<Our Institute's focus is on an anger management program which will help court ordered anger addicts overcome their anger problems>

Anger Management Programs Prevent You Being a Victim of Your Own Anger

When you get angry and take action you later regret, your anger is controlling you and you are a victim of your own anger. Examples include ruining a relationship, hurting another person or putting yourself in a real bad situation.

Two points are critical here:

1. I said a victim of your anger. I did not say that you were victimized by someone else. Many times you will hear celebrities and others portray themselves as a "victim" and blame their actions on the person they hurt. This is not what I am talking about here and leads to point #2.

2. Each of us is responsible for the actions we take. Being controlled by and, therefore, a victim of your anger does not relieve you of responsibility for what you do. It only helps to explain your actions so that you can learn to regulate your anger and move forward.
Some examples: Anger Classes and programs and articles can help with your anger problems.

• The young incarcerated men and women I worked with in the California Department of Corrections, Juvenile Division would often tell me, "I wouldn't have hurt that person, if I had not been so angry."
• You see famous celebrities who abuse their significant others and appear on television apologizing for their actions. They blame their anger for what they did.
• You get angry at another driver on the road, drive recklessly, and blame the other driver. Or, some other driver "blames" you.
• A student of mine noted that she became very angry when her supervisor presented a report that she had written and claimed that he did the work.

How you can stop being a victim of your anger...

The emotions as tools model says that all emotions are tools that inform you about your world and help you become more effective in choosing what actions to take.
Anger tells you that you believe you are facing a threat that you must overpower.

This threat can be to:

• Your personal safety
• Your sense of fairness as when your co-worker tries to pass off your work as his
• Your ego as when you believe that someone is challenging your "authority" or reputation
• Your finances
• Your goals
• And so forth.
   

To avoid being controlled by your anger, you need to learn to regulate it. See our anger management class schedule.

To regulate your emotions is to use the information your feelings provide and match the actions you take to the level of threat which actually confronts you.

So, how can all this work in real life to prevent your feelings from controlling you?

These are four steps...

1. Recognize that you are angry.
- You need to become aware of what you do when you get angry.
- In most cases, you will find yourself wanting to get back at the person you perceive as a threat.

2. Take a deep breath and question how real the threat is.
- The deep breath calms you down just enough and gives an extra second of time to respond before you react.
- Ask yourself, "What is really at risk here?"
- The threat will feel real but, when you question it, you will, with practice, be able to determine what situations demand aggressive action and which ones are better handled in other ways.

3. Choose the response that best fits the nature of the threat.
- If the threat is to your life, your core values, or your primary goals, use all the power your anger provides to overcome the threat.
- If the threat is not absolutely critical, match your response to the level of threat. This might mean you take a look at your role in the situation, you engage in an assertive conversation, you walk away and deal with it some other time, or you choose to ignore the situation and let it pass.

Dr. Ed Daube

Anger Classes and programs and articles can help with your anger problems.