We all get angry, I have just got angry with a man on the phone ringing me up out of the blue from a company I have never heard of asking me if I had a car accident in the last 2 or 3 years that was not my fault.

My reply, “Why, if it happened 2 or 3 years ago are we talking about it now?

He responded, “Were there any children in the car?”

My reply, “Why, if it happened 2 years ago why are we talking about it now?

His response, “So it happened 2 years ago?”

My reply, “Well, I can’t remember if it happened 2 or 3 years ago. I can’t remember now, it was 2 or 3 years ago. Why are we talking about it now?”

His response, “Who dealt with it?”

The fact that he would not answer my question about why he was ringing me up was what was annoying me. Instead of just answering my question he persistently ignored my question and asked me another.

He eventually said that I could claim some compensation. When I said, “I did not want to.” he asked “Why.”

This rattled me too. I said, “Can you not respect my choice that I don’t want to?”

I then said, “This conversation is now over, thank you.”

I think I went from frustration to annoyance fairly quickly.

Here is an example of going from frustration to annoyance. One of my triggers is when people do not listen to me and he clearly was not listening, just asking me questions that I did not want to answer.

6 Steps to anger..

Dr Larry Iverson says that there are 6 steps we go through to getting angry.  Watch his video on You Tube  – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLQidd6grck.

The stages are frustration; something is stopping me from having it; demanding; you are not giving me what I want; they deserve to be punished; I am going to punish them.

The first – Frustration is our primary emotion and most of us will have many of these a day (average a day is about 20) and they may be things like the heating has not come on in the morning for some reason, there is no bread left (only the crust), it is raining so you have to take your umbrella and you have extra things you have to take with you that day, the bus/train is late, etc. and that is just in the morning!

These are all minor frustrations that we deal with daily and probably don’t think much of at the time. These can then escalate. These frustrations lead me to not getting/having what I want.

So let us take the example above of the bus/train being late. You wanted to be in work early because your boss has asked you to do the window display and they want it done early that day for some reason. You arrive late so don’t get what you want. Or another example, you go into a shop to buy your favourite biscuits and you are walking up to them when you see the person in front of you take the last packet off the shelf! We show our frustration in the way we behave. How would you react as you saw someone take the last packet of biscuits off the shelf?  Pull a face, huff and puff, say something to the person?

We can become demanding if we don’t get our way..

That’s a frustration and you are not getting what you want so you go into the next category of “Demanding”. This is when we have such thoughts of:-

  • I must have my way,
  • this ought to happen and
  • it has got to be my way.

Here we are demanding that we have our way/get what we want – that packet of biscuits. This leads us into the anger. We have gone from frustration into anger – my needs must be met.

If you don’t give me what I want then you deserve to be punished and I am going to punish you. We usually punish people with the way we behave, e.g. we can become moody, shout or banging doors.

Most of us have a default anger state that we go into. Have a look at the picture below (copywright James Hawes, 2020). This shows a spectrum of angry behaviour that we display and we usually have one that we will always fall into. There is no right or wrong and you might find that you are a mixture of one or two but I think there will be  one that is slighlty more dominant. When I saw this I could see mine straight away – irritable. I start to get quite tetchy with people and I am not fun to be around.

Which of these is your default angry behaviour?

Most of these are quite self-explanatory e.g. shouting; moody (could also be seen as sulking). Punching or throwing things, I think we will all have heard of, if not experienced this first hand. Being defensive might be new to some of us. This is when we feel we have to defend ourselves because we are feeling very vulnerable. This vulnerability comes from a feeling deep inside us and it could be shame, hurt or feeling worthless. The next few are obvious.

Self-talk – this is usually negative talk we tell ourselves, e.g. it’s all your fault, you’re useless/worthless. We don’t show we are angry because we take it all in to our bodies and don’t show it. Self-harm or cutting ourselves is normally to do with control or rather being out of control and the cutting gives us some of that control back.

Chronic boredom is an interesting one. This is when we have no motivation/energy to do anything. We just let things ride over us because we can’t we bothered. We have got to the point that we are so bored we have not got the interest to do anything. Being late for meetings is a behaviour we use to punish people. Frustration I have talked discussed above. Constant criticism again is where someone feels they have to be constantly putting someone down so they can feel big.  I think the rest speak for themselves.

We all experience frustrations and anger in our life. Some of them are just part of our everyday life. For people who have real trouble with their anger and cannot control it maybe they have not worked out what there triggers are. This is the key and usually when we are anger it is our bodies and minds telling us that there is something wrong. It is like an alert signal going off. We have to take time out and find out what our bodies are trying to say to us – what message is it trying to tell us?

These could be things like

  •         feeling out of control
  •        feeling powerless
  •        a sense of injustice/unfairness
  •        feeling small – shame, sad, Scared (feelings of vulnerability).

The above examples are certainly true for men but they also apply to all people.

If you feel you want to explore this further with me please get in touch.

  • ursula@counsellinginblackpool.com
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