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By Root 886 0

Catharsis may happen once in a while, but statistically, the opposite is more often the case. Seymour Feshbach, an early pioneer of experiments on anger, explored catharsis by working with a group of young boys who were not aggressive or destructive. He encouraged them to kick furniture and play with violent toys. They did so—exuberantly. Did this drain the boys of aggression? No, it amplified it. The boys became more hostile and destructive, not less. The same holds with adults: Telling someone off typically makes you feel more hostile, not less hostile, toward the target.14

Can Anger Be Changed?

I’m not sure. Concerted research and clinical efforts have been mounted to relieve the two other major negative emotions, anxiety and depression. Because each of these is a certified disorder, millions of dollars have been spent and tens of thousands of patients treated with an adventurous variety of tactics. Control groups have been run, and major outcome studies performed. I am therefore entitled to claim, as I did in the last several chapters, that panic is curable, that depression can usually be relieved and shortened, and that obsessions can often be alleviated. Anger, however, is not a certified disorder. Pitifully little research has been focused on it. There are only a few hundred patients who have been treated, and only a handful of tactics have been tested. There is not a single major outcome study on how to change anger. So my advice about anger mixes what is known with more than a dollop of the clinical wisdom.

Let us assume you scored in the upper 10 percent of the anger inventory. Your short fuse is a vexation to others around you and to your spirit as well. After reading this chapter, you are now convinced that the cost of venting your anger clearly outweighs the gain. What should you do?

A good first step is to keep an “anger diary” for a week.15 Divide it into five columns. Here is what an entry might look like:

Doing this will allow you to see patterns in your anger. What kind of incidents set it off? Trivial ones? Threats to income? Romantic thwarting? Interruption at unimportant tasks? Does shouting make it worse or better? Do you feel guilty? Does it go away quickly even if you don’t do anything? Do people seem to like you less afterward? Do you accomplish the goal?

Once you are on top of some of your patterns, you should learn about how clinicians dampen anger. All of their tactics are simple, and you can use them yourself. Anger consists of three aspects: the thought—trespass; the feeling—fury, blood pressure up, heart racing, muscles tensing; and the behavior—attack. There are separate tactics for dampening each of the three.

Thought. When we are provoked, the time interval between the trigger and our attack is often terribly brief. This is as it should be, since it reflects the evolutionary need for instantaneous defense. It is an old saw to “count to ten.” This is very sensible advice—as far as it goes. Such advice attempts to buy time between the provocation and the response.

But time for what? The count-to-ten advice assumes that time itself dampens the impulse to hit back. There is some truth in that, but we can do more than just count—the thought “I am being trespassed against” can be directly modified during the lengthened interval. By all means, count; count not to just ten but through twenty breaths. (Better yet: Sleep on it.) But during that time, challenge and reinterpret the thoughts of trespass and affront.

Imagine yourself as a fish swimming along. Numerous fishhooks, in the form of insults, appear in your path. Each offers you the choice of whether or not to bite.16 Ask yourself: Is this actually a trespass? Try to see yourself from the provoker’s point of view. Try to reframe the provocation:

Maybe he’s having a rough day.

There’s no need to take it personally.

Don’t act like a jerk just because he is.

He couldn’t help it.

This could be a testy situation, but easy does it.

Use humor if you can. For example: You have just been cut off by a reckless driver who