Anger Management

Yep, this is another anger management book. Before you throw it down, ask yourself, "Why another one?" The answer, in part, can be found in baboons. There is a troop of baboons in eastern Africa. Actually, there is more than one, but this particular troop had a unique anger management transformation. For those of you not familiar with baboons, suffice it to say when the higher ranking (dominant) males get angry, they take it out on the rest of the troop. One season a garbage pile was left with a lot of tainted meat. The dominant males insisted on eating first. This resulted in a massive death of all the angry, high ranking baboons.[1] Post the group funeral for the angry guys, the remainder of the males were easier going, nicer fellows. The whole mood of the troop shifted to calmer and more cooperative. When new, angry adolescents from other troops joined the calm group, within six months they were nicer guys too; less fighting, less attacking, more cooperation. So how is it a troop of baboons can learn not only to manage their anger, but to teach other baboons as well? The answer does not lie in becoming a baboon or feeding angry people tainted meat. People need to be taught the skills necessary to effectively manage their anger. Let's assume most of us are as smart or smarter than a baboon. Baboons don't have short and long-term anger strategies. They do not sit on a couch and role-play their various anger triggers. Yet they can develop social skills that make them less aggressive or angry. For our program we needed to identify: * What are these skills that we as humans need to learn? * How can they be structured into our program? This program does just that. This book is not about the philosophy of what you should do, but how to do it. Most anger management books are long on theory, and short on application. After six months, you get some results. But as soon as you leave the troop, you are back to scratching and fighting. You get results while in the program, but then it doesn't last. This program introduces some theory, but only in respect to developing the needed skills. You take these skills with you. This means you will have the tools you need to deal with anger situations in the real world. The next ingredient was finding the right audience (the baboons wouldn't sit still) to test the program. For this we worked with inmates in the federal prison system. Trust us when we tell you, failure was not an option. Most anger management programs deal with rage, violent outbursts, and the need for control. Yes, these need to be addressed, but this is not the only expression of unhealthy anger. Ron and Patricia Potter-Efron identified multiple types of anger, called anger styles. The importance of their work is recognizing that unhealthy anger can take several forms. Passive-aggressive and Shame-based anger are examples of a couple of styles. While we believe the chronic anger styles may simply be characteristics of anger, the ability to look at these various anger styles assists with developing skill training to address them all more effectively. Traditional anger management programs either discuss how to be (i.e. more optimistic, less reactive, etc) or they completely ignore other elements, such as morals, ethics, and the spiritual. In the 1980's the medical doctor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl, developed the psychological therapy model of "Logotherapy". He argued that some problems could not be successfully treated unless people took into account the meaning and purpose in their lives. He also touched on issues of ethics. Many psychologists before him mentioned the importance of looking at issues of morals and ethics, including Freud, Carl Rogers, and Carl Jung. Early in his career Freud postulated that people who lived by strong morals and ethics carried fewer regrets throughout life, and subsequently lived happier, healthier lives. So why did their students and their students' students fail to create programs that included these important points? Following the advice of these former masters, we have incorporated morals into each anger management session. Often times when psychologists are faced with difficult individuals, medication comes into play. Its most effective role has been demonstrated in the management of severe symptoms in conjunction with therapy and behavioral strategies. The need to treat the entire person, with most of the individual functioning, instead of medicating most of the individual and treating the small part left unimpaired by side effects, is the main concern. Comprehensive treatment plans provide people with tools to help them live better. They are not just about a symptom, diagnosis, or a disorder. They are about the person having a better quality of life. This program considers the treatment of the whole person, the mind, body, and spirit, in effectively managing anger. Its design calls for 12 sessions taught over an equal number of weeks, but applied over a lifetime. Because this program is comprehensive, it can work synergistically with the responsible use of anger related medications. In designing this program, we realized there are many other missing components in supposed "comprehensive" anger management programs. There are literally years of studies explaining how music, exercises such as yoga, and breathing techniques can assist with calming. When a stressful situation appears, these techniques help to relax the person and generally assist them in maintaining a healthy perspective. Another factor in determining how you handle stress is your nutrition. Nutrition can literally pump you up, or bring you down. The right nutrition keeps you healthy and helps regulate your mood. We also incorporated positive affirmations and positive language. All of these things combined, help make you happier. Happy people are less tense and respond to anger better. The final component involves preparing participants for the real possibility of "slipping up" / Back Sliding, and how to address it. These are the components of the program that make it unique. We then identified some of the core skills people need to carry with them into the real world. This is where we turned to Positive Psychology. It identifies Virtues and Strengths that happier people tend to have, incorporating them into a theory of psychology. From these Strengths, we identified five that are critical in the management of anger. In order to teach them, we had to break them down into component skills. Step by step these can be learned and developed. In a sense, this is what our baboon troop is doing. They communicate daily which behaviors work and which are being shunned. They never stop their skill development. In our program we develop the following Virtue/Strength/Skills (VSS): * Optimism * Self-forgiveness * Self-control * Empathy * Forgiveness of Others The program includes both short and long-term anger management strategies that include these positive skills. They are versatile strategies applicable to a wide range of real life situations. They are not the rote responses that many other programs suggest. We also include ongoing VSS development exercises, designed to continue your training in these skills. All of these parts combine into a truly comprehensive anger management program that works.