Manage Anger Before it Manages You

Manage anger before it manages you
Jul. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
Toronto Star


Athletes are not the only people in the public eye who lose it spectacularly.

Even Canadians who aren't hockey players do it from time to time and Hollywood celebrities do it all the time.

"My office is in Brentwood," said anger management therapist George Anderson, "so I wind up seeing a lot of these people."

He said the paparazzi pressure is so great it's difficult for his celebrity clients to be relaxed anywhere but their own homes.

"It's really pretty bad," he said. "They're under enormous stress and anger is a secondary emotion. A person is suddenly victim of their own success. Their response has to do with primarily feeling powerless."

Anderson cited Lindsay Lohan, about whom he talked recently to People magazine.

"She got kicked off the set of a movie she's making and when she goes to a restaurant, she's so extremely rude that people just expect she's going to behave badly."

Anderson advises his celebrity clients — and the rest of us — that getting angry is not the problem, but the resulting behaviour can damage yourself, your reputation or someone else.

Anger is a problem when it's too intense, lasts too long, occurs too frequently, is damaging or hurtful to the individual or to someone else, or leads to violence.

"A person should always be in control of his or her behaviour," he said, "because then you have options. You can choose to respond how you wish."

Among those who have lost it:

Russell Crowe: Pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, admitting that he threw a phone that hit a Manhattan hotel concierge in June 2005.

Naomi Campbell: Pleaded guilty to assaulting her personal assistant in September 1998.

Roberto Alomar: Spit in the face of home plate umpire John Hirschbeck in September 1996.

Sean Penn: Punched photographers, jailed for assault in 1987 and charged with domestic assault.

Sondra Gotlieb: Struck her social secretary across the face just before acting as hostess, as wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., of a dinner for Brian Mulroney in March 1986.

Pierre Trudeau: Gave the finger to B.C. government workers in response to their protest signs in August 1982.