One lesson

One of the method to deal with anger (as opposed to controlling anger) is apparently the way I talk. The counselor, after asking me a few case study question, said that I use a lot of the word “you”. Example.. when I get mad and want to screw someone, I would start blasting that poor bugger with all the nasty.. “you should not have done this”.. “you should have informed me first”.. “why did you do this and getting us all screwed”..

Apparently, that is not the best method to deal with the anger. The advise she gave me was to start the conversation with the word “I”. I should say, “I feel that you have betrayed me, you should have….”… or “I feel angry now because you did …. “.

I read through some website for easy understanding on this technique. At that time, I was hungry and I could not pay attention to what the counselor was saying about using the word “I”. She was being a bit abstract. I was in no attention span for something abstract. I found this website that explains it quite clearly. (http://www.stressgroup.com/abcscrashcourse.html)

By using the word “I”, starting the statement with “I am angry..” puts the anger as my responsibility. Saying.. “you should have done this”.. makes the other person responsible for my anger. This is not the case, as I was told. Anger is mine and they did not cause it. they may have triggered it but it was my irrational belief that cause the anger burst. So by using the word “I”, I put the responsibility for that anger to be mine.

interesting concept.

Just that the implementation was not that easy. Lets just say I had almost had a fuse this afternoon after some inconsiderate leach proposed a very outrageous suggestion. I kept saying.. you should.. you must.. you you you.. it was after he left, that I realised that I should have used what I had been taught.

I still have a long way to go.