Change Your Language and Reduce Your Anger- Part 2

In part, the last article entitled Change Your Language and Reduce Your Anger, I introduce the idea of how a poor emotional vocabulary was linked to anger management. I suggested that anger is a secondary emotion driven by many primary emotions. This concept is not new; however what I have been developing that is fascinating is how building an emotional vocabulary can be linked to reducing our tendency to be explosive.

Awareness

In reality, what I am encouraging is that we become more self aware. I am also encouraging that we have a new internal conversation that allows us to be in tune with our needs, expectations and desires. To do this effectively we need a stronger emotional vocabulary. Often we have unmet needs and expectations which are unfilled. These represent sensitive areas in our thinking and feeling that, if threatened, we will fight back emotionally, physically or even retreat. This is an automatic response to the pain and anxiety associated with a need to defend the things in our thinking that we hold dear.

Language as power

The tendency to fight back is very evident in animals. I often tell my clients to consider a cat that is backed into a corner. The cat instinctively “feels” vulnerable and fights back. The cat cannot converse or negotiate- it can only display overt aggression. You see, neither the cat nor any other animal has the benefit of something that humans may take for granted-language. We have the capacity to put into words our feelings to let others know what is really bothering us or what has the potential to anger us. This ability to use language has been perfected over many millions of years, but sadly many take little advantage of this opportunity to access and share their emotional concerns-choosing rather to engage in physical and verbal aggression.

Emotional Vocabulary

This brings me back to the emotional vocabulary. In my mind this revolution in thinking holds the key to assisting us in quickly being aware of how we feel and taking action to avert an unnecessary outburst. While there maybe more than 2000 feeling words in our vocabulary, the average person would be lucky to know 50. This is troubling because we need that emotional vocabulary to gauge how we feel and how those feelings can potentially lead to anger outbursts. Let me illustrate by providing a scenario and then describing a list of feelings that could have lead to the aggression.

Tom’s story

Take a chain of events occurring in the life of a man we will call Tom. Tom is a successful banker having trouble in his life. On the day in question, Tom berated one of his employees by calling him offensive names. This led to his suspension from his job. The background story is that Tom is going through a divorce, and that morning, before the incident with the employee, he had received a letter form his wife’s attorney detailing an extensive alimony payment. On the way to work, Tom was driving aggressively. He refused to greet others when he entered his office building; and, just before the incident, Tom found out that the employee he berated had made a serious error with a contract bid. Tom displayed anger and aggression towards this employee; but if we dig deeper, one may realize that he had many other emotions which include feeling abandoned by his wife, on edge, betrayed, regretful, hopeless, vulnerable, broken, burnt out, cheated-the list can go on. The point is that Tom was driven by his emotions, but had no idea that he was. Instead, he displayed rage. Inappropriate anger is an extremely ineffective way of dealing with these complex emotions because, in reality, Tom needed to resolve issues related to himself and his wife. The employee unsuspectingly came into the line of fire and was hit by a “stray bullet.” Anger is often a stray bullet that is not fired at the source, but at another, often unsuspecting, target.

What next

What could have Tom done? Tom essentially will need anger management, but with a difference. I follow the Anderson and Anderson model which teaches anger management, emotional intelligence, communication skills and stress management. Although all four of these components are important, emotional intelligence holds important keys to long term anger management. I teach what I describe as the ADA system, which is awareness-dialogue-action. With the ADA system, Tom could learn a language to increase his self-awareness, engage in a dialogue with himself and others about his emotions, and take action to resolve his internal and external struggles without an anger blowout. The key is emotional vocabulary. This is where Tom develops the language to define how he feels. Without this vocabulary, Tom will experience an emotional noise which will again lead to confusion and possible anger outbursts. In the next article, I will detail more about ADA , introduce new emotional vocabulary words and discuss what I mean by emotional noise.


Carlos Todd, LPC, NCC, CAMF

President of the American Association of Anger Management Providers

Carlos Todd is the owner of Todd’s Anger Management Solutions in Charlotte, NC

www.masteringanger.com
www.aaamp.org