What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [58]
KATE: Can’t you just be a little help around here before you start complaining?
JONAH: You don’t seem to realize that I’ve had a hard day at work. I don’t need this shit when I come home!
KATE: You’ve had a hard day! What do you think two teenagers and a six-month-old to take care of are? May Day at Bryn Mawr? I need a man who pitches in, not a black hole.
JONAH: Black hole, eh? Who went to my promotion party last week and did nothing except scowl? You ungrateful bitch.
[Jonah storms out. Kate bursts into tears of helpless rage.]
The dishwasher fight is an all-too-common experience. This couple lives a balance of recriminations. All it takes is some innocent issue, like the dishwasher, to bring the simmering resentments to the surface. The underlying issues don’t seep out then; they emerge in volcanic form. Because they explode, both Kate and Jonah are taken by surprise, and neither can be coolheaded enough to be anything but aggressive and defensive. Nothing gets resolved, and now, yet another incident is added to the ever-mounting mass of things to fight about next time.
Do you often find yourself in “dishwasher fights” with people you care about? Do the issues mount with nothing getting resolved? Are you a grudge collector? Let’s find out if you are an angry person—relatively speaking. I want you to take an anger inventory. There is nothing tricky or deep about this quiz. Your score will tell you where you stand relative to other adults.
ANGER INVENTORY1
Read each statement and then mark the appropriate number to indicate how you generally feel There are no right or wrong answers. Do not spend too much time on any one statement, but give the answer that seems to describe how you generally feel.
Scoring. Simply add the numbers attached to your answers for the ten questions. The higher your total, the more anger dominates your life.
If you scored 13 or below, you are in the least angry 10 percent of people.
If you scored 14–15, you are in the lowest quarter.
If you scored 17–20, your anger level is about average.
If you scored 21–24, your anger level is high, around the seventy-fifth percentile.
If you scored 29–30 and you are male, your anger level is around the ninetieth percentile.
If you scored 25–27 and you are female, your anger level is around the ninetieth percentile.
If you scored above 30 and you are male, your anger level is at the most hotheaded ninety-fifth percentile.
If you scored above 28 and you are female, your anger level is at the ninety-fifth percentile.
People mellow as they age. If you are under twenty-three years old, a score of 26 or more puts you in the most angry 10 percent. But if you are over twenty-three years old, a score of only 24 or more puts you in the top 10 percent.
If you scored in the top half of the anger inventory, anger is an emotion you know well.
ANGER has three components:
There is a thought, a very discrete and particular thought: “I am being trespassed against.” Often, events get out of hand so quickly that you will not be conscious of this thought. You may simply react—but the thought of trespass is lurking there nonetheless. Kate’s underlying thought was “Jonah never helps; he just bitches.” Jonah’s was “Kate doesn’t appreciate me.”
There is a bodily reaction. Your sympathetic nervous system and your muscles mobilize for physical assault. Your muscles tense. Your blood pressure and heart rate skyrocket. Your digestive processes stop. Brain centers are triggered and your brain chemistry goes into an attack mode. All this is accompanied by subjective feelings of anger.
Third—and this is what the first two phases ready you for—you attack. Your attack is directed toward ending the trespass—immediately. You lash out. What you are doing is nothing less than trying to wound or kill the trespasser. If you are well socialized, you will attack verbally, not physically; and if you are very well socialized, you will usually be able to control the attack somewhat. You will mute it, or