:19:07.000
urge what was my autopilot telling me to do and then what did i actually do what behaviors did i engage
00:19:12.380
in and then finally that outcome piece again what was the outcome of me getting angry and and that's
00:19:19.240
sort of the starting point for us and once you kind of figure out what the building blocks of anger
00:19:24.160
episodes are that opens up a whole array of different places where you might intervene we might work with
00:19:31.960
people on changing some of the triggering events around them we might help people work on the way
00:19:36.660
they think when when they're confronted with challenges we might help people learn to relax
00:19:40.900
and calm their bodies or learn social skills to express themselves better and negotiate outcomes
00:19:46.380
that they want in life so i think the analysis of anger episodes kind of is sort of like a lighthouse
00:19:52.460
that tells you the guide you where to go when you're sort of working in this messy area okay so
00:19:58.160
by understanding the the pattern that anger follows you can find places where you can start tinkering
00:20:02.400
with things uh to start managing your anger whether it's at the trigger point or how you think about
00:20:07.420
things or the behaviors you you you express when you experience anger so uh let's talk about some
00:20:12.400
of these things i like i thought it was interesting before you really got into like okay you know what
00:20:16.820
can you do about these anger triggers you have your first bit of advice was just make some lifestyle
00:20:21.720
interventions that i think are geared towards reducing the likelihood of you getting angry and it's just
00:20:26.780
stuff like eating right exercising getting enough sleep i mean in your experience with working with
00:20:32.940
people with anger problems what's their diet exercise and sleep like typically you know people who
00:20:39.600
struggle with anger difficulties often have multiple problems and difficult lives and they're often
00:20:45.680
not taking care of themselves and so this isn't so i think not considered a specific element of an
00:20:52.020
anger episode there are a variety of environmental factors and habit patterns that can make episodes
00:20:57.100
sort of more likely to occur so you can think of episodes kind of like wildfires right there are
00:21:02.280
environmental conditions that make wildfires more likely you know if there's drought and heat if
00:21:08.580
there's an accumulation of brush in the area if there are problems with power lines or lightning strikes
00:21:15.620
you're more likely to have wildfires so i think we sometimes ask people to just take a step back and look at
00:21:21.040
their lifestyles and consider factors that make it more likely that their own anger wildfires
00:21:25.800
might ignite the major culprits as you mentioned are poor nutrition lack of sufficient sleep alcohol
00:21:32.780
misuse and also other drugs and maybe just unpleasant kind of background noises and smells and things like
00:21:39.160
that and and most professionals rarely consider changes in the client's environments and routines and other
00:21:44.400
background factors and these lifestyle issues are often important and it may help just to kind of
00:21:49.840
rearrange your life in a way that makes negative reactions less likely so we sometimes ask people
00:21:55.420
to plan to face challenging situations or have difficult conversations with others once they've
00:22:00.300
eaten properly and slept well right we also ask people to be honest about their drinking habits and
00:22:05.460
whether that's fueling their anger episodes and affecting relationships with family members friends and
00:22:10.140
colleagues and we ask people to be kind to themselves and think about their daily environments and try their
00:22:15.460
best to arrange things in as nice a way as possible yeah the alcohol thing is uh important because what
00:22:21.440
alcohol does it disinhibits you right so you if you feel angry you're more likely to express
00:22:27.060
maladaptive anger behaviors so cutting back on your drinking can reduce a lot of not good anger episodes
00:22:34.880
yeah and and there's a connection between alcohol use and anger so one of our early treatment studies we did this
00:22:42.580
study in the 1990s and we advertised for for men who had anger problems between the age of 25 and 50 and we asked
00:22:52.680
them to give us a call and if their anger was high enough we were going to give them a free treatment and we what we
00:22:58.240
wanted was a sort of pristine treatment group we wanted a group of people that just had an anger problem and didn't have
00:23:05.080
other problems and so we got a lot of calls but i have to tell you like three months later there was nobody in our study
00:23:10.380
because the lives of people with anger problems are very messy they have multiple problems and one of the leading
00:23:16.240
problems was substance abuse and i think that anger is a negative experience generally right so there's there's probably
00:23:23.480
nobody listening that is thinking when they wake up in the morning you know i want to have a really angry
00:23:28.400
day today right and so early on in people's lives they learn that if they take a drink you know take a drug
00:23:36.520
take a pill that they can kind of sometimes reduce that internal activation and so anger problems go along
00:23:45.320
with substance misuse okay so don't do drugs don't drink if you're feeling angry go to that whole advice don't
00:23:52.280
go to bed angry sometimes i think the best thing you do is just if you're feeling angry just go to
00:23:55.820
sleep because then the next day you feel awesome and you can take on the issue right if you're hangry
00:24:00.560
eat something uh you mentioned the study on men that made me think about another potential factor in
00:24:06.960
anger gender sex have we found a difference between how the sexes experience or express anger
00:24:12.280
you know anger seems to be an equal opportunity emotion and so i'll go back to that 1990s studies we were so
00:24:18.760
naive back then so we placed these advertisements for men who had anger problems right we got a couple
00:24:24.000
calls that sounded like this you know i have an anger problem and i would like free treatment
00:24:30.420
and you people are sexist i'm a woman you know and i have to tell you that those callers were right
00:24:37.440
i think that we used to think that anger was just a male problem but there's been a couple of
00:24:42.240
descriptive studies that have been done that kind of look at you know how anger emerges in people's real
00:24:47.900
lives and what we have learned is that anger is actually more similar than it's different for men
00:24:52.880
and women so men and women get angry at about the same rate they get angry about the same things
00:24:57.620
they express themselves in similar ways so i think that both men and women can experience anger problems
00:25:04.900
i guess the issue with men is that when they do express it with aggression because they're bigger
00:25:10.220
typically that it causes more damage than women yeah that's absolutely true so so men they're behaving
00:25:16.340
with aggression will cause will cause more physical destruction okay so let's talk about so we took
00:25:22.580
some lifestyle things to help maybe reduce the chances we're clearing out the brush so we don't
00:25:26.240
experience as intense anger when it does pop up let's talk about the interventions we can make with the
00:25:31.340
the anger triggers what are some things there that you you coach clients on or recommend to your
00:25:37.000
patients well i think that in terms of triggers right a lot of people who struggle with anger
00:25:43.360
difficulties have this pattern of confronting every injustice right their lives just become full of
00:25:49.380
conflicts for example you know does the person who cuts you off on the road need to be tailgated and
00:25:54.460
approached at the intersection and given a piece of your mind does the clerk at the coffee shop need to
00:25:59.480
be scolded because she's texting instead of quickly getting you your cup of coffee if you're never going to
00:26:04.560
see the person again and there's no way to get a resolution with someone you might be better off just
00:26:09.160
walking away so sometimes in terms of just thinking about triggers we try to encourage people to
00:26:14.800
practice letting go of the small things right some problems will of course get worse with the passage of
00:26:19.860
time and those may need to be dealt with and there's an art to knowing which people and situations are worth
00:26:26.940
dealing with which to let go and deciding when and how to engage with certain challenges in one's life
00:26:33.820
so this might mean for some people if it's really they have a really extreme anger problem like they
00:26:38.320
just avoid the trigger or the provocation in the first place and but that again that that's going
00:26:43.180
to take some judgment to figure out can i do this and have a good outcome or if i keep avoiding it
00:26:49.460
we'll just make the problem worse yeah exactly so you know there might be a family member that you know
00:26:57.340
when you show up at a family picnic or holiday that you have a negative history with and that there's
00:27:04.720
you know often ends in an argument you might decide not to go to that event right or if you do to try to
00:27:11.400
limit your actual contact with that person or to limit the amount of time that you spend there
00:27:16.580
you know there's different ways to sort of navigate that i think that if you're at the workplace there
00:27:22.540
might be certain employees where it might be better just to sidestep the person instead of having the
00:27:27.140
conversation face to face maybe you really think about a thoughtful email but of course be careful
00:27:32.400
with emails and electronic communications because people send angry communications those are often
00:27:37.800
part of the record so i think there are different ways to respond to people that don't necessarily
00:27:42.620
mean responding in the moment so i think looking at your life and figuring out what do i really need
00:27:47.940
to face here what kinds of things need to be resolved and which ones can i let go and i think the big
00:27:53.740
i mean the biggest benefit of just paying attention to your triggers like just knowing what makes you
00:27:58.260
angry i think a lot of people go through life angry and they don't even know why they're angry you ask
00:28:03.140
like why are you angry i don't know i'm just angry and like paying attention will help you i don't know
00:28:07.740
it does something once you know yeah and so that's that's sort of why we sort of start with that
00:28:13.020
analysis of anger episodes and and so you know so you know everyone's feels anger so let's just look
00:28:17.940
at your anger and let's just kind of dissect it and see how it looks in your real life okay so you
00:28:23.400
experience everyone experiences that that sort of flash of anger it's automatic because it's part of that
00:28:27.220
fight or flight response what can intensify so like that's kind of when you experience like that
00:28:32.800
anger that initial anger it's like a lightning bolt right that strikes a forest now it can kind of
00:28:37.740
smolder and just sort of extinguish itself but it can start you know growing and getting more intent
00:28:44.500
into this raging fire because of our thoughts so how can thought how the way we think when we experience
00:28:50.800
that flash of anger make anger grow out of control yeah i i think that in terms of thoughts we want to
00:28:59.420
sort of reverse engineer the rules and assumptions that people live by that that drive their anger right
00:29:06.560
and so you know there are a number of cognitive interventions that involve looking at what people
00:29:13.400
are saying to themselves at the moment when they're angry and then trying to kind of talk back to that
00:29:18.360
inner voice and try to replace those anger prompting thoughts with thoughts that are going to lead to less
00:29:23.040
anger but maybe a better way to think about it is sort of to imagine the scenario imagine that we are
00:29:29.740
visited by an alien race and they come and they land on earth and they're very curious about human beings
00:29:37.360
and they don't experience emotions the same way that we do and they're wondering about anger and your job
00:29:44.600
is to write a rule book on how to become a really angry person and so what would your rule book look like
00:29:51.480
like what would some of your rules be and i'll share with you some of the rules one rule might be to
00:29:58.260
jump to negative conclusions about the actions and intentions of others so interpret any potentially
00:30:04.140
negative or ambiguous behaviors as being deliberately and maliciously targeted you maybe another rule might
00:30:11.040
be demand that people act in a way that you want them to and assist that situations turn out the way you
00:30:17.700
want another rule might be don't make a distinction between life's minor hassles and inconveniences
00:30:23.360
and those things that are really important treat every difficulty and challenge as a significant setback and so
00:30:30.300
what we want to do is figure out what what are the what is it of the self-statements what's the person saying when
00:30:34.860
they're angry what rules of life are they living by and we want to kind of know the inner world of the person a
00:30:40.380
little bit and help them learn to sort of change those those thoughts in the moment
00:30:45.040
no you can see these uh these cognitive bias i will call them biases like let's use an example like
00:30:51.460
someone cuts you off right right in traffic so what we feel that flash of anger and then we start
00:30:56.640
we have this demand is well no one should ever do that they should be really thoughtful and never
00:31:00.640
they should have thought about getting to the other lane before they did at that moment and then
00:31:05.060
they're like this guy did that on purpose you know you see you yeah exactly and he's just a jerk and
00:31:09.820
he's just trying to get my goad and then like it's a low frustration tolerance because it's a minor
00:31:13.640
thing it's not that big of a deal you i like the word awfulize you guys use you're like oh well this
00:31:18.320
is just the worst thing that could ever happen to me what a way to start my day off all the that
00:31:23.200
thought process is just making you more and more angry it's not helping right it's sort of fueling
00:31:28.700
your anger and ramping it up and for those folks that aren't familiar with the term awfulizing it just
00:31:33.000
means kind of exaggerating you know any adversity or hardship that you might experience and all of us
00:31:38.300
experience setbacks in our lives so people that do awfulizing a lot they're actually saying to
00:31:43.600
themselves in their heads like it's awful it's terrible it's horrible and what they lack is
00:31:47.620
wisdom they don't seem to have the wisdom to know what's a big deal in life and what's not right
00:31:52.100
and this this is where like a therapist could come in handy because they help you challenge or reframe
00:31:57.620
that type of thinking yeah they do and and i think when it comes to awfulizing what it does is it takes
00:32:03.840
energy away from solving your problems and awfulizing also makes you unpleasant to be around because no one
00:32:09.600
really wants to be near a complainer so what are some things you could say to yourself instead of
00:32:14.060
saying you know that when the person cuts you off this is awful and terrible and horrible just say
00:32:18.760
yourself you know bad drivers exist this is part of life i'm not the policeman of the universe let it go
00:32:25.340
i can give you another example just in terms of trying to change some of those thoughts yeah that
00:32:30.060
i think that for many people who struggle with anger they're like injustice collectors right they're
00:32:34.860
constantly scanning for disrespect and seeing the worst in others in situations so one alternative
00:32:39.800
might be practicing forgiveness in everyday situations as they come up in your life so you know it's
00:32:45.380
possible to practice this in the scenario you just mentioned so if someone cuts you off in traffic
00:32:50.040
you know the next time you're faced with this kind of behavior you can recognize that you're having
00:32:55.140
the same old angry thoughts in your head that might sound like you know he's a real jerk and what an
00:32:59.100
asshole and i'm going to show him and and try to catch yourself right but then try to guess what might be
00:33:04.080
happening or what may have happened in the other person's life that's causing him or her to behave
00:33:09.680
in that way or in this case cut you off right but this is hard to do and you won't know for sure but
00:33:14.320
maybe the person who cut you off is going to the hospital to visit a friend maybe they have some kind
00:33:21.760
of cognitive impairment perhaps you know they're having a really bad day and they're distracted by
00:33:27.680
something going on in their world and so you can silently in your mind wish the person well
00:33:33.260
let go of your anger and move on with your day we sometimes ask people to practice this simple
00:33:38.720
sequence of just practicing kind of forgiveness in small situations it's not what they're doing
00:33:43.920
naturally and so this will seem very sort of foreign to many many people who are acting automatically
00:33:49.400
but slowing down and just sort of kind of practicing forgiveness in small ways and changing those thoughts
00:33:55.100
in your head over time can pay dividends as you mentioned earlier that we often resort to these
00:34:01.340
maladaptive thinking patterns you know this awfulizing low frustration tolerance demandingness
00:34:06.300
etc when there's situations that are ambiguous right so we're not sure if if this person meant
00:34:12.740
ill or good or there's neutral i think this is why digital communication can be so fraught because
00:34:19.200
oftentimes it's ambiguous as like intent behind a typed message on a computer screen so that's why
00:34:25.660
someone types something like our initial response like man this guy means this awful thing but really
00:34:29.900
they probably didn't yeah i think we've all we've all done that right yeah you know it's probably
00:34:36.660
better to give people the benefit of the doubt and to not look for the worst in terms of other people's
00:34:45.020
intentions and so we know that if you analyze anger episodes for many people there is this distortion
00:34:51.680
and there's this sort of kind of looking for malicious intent in other people's actions
00:34:58.760
that that maybe isn't there and so that occurs for many people and we try to slow them down and get
00:35:05.160
them to think of you know what are some other possibilities maybe this person doesn't mean this
00:35:09.480
what might they mean okay so this uh looking at your thought patterns and kind of challenging it this is
00:35:15.220
the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy so this is one option right of managing anger but as you said
00:35:21.420
earlier you offer sort of like a menu of options so so you can find the one that works best for you
00:35:26.400
and another option you you highlight in the book is acceptance and commitment therapy and we've had
00:35:32.340
stephen hayes on the podcast a while ago yeah so but for those who aren't familiar like what is
00:35:37.180
acceptance and commitment therapy and how can that how can you apply that to anger so yeah this is an
00:35:42.940
approach that is helpful for many people and from an acceptance and commitment therapy perspective
00:35:48.860
angry behavior results from unskilled attempts to fulfill one's sort of personal values and cope with
00:35:55.020
their life's challenges right so this style of intervention incorporates elements of buddhist
00:36:00.540
philosophy it emphasizes mindful awareness and values based actions so just to get a little bit more
00:36:08.460
concrete about this the focus in this approach is not on eliminating or changing your thoughts and
00:36:13.820
feelings but rather learning to accept those thoughts and feelings as they are but acting in a way that
00:36:20.080
moves you in a productive direction and to do this often we have conversations with people
00:36:25.360
about their personal values right to establish kind of anchor points like how do you want to be as a
00:36:30.840
parent you know what what do you value do you want to be a a calm parent do you want to be a parent
00:36:35.840
that models productive behavior for your kids and so i i think that in this approach there is this idea that
00:36:45.220
people do not have to act on every thought emotion and urge in fact during a typical day all of us have
00:36:51.900
impulses that we don't automatically translate into behaviors such as i'm hungry we might think i wish
00:36:59.200
he'd shut up or i'd love to take a nap right now or something like that right but from this perspective
00:37:03.480
the problem is less about the thoughts but it's more about the behavioral kind of expression and so what
00:37:10.720
we try to do here is we explore what clients want out of life so we sort of try to identify their values
00:37:16.160
and life priorities and by the way values are like big life directions that require ongoing attention
00:37:22.140
in your life you might value being a nurturing parent you might value being excellent at work or being
00:37:28.080
involved in your community but but i think that what we try to do here is explore to the degree to which
00:37:34.320
your everyday decisions are consistent with what you say your core values are right and so that means
00:37:39.500
kind of fostering values based actions and so what we're trying to do is align people's everyday
00:37:46.500
behaviors with the things that they value most in life and from a acceptance and commitment
00:37:51.180
therapy standpoint a meaningful life is sort of defined by living in accordance with what you value
00:37:57.060
often your angry reactions are the opposite of that yeah so again i think the point to reiterate here
00:38:03.460
is that these are options so if you try the cbt route the cognitive behavioral therapy where you're
00:38:08.120
challenging angry thought patterns maybe that works for you for some people it doesn't it kind of there's
00:38:14.200
like a backfire effect the more they fight it the stronger the thought pattern becomes it's like okay
00:38:19.320
i'll try acceptance and commitment therapy maybe that will help me manage my anger so again i think
00:38:24.100
there's no silver bullet here you have to experiment and try to figure out what what works for you
00:38:28.880
absolutely and there's a whole range of options and it you know this is actually a big area we could
00:38:33.820
talk for hours about the different types of interventions that people have we've just touched
00:38:37.600
on a few of them there's definitely more than one way to work on reducing your anger and improving your
00:38:45.720
effectiveness in the world one thing you mentioned the book is this idea of exposure therapy and i think
00:38:51.080
we've heard people talk about exposure therapy with like phobias and extreme anxieties so the idea is
00:38:55.780
if you have a fear of spiders then you kind of gradually expose yourself to spiders to the point
00:39:01.980
where you no longer like you kind of extinguish the fear how does this work with anger how can you use
00:39:07.400
exposure therapy just you put yourself in angry situations like what do you do here yeah exposure
00:39:11.920
practice is one of the more attention grabbing techniques yeah and so you you know i think when
00:39:18.120
you if you want to understand exposure the idea might be this if on the on the anxiety side if you
00:39:25.040
watch a scary movie and you feel some kind of anxiety watching the movie what would happen if you saw the
00:39:30.460
movie 10 times yeah not scary okay right i know it's coming yeah so the idea here is that you know
00:39:37.880
we want people to practice new skills right in their lives and it's one thing to maybe practice your
00:39:44.020
tennis serve against the wall in a gym but it's another to have a real live opponent kind of hit the
00:39:50.540
ball back at you and so with exposure we're trying to give people the opportunity for simulations and
00:39:56.340
practice and there's different ways to to do exposure techniques one way to do it is to sort of send people
00:40:04.500
out to do exposure type of assignments and so i'll try to describe this briefly but we have people sort of
00:40:12.800
spend some time thinking about and imagining maybe some real life anger scenarios and think about the things
00:40:19.160
that people might say that typically trigger your anger reactions in those situations the second step is to
00:40:26.140
sort of practice some relaxation techniques there's different sort of ways to kind of tense and release
00:40:32.280
your muscles practice breathing techniques sometimes we ask people to practice coping statements in
00:40:38.420
response to some of these triggers that means what can you say to yourself in your mind that would
00:40:42.480
lead to less anger so like if someone cuts you off you can say you know what bad drivers exist i'm not
00:40:47.220
the policeman of the universe i'm going to let it go but the final step is to transfer whatever skill
00:40:53.360
you're practicing whether it's breathing staying calm coming up with a new statement in your head
00:40:58.240
is to transfer this to real life and the goal is to get to the point where you can intentionally put
00:41:03.220
yourself in some of these situations and handle yourself with less anger it's that practice makes
00:41:09.240
automatic idea again right but essentially we try to get people to the place where they can do a live
00:41:14.440
practice round now i do need to say that it's important not to react to your anger triggers by making
00:41:19.640
anger statements and using provocative body language and gestures and your goal is to tolerate triggering
00:41:24.340
situations stay calm while hearing things you don't like then try to exit gracefully right and so this
00:41:30.260
could be done with a difficult topic with your kids or maybe a partner interacting with a co-worker
00:41:35.680
dealing with the rude salesperson the goal is always the same stay calm keep your angry autopilot response
00:41:41.900
turned off use your new coping skills and try to try to make a graceful exit so when people do this
00:41:48.800
we ask them to gauge what went well and what could they do to improve this right and we ask people
00:41:52.940
to start small don't pick a situation that if it goes poorly it'll result in like a significant loss
00:41:57.600
like you'll lose your job if you you know put yourself in a situation with a critical supervisor
00:42:02.400
and if you don't think you can deal with a difficult situation then you may need to spend more time
00:42:06.420
practicing and imagination and if people think that facing a particular situation in real life is
00:42:11.160
likely to result in a significant problem or loss then maybe skip the live practice and and think about
00:42:16.620
getting some professional guidance okay so the idea is just again we're trying to minimize the intensity
00:42:22.680
of anger and how and minimize the response that we we have when we we have that anger yeah and take
00:42:29.180
new skills out for a test drive actually try them out yeah try them out and you know it's funny as as i've
00:42:35.540
had this listen to our conversation and whenever i've talked to other psychologists about how to manage you
00:42:41.840
know emotions strong emotions i always keep on i'm sure my listeners are tired of hearing this but i'm
00:42:46.960
like this sounds like aristotle aristotle had this down 2500 years ago you know he you know when you
00:42:53.760
speak of anger aristotle would say anger's not good or bad it's good if you express it in the right way
00:43:01.000
at the right time for the right reason the right intensity if you don't do that then then anger is bad
00:43:06.880
it can become maladaptive and like that's what you were saying like anger is not necessarily bad it can
00:43:11.460
just becomes bad when you express it too much or in the wrong place at the wrong time and then
00:43:15.920
aristotle also talked about okay well how do you how do you learn how to manage your anger well he says
00:43:21.060
well you practice it that's only you you have to you can't just think about it you actually have to
00:43:24.640
to practice the virtue of managing your anger so i always think that's interesting whenever i talk
00:43:30.700
like well man aristotle got it right yeah the um early philosophers did get it right and so they they
00:43:36.620
wrote about anger as something that can get out of hand and derail people's lives and also be a
00:43:43.640
destructive force for societies and nations and that to to live a truly effective life meant that
00:43:50.440
you know you had to sort of master your own anger reactions well chip this has been a great
00:43:55.760
conversation is there some place people can go to learn more about the book in your work
00:43:58.860
yeah people can get the book it's called anger management for everyone
00:44:03.240
10 proven strategies to control anger and live a happier life it's an inexpensive paperback and you
00:44:09.160
can find it on amazon also howie kazanov and i developed a comprehensive online udemy program
00:44:15.840
called anger management for any situations 10 ways to control anger fantastic well chip trefady thanks for
00:44:22.020
your time it's been a pleasure thank you for having me my guest today was dr chip trefady he is the author
00:44:27.180
of the book anger management for everyone it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere
00:44:30.920
check out our show notes at aom.is slash anger where you find links to resources where you delve
00:44:35.840
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:44:46.700
art of manless.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles written
00:44:50.300
over the years about pretty much anything you think of and you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the
00:44:53.720
aom podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcherpremium.com sign up use code
00:44:57.800
manless at checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up download a sutra app on android
00:45:01.660
ios and you can start enjoying ad free episodes of the aom podcast and if you haven't done so
00:45:05.560
already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on apple podcast or spotify it
00:45:09.040
helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a
00:45:12.400
friend or family member who you think will get something out of it as always thank you for the
00:45:15.500
continued support until next time it's brett mckay remind you on the list they went podcast but put