[(JD)]

http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/Chapter7/ This is a link to Dr Clay's book...Chapter 7 on anger and aggression. I thought a thread on this topic, covering his book, could help members here deal with the subject matter. I think it is pretty much a "self-help" topic, indeed! Most of us have trouble reasoning with anyone else who is angry, and we all probably understand how little we hear of others speaking to us when we are angry.

Let's begin!

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Introduction—An Overview of Anger How we deal with stress, disappointments, and frustration determines the essence of our personality. In this chapter we consider frustration and aggression. Anger may do more harm than any other emotion. First of all it is very common and, secondly, it upsets at least two people--the aggressor and the aggressed against. There are two problems: how to prevent or control your own anger and how to handle someone aggressing against you. This chapter attends more to self-control.

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Anger can be the result of hurt pride, of unreasonable expectations, or of repeated hostile fantasies. Besides getting our way, we may unconsciously use anger to blame others for our own shortcomings, to justify oppressing others, to boost our own sagging egos, to conceal other feelings, and to handle other emotions (as when we become aggressive when we are afraid). Any situation that frustrates us, especially when we think someone else is to blame for our loss, is a potential trigger for anger and aggression.

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Anger is feeling mad in response to frustration or injury. You don't like what has happened and usually you'd like to get revenge. Anger is an emotional-physiological-cognitive internal state; it is separate from the behavior it might prompt. In some instances, angry emotions are beneficial; if we are being taken advantage of, anger motivates us to take action (not necessarily aggressive) to correct the situation. Aggression is action, i.e. attacking someone or a group. It is intended to harm someone. It can be a verbal attack--insults, threats, sarcasm, or attributing nasty motives to them--or a physical punishment or restriction

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and...

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An important new term has come into use: Indirect Aggression (Heim, Murphy, & Golant, 2003). This is where gossip or rumors are spread about someone or where a person is left out, shunned, or snubbed. This behavior has been shown to be more common among girls because girls, in general, are more eager than boys to be accepted into their social group and to have close personal relationships. Having bad things said about you or being neglected or avoided is very hurtful to a teenage girl. Sometimes it is called Relational Aggression because it is designed to hurt certain relationships in the group and build other contacts. It is a way to manipulate relationships and create excitement. Viewing indirect aggression on TV increases this kind of action by the viewer.

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and finally for this post:

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To clarify aggression, some writers have classified it according to its purpose: instrumental aggression (to get some reward, not to get revenge), hostile aggression (to hurt someone or get revenge), and annoyance aggression (to stop an irritant). When our aggression becomes so extreme that we lose self-control, it is said that we are in a rage. Aggression must be distinguished from assertiveness which is tactfully and rationally standing up for one’s own rights; indeed, assertiveness is designed not to hurt others (see chapter 8). Anger can also be distinguished from hostility which is a chronic state of anger. Anger is a temporary response, which we all have, to a particular frustrating situation; hostility is a permanent personality characteristic which certain people have.

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[drclay]

Posters on this Forum:

I owe you an explanation of why I haven't posted during the last month or more. I have enjoyed good health for most of my 75 years but starting in late March and for most of April I have been slowed down by treatment for prostate cancer. This consisted of both radiation and hormonal treatment. One of my reactions was to get very sleepy when I tried to work several hours on the computer. Most of my life I didn't like to take a nap...what a change. If I got active in the yard or doing something with my hands, I luckily felt pretty good.

I am eager to read how people will respond to _Sky's idea of citing some quotes. Anger is a terrible problem but I'm not sure just reading quotes about anger will help much. I was impressed with some of the posts in the last month by some of you about how you have been able to change.

If you have any questions about prostate cancer or the treatment for it, I'll be glad to tell you what I have learned and experienced.

drclay

[nothemama8]

glad your feeling better, I'm dealing with my hubbys having bleeding hemerroids and his panic attacks right now.
I also think I have some missplace anger issues
Angie

[SeptemberMorn]

DrClay, prayers going up for a full recovery on your part. Please take of yourself.

[Wants2Fly]

I am so sorry to hear about your illness, and relieved that you are on the mend. I must say, you do not look anything close to 75 in your photo!

i do hope you're feeling much better now. chemo is a drag..........xoxoxo pat

i have a question about prostate cancer? how were you DXed? what caused you to suspect you were ill?

[nothemama8]

getting back on topic, why is it so easy to fall into misplaced anger issues?
Angie

[(JD)]

Recognizing Anger

We know when we are very mad, but anger and aggression come in many forms, some quite subtle. Look inside yourself for more anger. This list (Madlow, 1972) of behaviors and verbal comments said to others or only thought to ourselves may help you uncover some resentments you were not aware of:<ul type="square"><font color="blue"> Direct behavioral signs[*] 1. Assaultive: physical and verbal cruelty, rage, slapping, shoving, kicking, hitting, threaten with a knife or gun, etc.[*] 2. Aggression: overly critical, fault finding, name-calling, accusing someone of having immoral or despicable traits or motives, nagging, whining, sarcasm, prejudice, flashes of temper.[*] 3. Hurtful: malicious gossip, stealing, trouble-making.[*] 4. Rebellious: anti-social behavior, open defiance, refusal to talk.[/list]<font color="green">
<ul type="square"> Direct verbal or cognitive signs:[*]1. Open hatred and insults: "I hate your guts;" "I'm really mad;" "You're so damn stupid."[*] 2. Contempt and disgust: "You're a selfish SOB;" "You are a spineless wimp, you'll never amount to anything."[*] 3. Critical: "If you really cared about me, you'd...;" "You can't trust _______."[*] 4. Suspicious: "You haven't been fair;" "You cheated!"[*] 5. Blaming: "They have been trying to cause me trouble."[*] 6. I don't get the respect I deserve: "They just don't respect the owner (or boss or teacher or doctor) any more."[*] 7. Revengeful: "I wish I could really hurt him."[*] 8. Name calling: "Guys are jerks;" "Women are *****es;" "Politicians are self-serving liars."[*] 9. Less intense but clear: "Well, I'm a little annoyed;" "I'm fed up with...;" "I've had it!" "You're a pain." "I don't want to be around you."[/list]
<font color="blue">
<ul type="square">Thinly veiled behavioral signs:[*] 1. Distrustful, skeptical.[*] 2. Argumentative, irritable, indirectly challenging.[*] 3. Resentful, jealous, envious.[*] 4. Disruptive, uncooperative, or distracting actions.[*] 5. Unforgiving or unsympathetic attitude.[*] 6. Sulky, sullen, pouting. 7. Passively resistant, interferes with progress.[*] 8. Given to sarcasm, cynical humor, and teasing.[*] 9. Judgmental, has a superior or holier-than-thou attitude.[/list]

<font color="green"><ul type="square">
Thinly veiled verbal signs:[*] 1. "No, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed, annoyed, disgusted, put out, or irritated."[*] 2. "You don't know what you are talking about;" "Don't make me laugh."[*] 3. "Don't push me, I'll do it when I get good and ready."[*] 4. "Well, they aren't my kind of people."[*] 5. "Would you buy a used car from him?"[*] 6. "You could improve on..."[*] 7. "Unlike Social Work, my major admits only the best students."

<font color="blue">Indirect behavioral signs:[*] 1. Withdrawal: quiet remoteness, silence, little communication especially about feelings.[*] 2. Psychosomatic disorders: tiredness, anxiety, high blood pressure, heart disease. Actually, college students with high Hostility scores had, 20 years later, become more overweight with higher cholesterol and hypertension, had drunk more coffee and alcohol, had smoked more cigarettes, and generally had poorer health (Friedman, 1991). See chapter 5 for a discussion of psychogenic disorders.[*]3. Depression and guilt.[*] 4. Serious mental illness: paranoid schizophrenia.[*] 5. Accident-proneness and self-defeating or addictive behavior, such as drinking, over-eating, or drugs.[*] 6. Vigorous, distracting activity (exercising or cleaning).[*] 7. Excessively submissive, deferring behavior.[*] 8. Crying.

<font color="green">[b]Indirect verbal signs:[*]1. "I just don't want to talk."[*] 2. "I'm disappointed in our relationship."[*] 3. "I feel bad all the time."[*] 4. "If you had just lost some weight."[*] 5. "I'm really swamped with work, can't we do something about it?"[*] 6. "Why does this always happen to me?"[*] 7. "No, I'm not angry about anything--I just cry all the time.[/list]

[(JD)]

(above post are quotes from the same source: DrClay's Self Help book, linked in this forum.)

[SeptemberMorn]

Speaking for myself, Angie, before I went through intensive therapy about 15 yrs ago, I had a whole bunch of repressed anger about what had happend to me when I was little. I didn't remember it and I sure didn't know I had all that anger waiting to boil over. But I do know that my anger was my motivation to do a lot of things.

The bad thing about it was that so many, many things made me angry and I didn't know why. When my daughter started walking and getting into things, I realized that I was smacking her had or her diaper way too much. When I stopped to think, I knew that what she had done wasn't an offense that needed a spank or even a reprimand in a loud voice. I learned to control myself, but I still reacted to other people out of anger when it wasn't called for.

IMO, many of us walk around with a kettle full of boiling anger and we don't really know why... or we try to "play nice" and never express that anger so when we spot an opportunity to release some of that anger, we go off like skyrockets!

There's lots of ways to release anger and most of them aren't healthy. I'm not going to get into it because I'll get ahead of Sky and I don't want to step on her toes. I'll wait until she gets into that part of it.

Thanks Sky!

And, Dr. Clay, I was thinking of you today and I hope you are feeling better these days. Are you still in treatment?

I believe aggression IS loss of control. Acting out anger is loss of control. Understanding the misperceptions that cause the anger is key, IMO.

I recently nearly lost a friend when I lashed out at them with words because I had unrealistic expectations. On another board, I posted to them and anticipated a reply. When that person's reply did not match my expectation, I was hurt and I lashed out. What's important for me to know is not how to avoid lashing out, but to understand a couple of things. One is that I do not control other people's thoughts or actions. (If I did, every relationship would be essentially, with myself and how dull that would be--no pleasant surprises and differences of ideas, etc.); my expectations don't dictate the other person's behavior. Also that I may hav expectations, but I may not demand that reality fit my expectations; and if I have trouble accepting that, then I need to give it some room, give myself room around my emotions about it. Also, just because my expectations were not met in the way I expected, doesn't mean that my need or desire wasn't met; in this case it was met, but met in the other person's own way and that *requires* me to give myself room around my emotions to have time to understand and accept and embrace that... a kind of looking at it from her point of view. And finally even though I might not have felt I was lashing out, the other person did percieve it that way and said so; at that point I can react and deny it or I can step back and again look at it from the other side and see how it IS lashing out. (I guess it depends on whether you're seeing the arrow coming at you or leaving you, huh?!)

Anyway, I think it is helpful to go deeper and understand what's underneath the anger. I doubt I would do again what I just did to this person; in fact it has me thinking more about my perceptions, my reactions, and if I think I've given myself enough room around my emotions. Nothing says we have to respond immediately. "Let me think about that" is a good defense against acting out anger/being agressive.

[(JD)]

The link to DrClay's book is here : http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/ for those who wish to read more about anger and aggression than what this thread might cover, or for any other category concerning Psychological Self Help.

[SeptemberMorn]

Sky, am I right in thinking that anger can also show itself covertly? Say for exmaple, before I recognized and dealt with my repressed anger, I feel as if I behaved in a manner that would stir up an argument or an outright fight, although not physical.

My ex-husband was guilty of this, too, and maybe I learned it from him, but there were times when he'd manipulate me into an argument. This followed me into other relationships. I became aware of it when a friend told me, "I'm not going to argue with you." For some reason, that one statement made me aware of how argumentative I was! Can't say as I've totally overcome that fault.

[(JD)]

Could be... let's hear what DrClay thinks?

[SeptemberMorn]

...tap
tap... ... ... tap, tap... tap... ... tap... tap... tap,tap,tap... ...

I know he's ill but I hope he gets well and comes back soon.

[drclay]

SeptemberMorn and others:

Thank you much for the well wishes. I worked hard today in humid 85 degree weather and still felt good. If I anyone has questions about prostate cancer, perhaps we can talk by email.

The question about indirect anger is a good one...and I see _Sky has quoted the list of ways anger can be expressed. Of course, one of the more common ways to expressing anger or irritation is just to withdraw and say little or nothing. But there are other situations that cause people to be quiet or to be silent. I wonder how often the other person will feel some anger but deny it when I ask if you have done anything to bother them? Any ideas about how to find out their true reasons for withdrawing? Ask them? Just oberve over time?

I think we will get better specific suggestions about uncovering hidden anger if we dealt with specific situtations.

drclay

[SeptemberMorn]

With some people, I withdraw or am silent. With others, I'll ask if I did something to upset them.

Sometimes I'm sorry that I was silent, especially if they've made ME angry. It's usually with two of my sons; the oldest and the youngest. They'll make a comment that I know to be wrong, usually an assumption, and rather than correct the assumption, I just won't respond. It's almost as if I don't care what they think, yet it will either hurt me or keep popping back up in my mind and will make me angry all over again. (more than likely, it's to not cause an argument) I don't know why I do that!

[Perna]

For me, some hidden anger, sulking, being quiet, is to punish the other but I think sometimes it's a good thing I'm silent because often (especially when I'm sulking :-) I misperceive things or am angry because I didn't "get my way" or over something small and not "worth" being angry over and I need to learn to shrug. In short, sometimes I'm quiet and "wrong," which doesn't mean my anger is "bad," or inappropriate; one feels what one feels, but often just in a confusing place at cross purposes to myself.

Sometimes the truth hurts and it gets confusing to me being angry at the hurt and person who would deliberately or accidentally hurt one but recognizing the truth of the message. I have a slogan I thought up for myself, "what is true is true whether you like it or not" so I keep moving forward but I do want to acknowledge the anger, the "messenger" telling me I have a problem or conflict.

[SeptemberMorn]

"Constructive critizism" is tough to take, that's for sure! I've gotten quite a bit of it here on this site. I have to admit, though, that I'm better for it.

Something that I apply when this happens is "STOP... THINK... ACT" ... rather than REact. If I find a smidgeon of truth, then I try to stay aware of what was critizised and work on it.

*Notice, I said "WHAT" was critized, not "WHO" (which would be me). I try to difuse the situation (within my self) by not personally internalizing what was said. Of course, it takes time and work to get to that point. That's when it's best to "become silent."

[Rapunzel]

Quite often I respond when I am angry by withdrawing and being quiet. I think that I do that a lot, and probably most of the time I fail to recognized that I am doing that because I'm mad. It doesn't seem to be an aggressive response to withdraw and not say anything. But that's even aggressive when it goes very far. How comfortable is it for the other person to try to interact with me when I won't talk to them? Ouch. But I still don't know that I'm mad. I might think that I am afraid that I'll say the wrong thing (hmm, if I'm afraid I'll say the wrong thing should that be a wake-up call?), or I'm afraid that if I say something the other person will say something else that will hurt me (okay, so I'm defensive, which also seems related to anger). Anger is a fear-based emotion, and the withdrawal response seems to be acting on the fear component. If I withdraw and won't talk during therapy, T might start talking to her cat and say something like "she's mad. She just doesn't want to admit it, but everybody else knows that she's mad, don't they?" Ooh, that's so frustrating!

I have always thought that I internalized my feelings because I would either keep silent or act destructively against myself somehow. But T says I am an externalizer, and the way that I deal with or express my anger hurts other people. That really hurts, because the last thing that I want is to hurt other people. Okay, that's what I have always told myself anyway, but if I'm really mad at someone, ....

It is painful to look at myself this way. This thread is a bit uncomfortable to read if I actually pay attention to what it says and evaluate myself along these lines. I don't want to think of myself as an angry person, even though inside I'm probably boiling over most of the time. I just work really hard to try to keep it inside and not let it spill out, but it really doesn't work. Everyone else can tell when I'm mad, even if I can't because I lie to myself.

Somehow, it is so much easier to identify when someone else is mad, but I think that we tend to miss it or deny it when we are mad. We'll call it something else or try to hide it or blame the other person. Then when we lash out, we can tell ourselves that was just a normal reaction to the angry person we were dealing with at the time, and they had it coming. But isn't it funny how we can lash out at someone else who is angry, and not even notice that we are just as angry? Not funny in a humorous way, but strange, rather.

Rap

[DocClyde]

Clay,

This is the first I have heard...I am so sorry to hear, and hope and pray you get better soon...

[(JD)]

Ok... moving forward. I hope everyone has had time to read the excerps posted ahead of this one.

Hidden Anger—passive-aggressiveness
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It is obvious from these "signs of anger" that anger is frequently a concealed or disguised emotion. And why not? Getting mad is scary... and potentially dangerous. One common way of expressing suppressed anger has been given a special name: passive-aggressiveness. It is releasing your anger by being passive or subtly oppositional. For example, such a person may be "tired," unresponsive, act like he/she "doesn't understand," be late frequently, exaggerate others' faults, pretend to agree ("sure, whatever"), be tearful, be argumentative, be forgetful, deny anger ("nothing's wrong"), procrastinate, and frequently be clumsy or sick (Hankins, 1993).<font color="green">

Many of these traits and behaviors are listed above. There is another related form of concealed anger: feeling like a victim. Feeling victimized assumes that someone or some situation has mistreated you. But a person who specializes in constantly feeling like a victim may not identify or accuse his/her abuser. Instead, he/she generally feels that the world is against him/her, that others vaguely intend to make him/her miserable. Victims usually feel helpless; therefore, they take little responsibility for what has happened to them. They think they were terribly mistreated in the past but they now seem unable to accept love and support, e.g. if you offer them help, they never get enough or if you try to cheer them up, it seldom works. A victim is much more likely to sulk, pout, look unhappy, or lay a guilt trip on something than to get angry. They play games: "Why does it always happen to me?" or "Yes, but" (no one's ideas or suggestions will do any good). <font color="blue">

The self-pitying, pessimistic, sad, jealous victim is surely sitting on a mass of hostility. Both the passive-aggressive and the victim are likely to be aware of their anger, even though it is largely denied.

In chapter 9 we will discuss "game playing" in which the aggressor plays "You're Not OK" or put down games without being aware of his/her anger. Anger expresses itself in many forms: cynic, naysayer, critic, bigot, etc. Potter-Efron & Potter-Efron (1995) describe ten different styles of expressing anger; this may help you identify your type and help you stop it.

<font color="purple">[b]Up next: How angry are you?

Read ahead if you wish: (click on this link------>) http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org.../chap7_11.html

[SeptemberMorn]

You're talking about both my husbands here! Jerry knows what he's doing because he stops when I bust him. LOL It's been a while since he's been P/A, thank God!

I'm gonna have him read this thread. Maybe he'll recognize himself and decide to do something about himself without me prompting him. ... HA! Say a prayer for us, eh?

[(JD)]

I have been working very hard on NOT doing the "Yes, but..." both to myself and to my T. It contributes to my depression, I'm sure. My T's replies often include something about it being "life" and the "journey."

I'm interested in what others who are reading have to say. Can you identify anything within yourself? We all experience anger. IMO it's important to recognize it before it becomes out of hand and maybe aggression.