Anger at Your Children - Who Has the Power?

Writen by Steven Stosny

Every parent since the beginning of time has been painfully aware that children can do a great many things to irritate, frustrate, and otherwise turn the pleasant feelings of their caretakers into moods from hell. Those same creatures who look like little darlings when they sleep can, without a moment’s notice, produce headaches, jangled nerves, strained muscles, aching bones, and overloaded emotional circuits.
But there’s one thing that even the most exuberant or obstinate of children cannot do. They can’t make us angry. They cannot force us to give up internal regulation of our emotional experience. To understand this scientific fact that seems to fly in the face of common sense, consider the psychobiological function of anger.

Why Anger is a Problem in Families

An automatic response triggered whenever we feel threatened, anger is the most powerful of all emotional experience. The only emotion that activates every muscle group and organ of the body, anger exists to mobilize the instinctual fight or flight response meant to protect us from predators. Of course, our children are not predators. For the vast majority of problems in family life, anger constitutes overkill and under-think. Applying this survival-level fight or flight response to everyday problems of family living is like using a rock to turn off a lamp or a tank to repair a computer.

Is anyone really stupid enough to turn off a lamp with a rock? When angry, everybody is that stupid. The problem has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with how hurt we are. Anger is always a reaction to hurt. It can be physical pain, which is why, when you bang your thumb with a hammer while trying to hang a picture, you don’t pray.

Far more often, though, anger is a reaction to psychological hurt or threat of it, in the form of a diminished sense of self. Of course, vulnerability to psychological hurt depends entirely on how you feel about yourself. When your sense of self is weak or disorganized, anything can make you irritable or angry. When it’s solid and well-integrated, the insults and frustrations of life just roll off your back.

For instance, if you’ve had a bad day, if you’re feeling guilty, God forbid, a little bit like a failure, or just disregarded, devalued, or irritable, you might come home to find your kid’s shoes in the middle of the floor and respond with: “That lazy, selfish, inconsiderate, little brat!” Then, too, you can come home after a great day of feeling fine about yourself, see the same shoes in the middle of the floor and think, “Oh, that’s just Jimmy or Sally,” and not think twice about it.

The difference in your reaction to the child’s behavior lies entirely within you and depends completely on how you feel about yourself. In the first case the child’s behavior seems to diminish your sense of self: “If he cared about me, he wouldn’t do this; if my own kid doesn’t care about me, I must not be worth caring about.” The anger is to punish the child for your diminished sense of self. In the second instance, the child’s behavior does not diminish your sense of personal importance, value, power, and lovability. So there is no need for anger. You don’t need a tank to solve the problem of the shoes in the middle of the floor. Rather, the problem to be solved is how to teach the child to be more considerate in his behavior; you won’t do that by humiliating him because you feel humiliated. His reaction to humiliation will be the same as yours: an inability see the other person’s perspective, an overwhelming urge to blame, and an impulse for revenge or punishment. Anger comes with two motivations: avoid or attack. Can you think of a family problem that avoidance or attack will help?

Modeling Anger Regulation for Children

Although their intellectual maturity is far less advanced than that of their parents, children experience anger for the same reasons as adults, mostly to defend the sense of self from pain and temporary diminishment. At the moment of anger, both children and adults feel bad about themselves. Making angry people feel worse about themselves can only make their anger worse. Rather, children must learn from their parents to restore their own sense of core value, while respecting the core value of other people. This means regulating the impulse for revenge through validation of the hurt causing the urge for revenge, and through understanding the perspective of the person at whom the anger is directed. They will only learn to do this by watching their parents do it.

Self-Compassion and Compassion for Others

Mastery of the three steps of self-compassion and compassion for others - acknowledge the hurt to the self, revalue the self, and recognize the humanity of the other - makes us virtually immune to the ill-effects of anger. With self-compassion we see beneath the symptom or defense (anger or resentment) to the cause, which is some form of core hurt (feeling unimportant, disregarded, accused, devalued, guilty, rejected, powerless, inadequate, unlovable). Second, the core hurt must be validated (this is how I feel at this moment), and, third, changed (this behavior or event or disappointment or mistake does not mean that I’m unimportant, or less valuable and lovable.) Compassion for others is recognizing that their symptoms, defenses, and obnoxious behavior come from a core hurt, validating it, and supporting them while they change it. Compassion does not excuse obnoxious behavior. Rather, it keeps us from attacking the already wounded child, which shifts focus from defending the self to changing the undesired behavior.

Anger Regulation

Core hurts cause anger. Once activated, they put the sense of self at stake in solving the problem, which greatly distorts thinking, blows the problem out of proportion, and increases the emotional intensity of the response. To regulate anger, we must reduce sensitivity to the core hurts. We must learn to view anger as a signal, not to assign blame to our children for stimulating the core hurt, but to look within the self to reset the activated core hurt, i.e., to restore Core Value, our sense of personal adequacy and worthiness. With the sense of self no longer at stake, the problem, no longer a source of self-diminishment, can be solved for what it is: a call for more attention/effort, an inconvenience, disappointment, or mistake.

Dr. Steven Stosny has demonstrated his highly successful recovery program on such national television programs as “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and CNN’s “Talkback Live” and “Anderson Cooper 360″ and has appeared on numerous radio talk shows. He has been quoted by, or been the subject of articles in, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, Women’s World, O, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, AP, Reuters, and USA Today. His website is http://compassionpower.com

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Anger Management, Emotional Intelligence and How to Become Calm

Writen by Dr. Iris Fanning

(Disclaimer: This article is not written for therapeutic purposes and is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or legal intervention).

Anger management is one of the hallmarks of strong Emotional Intelligence or EQ. In Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, he addresses being able to handle one’s anger as a sign of high EQ. We know, from physiology, that within less than seconds of becoming angry our brain and body are flooded with internal chemical changes. When this occurs, we operate from our brain stem. Our brain stem is the most primitive portion of our brain. It’s responsible for the fight or flight response and our autonomic nervous system (breathing, heart rate, body temperature etc.). When we are in this mode, we bypass our rational portion of the brain. This spells trouble because the neo-cortex is our thinking, rational portion of our brain.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that when you are really angry, you can’t think clearly. Again, the reason for that is that you are not using your logical, rational portion of your brain. It takes a minimum of about 20 minutes for your brain chemicals to go back to normal and to think clearly again.

It’s time to take a look at your situation with anger. Answer the following questions. Take an honest look, don’t sugar coat how you handle anger. Even if you are not angry often, please read some of the strategies that follow these questions. The strategies can help in all of our relationships.

When was the last time you were really angry? What was the situation that created your feelings of anger?

How frequently do you feel angry?

Do you have a short or long fuse?

Do you frequently become verbally abusive when you’re angry? Do you call the person demeaning names, cuss at them, call them stupid, fat, lazy or use racial slurs?

Have you ever become violent when you’re angry? “Just once” is still too often. Violence includes: slapping, hitting, throwing things, hurting animals, punching walls or destroying property. List any violent acts you’ve done and who they were against.

Are people afraid of you when you’re angry?

Do you need to learn to express your anger in more productive ways?

Do you need to control your anger?
Is anger/rage destroying your relationships?

WARNING SIGNS THAT SIGNAL YOUR NEED FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP:

There are warning signs that your rage is getting out of hand and you need professional help. If you are violent, verbally abusive and anger is destroying your relationships it will take some massive action on your part to stop this cycle. You need to call your local counseling center or social service agency and ask to participate in Anger Management sessions. It is NOT ok to continue this way. The price others have paid to be around you is far too high. The price you will pay, if you insist on continuing will be high also. Stop reading this now. Go to your phone with your phone book, look in the yellow pages under Counseling and call now. You can look for counseling centers that are United Way funded or connected with your local university. These centers offer free or low cost counseling. You can also contact your child’s school counselor and they will be able to give you local resources. Continue to call until you reach a service that will help you. No excuses. Just do it.

NORMAL ANGER: HOW TO MANAGE ANGER, IMPROVE YOUR EQ AND NURTURE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

Most people can use several more strategies in how to handle their anger. Even if you are not frequently an angry person these steps can be helpful in deepening your relationships. If you are an angry person, then these tools will be essential to help you with handling your anger more productively. (Again, if you have been violent you will need to work with a counselor or psychologist to develop long lasting strategies).

1. Stop arguing. When you continue to argue, you DON’T LISTEN and it just feeds the anger cycle.

2. Set some “good fight” rules.

NEVER say something that you know will hurt that person or relationship for a lifetime. It’s cruel and unnecessary and you know it. The person can forgive you, but they won’t likely forget or trust you.

Have a signal for pause. A simple phrase like, “I’m just too angry and upset to talk right now. This is important, so let’s get back together and talk in a few minutes when we’re both more calm.”

Make it ok to separate and cool down. Men more than women will leave the scene when there’s extreme anger. I know this frustrates women. However, men leave because they have a sense that anger is overtaking them and they fear they will harm the woman or children they love. Do not take this personally; it’s a good thing. They can come back when they have calmed down.

3. Learn excellent communication skills. Every community has adult learning, continuing education and excellent workshops on communication. Make a commitment to attend one of these trainings within the next 3 months. This training will enrich your life and make all your relationships easier including work, children and home. One simple strategy I can give you now is: Don’t blame the other person for your reaction. A simple phrase of - I feel______________, when you_____________. In the future I would like or I expect_________________. This simple communication tools gets you to the heart of anger, which almost always is hurt. It is assertive, helps get your needs met, yet does not attack or provoke the listener.

4. Do NOT mentally rehearse the anger situation over and over again. When you picture the situation and possible ugly comebacks you only prolong your anger. It’s a form of self-abuse and “justifies” and even uglier reaction to that person the next time you see them. Mentally rehearse an easy flow of conversation. Feel what it would be like to REALLY understand and be understood by that person. Positive mental rehearsal will help get you back into your rational brain.

Free Newsletter with up to the minute coaching on business, networking, marketing, self empowerment and successful living. http://www.irisfanning.com

Dr. Iris Fanning is a Nationally recognized Success Coach. Dr. Fanning is a graduate of Coach University, Honorary Doctorate in Divinity, M.A. degree in Psychology, Counseling & Guidance and a B.S. degree in Psychology. Additionally Iris is the self published author of “Change Your Life Right Now” c 2006 and “Do What You Love & Get Rich” c 2006. Dr. Fanning is also an in demand public speaker. Individual and group coaching is also available. Contact: coachiris@hotmail.com Please place Coaching in the subject line.

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