With anger, I can offer a similar useful oversimplification to light your way:
Repetition is the problem.The first time people express anger, listen. They
are talking to you. There may be a problem you can solve together. When
they repeat themselves, stop listening and start using defusing techniques.
Communication has changed to rumination. They are no longer talking
to you, they’re talking to themselves and making themselves angrier.
Steps in Treating Anger
To treat anger control problems, therapists have to step back and forth
through the looking glass. To handle angry people effectively, you don’t
have to follow, but you do have to know which side you’re on.
The biggest difference between angry people and most of the rest of
us is that they’re not in the least ashamed of operating in their own self-
interest. They seldom make polite pretense of putting other people’s needs
ahead of their own. They don’t play by the rules. They get to be selfish,
but we have to be nice. It’s totally unfair.
Angry people will always see self-interest in their own actions, and
in yours. If you don’t, they’ll accuse you of hypocrisy. Believe me, that’s a
battle you do not want to fight.
Treatment must always be presented to the angry in terms of what’s
in it for them, even if a court is forcing them into it. If there are angry
people in your life, don’t think of therapy as sending them to the assistant
principal’s office. The cure for bullying isn’t a referral to a bigger bully.
Morality is a dominance hierarchy based on right rather than might.
The good are allowed to punish the bad when they don’t do what they should.
But when the bad attempt to punish the good, it’s called an anger control
problem, or worse, abuse. Unfortunately, we all see ourselves as the good—
with the possible exception of depressed people. If we’ve been abused, we
believe our suffering somehow makes us even more qualified to punish.
The goal of treatment is to persuade angry people to abandon moral
evaluation of other people’s behavior, to convince them that nobodydoes
what they should, and that most of us are plugging along, doing the best
we can. This crucial insight cannot be rolled down onto them from higher
moral ground. If you argue with angry people about who’s right or wrong,
they’ll always see it, correctly, as a struggle for dominance.
242 ❧Explosions into Anger