never used his management skill at home. He didn’t know. It had simply
never occurred to him.
Angry people usually aren’t equally angry everywhere. By looking
closely at the areas of their lives in which they successfully control their
anger, I can demonstrate that the techniques I’m trying to teach are down-
to-earth strategies that they use every day.
TIME-OUT. Another absurdly simple but effective technique is time out.
When anger begins to smolder, people tend to throw on more fuel. The
best thing to do is separate them and send them to neutral corners. Time-
out is a good way to get friends and family involved in the treatment in a
positive way.
Brandon’s wife sits at the far end of the couch, shaking her head
at his protestations that this time he’s really going to change.
She’s heard it before.
Brandon looks at me for support. “See what I have to deal
with?” his eyes seem to say.
“How do you expect her to feel?” I ask. “You’ve been in
anger control treatment for three weeks, and she just told me
how you blew up at the kids last night.”
“Well,” he says, “that was because—”
He stops when I make the duct tape sign across my mouth.
“There’s always a reason for being angry,” I say, “but no
reason is good enough to yell at your family. You’ve already
agreed to that.”
He nods sheepishly.
“Right now they’re all avoiding you, which makes sense
because they don’t know when you’re going to explode. I think
they need some protection they can count on. Know what this
means?” I make the time-out sign with my hands. “If either of
you see this sign, it means that both of you need to go some-
where and take a 15-minute break.”Time-out disrupts the sequence of anger. After I described the basic
technique, we spent considerable time discussing exactly how it would be
implemented in Brandon’s family, under what conditions it would be used,
266 ❧Explosions into Anger