Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [82]
“First,” she said, “participants are told that anger isn’t about anyone else. It is an emotion, and no one else is responsible. They need to own the problem.”
Hum. “Own the problem” has a certain 1990s business speak sound to me, but I didn’t want to be judgmental. “What happens next?”
“Once participants are told that their anger is not the fault of someone else, they are led through self-image exercises.”
“What are self-image exercises?” I asked.
“They think back to their childhood, for example,” she explained, “and consider which parent they are more like. Then they’re asked to think about who else has been a major influence. Then we end that exercise with them trying to remember any major events of their life, both bad and good.”
Okay, I was warming up to this. I liked the idea of influences. I’ve had some good ones, and I’m pretty anger free. Maybe I wouldn’t be quite so tranquil if my influences had been less positive.
“Once participants have a firm understanding of where their anger comes from,” she said, “we try to get them to recognize when it is making an appearance. Knowing how the body reacts when anger occurs is a key to controlling it.”
That made sense, too. Maybe we were getting somewhere with anger management. I even felt better about my part in having people sent off to participate in the course. “Is that it?”
“No,” she said. “One of the keys to anger management is learning to negotiate and communicate—particularly in conflict. Different negotiating styles are reviewed.” Different negotiation styles? Oh, I don’t like those words. An uncomfortable sense of déjà vu washed over me.
During my bar admission course, we were offered instruction in various negotiating styles. One of those, the one advocated by the bar course leaders, had as its central theme rejecting positional negotiating and trying to determine the real interests of the other party. After appropriate instruction we were paired off, given a fictional case to settle, and sent off to negotiate.
My opposite was a mature student. He had already lived life, done things, and been places. He understood the artificiality of the exercise and the inconsequential nature of the whole process. I, on the other hand, got wrapped up in the competitive aspect of it all. Contrary to our training, I staked out a position, made an offer substantially above that, and waited for the give-and-take I expected. Instead my opponent, when hit with my opening salvo, said simply, “Okay, deal. You want another coffee?”
I was taken aback. Not only was there no negotiation, but now I would have to go back and explain how I had ignored our course on interest-based negotiation and taken advantage of an old man.
Thus, when my anger management consultant talked about “different negotiating styles,” it killed my interest in anger management as the key to Tranquillity. It’s probably an excellent course, but like yogic flying, it’s not for me.
I thanked my anger management consultant for her help, and as she was walking out, she said, “Maybe you’d like to sit in on a course sometime?”
I thought about it for all of five seconds before politely declining. Notwithstanding my feelings about the course generally, it seemed unwise. This is a small jurisdiction. Most of the people in the course would probably be there because I helped put them there. Such a course could not end well for me.
It might, however, make for an interesting test of their newfound anger management skills.
The Harrison Gunn Method of Tranquillity
My stab at anger management might not have been the magic bullet on Tranquillity that I was seeking, but it did get me thinking about the source of my own Tranquillity. The course leader had said that, as part of the self-image exercises, people were asked to consider the major influences in their life. If that works for people trying to find the source of their anger, why couldn’t it help me deconstruct the