Try this Powerful Exercise to Manage Difficult People in Your Life

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One of the frustrating aspects of being human can be dealing with other humans. Not the nice, kind, reasonable ones. But the annoying, rude, disrespectful ones – I’m sure you have a few of those in your life. And managing these tricky customers is not easy, especially if they are partners, family members, close friends or colleagues. If someone says or does something hurtful or annoying, you may respond in all sorts of unhelpful ways, like firing off an angry message, giving them the silent treatment, people-pleasing or suppressing your own needs, desires and opinions to keep the peace.

Viewed through the parts-based lens of internal family systems therapy, we can take a more compassionate view, as everyone (including me!) has tricky protective parts, who might get angry, judgemental or even hostile to protect your younger, more vulnerable parts from being hurt. This may be especially important for you if you were harshly criticised, bullied or shamed as a child – that’s when those protectors came online for you and why they will fire up with great speed and ferocity if they sense something similar happening to you now.

So when you are in conflict with someone, it’s like a war between their protectors and yours. Their angry protector fires up and says something hurtful or mean. So your angry protector gets activated and fires a verbal volley at them, which comes back at you and so it goes until somebody ‘wins’ or backs down. Entirely understandable, but not usually very productive, because one or both of you could get hurt, or you might damage a relationship that’s important to you. Many marriages end in divorce precisely for this reason.

There is another way

Happily, there is a more productive, kind and effective way to resolve conflict. In order to do that, you need to approach this difficult person from your Self, asking your protectors to relax and let you (strong, confident, adult you) handle the situation. I have written a few posts about Self, but as a refresher, in IFS Self is described as you who is not a part, or who you are deep down. This is the you who is calm, sturdy, robust and resilient. When you are in Self you also feel authentic, compassionate and kind. With this energy, you can approach conflict without out-of-control anger or hostility, but a firm, steady, assertive energy that both protects you and diffuses the situation.

If you would like to see the human embodiment of Self-energy, watch the wonderful Netflix documentary featuring the late Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times. Both are wise, kind and deeply spiritual, in their own ways. There is a deep strength to them (one who successfully fought apartheid and the other continues to combat oppression by the Chinese government) coupled with huge-heartedness, warmth and a deep sense of playfulness and joy. Two remarkable leaders and qualities we can all aspire to, or develop, the more we live in Self and are less in thrall to well-meaning but unhelpful parts.

If you are struggling with a difficult person in your life, here is a guided-imagery practice I adapted from the classic IFS meditation, developed by the wonderful Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS. You can do this alone or, ideally, with a partner – if you have help, they can read you the script while you sit with eyes closed.

The script for this practice is quite long, but I have included the whole thing so you can use it, with a friend, family member or therapist. (If you are a therapist and would like to use this with your clients, on social media or in your teaching, please credit me and link to my Insight Timer collection).

You may prefer to listen to the recording on Insight Timer, which you can do here – Fire Drill: IFS Meditation.

The practice

• Welcome to this Fire Drill Meditation. This is a short practice you can use any time you are feeling angry with someone or dealing with some conflict in your life.

• As you go through this practice, I encourage you to pause whenever you need to, if you feel you need more time. You may also want to spend some time journaling afterwards, making a note of anything you learned and want to remember.

• Now close your eyes, if that feels OK for you, or gently lower your gaze. Then find a comfortable sitting posture and start by feeling your feet, flat and grounded on the floor. Then gently roll your shoulders back and feel your chest opening up, lengthen your spine so you’re sitting in an upright but relaxed posture.

• Take some nice deep breaths – in through your nose, out through your mouth, to a slow count of four on the in-breath and four on the out-breath, for 30 seconds.

• Now I want you to think of someone who is really getting on your nerves at the moment. This could be your partner or child, a family member, a friend or colleague. Or it could even be a politician, a celebrity, or someone on social media you have never met but have a strong, negative reaction to.

• And now, in your mind’s eye, put that person in a room, so you’re outside the room and watching them through a large window. Have them do the thing they do which annoys you so much – it could be sending you a critical message, saying something unkind, ignoring or belittling you.

• It could be expressing an opinion you vehemently disagree with, or find offensive in some way. Perhaps you feel they are being selfish, or unkind to you or someone you love.

• Just stand outside the room, watching them say or do the thing that triggers you.

• Then notice the parts that are with you outside the room, wanting to protect you from this person, or the ones who feel scared or vulnerable around them and in need of protection.

• There might only be one main part involved in this conflict, or a whole group of them there with you.

• As you stand outside with your parts, know that you don’t have to go into the room. It might be best to use this time just getting to know these parts of you – both the scared ones and those trying to protect them.

• Start by asking your protective parts what they are scared would happen if they weren’t out front protecting you from this person. They may have all kinds of fears and concerns – like you being hurt, attacked, manipulated or shamed by the triggering person – so just listen to and acknowledge these fears, whatever they may be.

• And then, don’t try and force anything, but if you can send your protectors a little wave of appreciation, or gratitude, for how hard they work to protect you from this person, and others like them, that would be great.

• Once you’ve done that, speak to the scared parts, who may be quite young. Ask them why they find this person so difficult. It’s likely that the difficult person reminds these young ones of someone in the past who really did hurt them, so if that’s the case, hear them out and comfort them in any way that feels authentic and natural for you.

• That might be with reassuring words, or a hug, if that feels good for these scared parts. Just see what comes naturally and do that.

• Then, ask for permission from all your parts – both the scared ones and the protectors – to go and speak to this person while they watch through the window.

• If that’s too much for them, it’s no problem at all, just spend some time understanding that and why this person pushes so many buttons for them.

• But if it is OK for them, open the door, go inside the room and leave your parts outside.

• Sit down opposite your triggering person and spend some time talking to them. The purpose of this is not to try and change this person or win the argument in any way, just spend some time listening to and talking with them.

• What’s it like to face him or her and speak to them, just as your Self, without your protective parts reacting so strongly? How does it feel in your body? What’s your tone of voice like? What language are you using? Are you able to be calmer, more direct, more assertive? There is no right or wrong way to do this, but just notice whatever’s happening.

• As you continue speaking to this person, you may notice your protectors getting involved, especially if you become irritated, hostile or defensive in any way, or find yourself interrupting and talking more than listening. If this happens, see if that protective part is willing to go back outside and let you finish talking to this person, alone. Reassure them that you can handle this and nothing bad will happen.

• When you’re done, thank the person for speaking to you and go back outside, closing the door.

• Ask your parts, what was that like for them? How did they feel about the way you handled this challenging person? Was it OK for them, or do they have any worries about it? Just listen, whatever they have to say.

• If it felt OK for your parts, you could also ask them whether they are willing to let you do this in the real world, with this person and others you find difficult.

• When that feels complete, thank your parts for letting you go into the room, if they did, or for sharing their fears with you if they didn’t.

• Do whatever you need to make that feel complete, then let the image fade away – it’s fading, fading and then it’s gone.

• Take a deep breath and bring your focus back outside. Then come on back and open your eyes.

• I hope that was helpful for you. Try using this practice whenever you have to deal with a difficult person, or are feeling triggered or activated by someone. You may find it helps to make those tricky people in your life just a little less tricky, as well as building your muscles of confidence, strength and assertiveness.

You can also listen to a recording of this practice in my Insight Timer Collection, by clicking on the button below.

Love ❤️

Dan

There Is No Such Thing as a Difficult Person

Image by Tumisu

Think of the person in your life that you find the most rude, annoying, insensitive or otherwise difficult. Can you see them in your mind’s eye? How do you feel as you picture them? I’m guessing some combination of irritated, frustrated, upset, hostile, vulnerable, anxious or exasperated.

Now I’m going to tell you a secret. This man or woman whom you think is so difficult, isn’t actually a difficult person. Why? Because none of us are entirely difficult, just as no-one is entirely lovable, kind, generous or compassionate.

That’s because we are all complex, multifaceted individuals, made up of an internal ‘family’ of parts. Some of these parts can indeed be difficult, but that’s not the sum total of who you are, or who that ‘difficult’ person is.

How parts work

There are many different ‘parts-based’ models of therapy, but my favourite is Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr Richard Schwartz (Dick to his friends). In this model, we are all made up of a complex, interrelated system of parts. This includes young parts who hold painful thoughts, memories, feelings and body sensations from your past (so a five-year-old part holds difficult stuff from when you were five, and so on).

You also have various protector parts, whose job it is to protect those young parts and make sure they never get hurt again. These protectors also try to keep the young ones hidden away inside, because they can hold such an intense emotional charge, which the protectors fear will overwhelm you if they come bursting out.

In IFS, it’s also thought that you have a Self, which is not a part but a rich array of inner resources like calm, compassion, clarity, confidence and more (some of the 8 Cs – Dick likes alliteration!).

So think about that ‘difficult’ person again. Got them? Right, now I want you to zoom in on the most troublesome behaviour they exhibit, whether that’s being rude, critical, dismissive, or whatever. Now label that as a part – so the Critical Part, or Angry Protector, and so on.

And now (here’s the bit that will help you manage this person better) try to understand that this protector, however rude, obnoxious or hurtful, developed at a time when that person was young, vulnerable and being hurt in some way. This protector’s job is to make sure that never happens again. Some protectors are proactive, like an Angry Protector, busily doing a job to keep them safe (being snippy or harsh, lashing out to keep potential threats at bay). Others are reactive, like a Soother part that makes them drink to numb out painful feelings as quickly as possible.

Look behind the curtain

And so, I guarantee that if you were look behind the ‘curtain’ (ie behind that protector part on the surface) you would find a young one who was hurt, scared, lonely, unloved, or some other painful thing. It’s like a dog who has been mistreated. They become very barky and aggressive, but they’re actually scared – being aggressive is the best way they know to protect themselves and make sure you can’t hurt them like they were hurt before.

This idea helps me virtually every day, as I deal with the various people in my life I find hard to manage. When they are doing whatever I find annoying, I try to see them as a scared little boy or girl. And suddenly they don’t seem so powerful. I can manage and set limits with the spiky protector part without demonising the person, thinking they are ‘horrible’ or ‘nasty’. They are just hurt and doing what they have always done to keep people at bay.

I hope you find that helpful – and if you’re interested in IFS, do come along to one of my webinars and workshops, as I and my co-presenters blend concepts and practices from IFS with other highly effective models in our teaching. We have two more planned for 2022 and one a month throughout 2023 – visit healyourtrauma.com to find out more.

Sending you love and warm wishes,

Dan

How to Manage Your Emotions in the Heat

Image by Clark Douglas

As I write this, I am sitting in my office in north London, struggling with the heat. It’s like an oven in here! The temperature is due to hit 33C in London today, which is crazy. Saturday will be 36C. These temperatures are not normal for a Northern European country with a temperate, maritime climate. But with climate change starting to hit us hard, sadly this is the new normal, so we all need to find ways to adapt to it.

As well as all the sweaty discomfort – especially in a country that is not geared up for hot weather – I have noticed my emotions being all over the place on these hot days. As my poor, patient wife will attest, I am definitely more irritable. I normally have a very long fuse and almost never raise my voice in anger. Most people who meet me describe me as a very calm person. But I’m not calm when it’s 33C outside!

And in many ways, this is not my fault. The human body is designed to exist in a narrow range of temperature, known as homeostasis. I just Googled a definition, which is: ‘A self-regulating process by which biological systems maintain stability while adjusting to changing external conditions’.

Translated into English, this means that we, like other animals, struggle when temperatures go above or below a fairly narrow range. We sweat. We mop our brows. We crave ice cream. And as we struggle to regulate our bodily temperature, we also struggle to regulate our emotions.

Heat makes us angry

Ever wondered why riots always happen in summer? It’s because everybody’s too damn hot. It’s also why domestic violence, air/trolley/road rage all spike on hot days and why everyone seems so impatient and irritable in London right now. Heat makes us angry, it’s that simple.

If you are struggling with your temper at the moment, start by naming what you are feeling, with as much specificity as possible. So for low-level anger you might be irritable, frustrated, annoyed, impatient or tetchy. Moving up the anger scale we hit angry, hostile or outraged. And when we hit the top of that scale we are into rage, fury, wrath and aggression.

It’s helpful to name your emotions like this, because research has shown that just doing that can help calm and reduce them.

Anger-management: some pro tips

Did you know that standard anger-management techniques often suggest cooling down physically, even on mild days? I use techniques drawn from dialectical-behaviour therapy (DBT) with my clients, because DBT is superb for emotional-regulation strategies. If you are losing your cool at the moment, here are some pro tips to help you calm down, quickly:

• If you’re getting into a heated discussion with your partner, family member or colleague, say to them, ‘I’m getting annoyed with you, and don’t want to say something I will regret, so need to take a moment to calm down.’ Leave the room. You can’t calm down if someone is still there, niggling at you. Try to cool your body down, even a little: splash cold water on your face and neck; take off any extra layers of clothing; press your face and forearms against an outside wall, which will be cool even on a hot day

• Do some deep breathing, to calm and soothe your overheated/dysregulated nervous system. I have recorded three different breathing techniques for Insight Timer, but you could try my 4-7-8 Breathing Technique first, which is incredibly effective

• Finally, here’s a weird-but-effective one: try going floppy. When we get angry we are in fight mode (the angry response in fight-flight-freeze). That means our muscles get tense and we focus on/move towards the threat, ready to fight. Do the opposite of that. Sit in a chair and let all your limbs, head and neck be floppy. Dangle over the arms of the chair. Be like a relaxed, sleepy cat

• Now try to be angry. Impossible, isn’t it? That’s because your brain has picked up on your body posture and thinks, ‘Oh, that’s fine then. We’re calm and safe. No need to fight right now.’

• When you feel cooler and calmer, rejoin the discussion, trying to listen, not interrupt, and be as assertive (not aggressive) as possible. You will probably find that the discussion goes a whole lot better than it would have done if you hadn’t calmed down first

I very much hope those techniques help. Wishing you a calm and peaceful day, wherever you are in the world right now.

Cool wishes,

Dan

Hatred is a Poison – Don't Let it into Your Heart

Image by Nathan Lindahl

Watching events unfold in Ukraine, our natural empathic response as humans is to feel shocked, upset and overwhelmed at the images we see and stories we read about this terrible war. These are normal, natural emotional responses, so allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling right now. I feel those things too.

It’s also completely natural and understandable to feel angry about what’s happening. And that anger can be a kind of healthy energy that fires us up to help in any way we can, whether that’s donating money, clothes, food or time; signing petitions and writing to our leaders, urging them to act on our behalf; welcoming refugees to our shores in any way we can; or sharing messages of support for the Ukrainian people on social and mainstream media.

Anger is like rocket fuel at times like this, as we refuse to be frightened or cowed and stand up to brutality and injustice – as our parents and grandparents did in the Second World War.

Why hatred doesn’t help

But there is one emotion that, although easy to feel at times like these, is not helpful – and that’s hatred. It can be easy to hate Putin, his inner circle, or the oligarchs who have made vast riches by stealing from the Russian people. We can find ourselves hating the soldiers who drop bombs on helpless civilians. You may find yourself hating people on social media, who express pro-Putin or pro-war sentiments.

It’s easy to do. But, however seductive hatred may be, it won’t help anyone or anything. The Buddha taught us this vital message 2,500 years ago. He called hatred a ‘poison of the mind’, because although it’s easy to feel and can be addictive at times of conflict or strife, it’s also toxic, corrosive and highly destructive to both the hater and hated.

Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Think about a time recently when you hated someone – really hated them, deep down in your guts. If it helps, you can close your eyes and imagine you are right there, living through that experience again. Play it out, moment by moment, reliving everything that went through your mind – all the angry, vengeful or even violent thoughts you had about this hated person.

As you do, see if you can feel what it’s like to hate, in your body. You might feel a great upsurge in energy, a burning sensation in your gut or chest, or a bitter taste in your mouth. Your muscles will be hard and tense, ready for action. Your jaw might be clenched and fists tight. Millions of years of evolution are preparing you to fight, possibly even kill, this person you hate so much.

(I know – or at least very much hope – you have no intention of acting on these feelings, but it’s helpful to remember that this is why we feel them, in evolutionary terms. Hatred is inextricably linked to the fight part of your fight-flight-freeze response.)

The cost of hatred

Doesn’t feel so good, does it? This is what the Buddha meant by hostility and hatred poisoning our minds, because they feel so awful when we experience them. They really do feel poisonous in your mind, heart and body. And when we hate it also distorts everything, focusing all of your energies on the hated person’s negative traits, words or actions, forgetting that they are human too, with a mother and father, friends, perhaps a partner and children. They love and are loved. They’re not evil, or a monster, or some kind of subhuman creature. Even Putin. Even Hitler, Stalin or Mao.

Deeply damaged and so damaging of others? Of course. People who need to be stopped, with every non-violent tool we have at our disposal? Absolutely – we need to stand up to Putin, or he will do even more damage. Personally, I would like to see him tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, as well as every other tyrant causing suffering around the world.

Anger? Yes. hatred? No

But I refuse to hate him for what he’s doing in Ukraine, because if I do, he has won. The Dalai Lama teaches that we should never let another person’s behaviour disturb our inner peace. And I am trying to be guided by that wisdom, doing everything in my power to help the Ukraininan people, feeling anger, upset, outrage – but never hatred.

I feel so strongly about this that I long ago made a commitment to stop using the word ‘hate’ in my thoughts or speech (around the time I started learning about Buddhism, by the way).

I won’t let Putin or anyone else make me feel that, or break the commitment I made to myself. I refuse to let my mind be poisoned.

Instead, I am sending deep love, compassion, and a heartfelt hope for peace and an end to their suffering to the people of Ukraine.

And my warmest wishes to you, wherever you may be in the world,

Dan

Please donate to Unicef, who are helping children in Ukraine and those fleeing from the conflict in their country

Why Your Anger Can Be a Force for Good

Image by Sushil Nash

I have always thought that anger gets a bad rap. More than any other emotion, anger is seen as dangerous, threatening, something to be avoided or repressed. That is partly because of its portrayal in the media, where we see a parade of angry, destructive, violent or even murderous characters. In most TV programmes and movies, anger is clearly a Bad Thing.

But anger can also be scary for us if we have suffered at the hands of angry parents or other family members when we were kids. If you had a very angry, shouty, hurtful dad, it makes total sense that you would see anger as something scary, to be avoided in others and perhaps even yourself. I see this all the time in my clients, who have often been hurt by destructively angry people as children.

Threat-focused emotion

Another piece of this puzzle is understanding that anger, like anxiety, is a threat-focused emotion. If we feel threatened, by an angry parent, say, our threat system will trigger the fight-flight-freeze response. Feel a jolt of anger? That’s your threat system deciding that fight is the best strategy for dealing with the threat. Or is it a jangle of anxiety? If so, your brain is telling you to either flee (if you can) or freeze (if you can’t).

So anger feels dangerous to us because it’s supposed to – it is literally signalling danger and giving you the fire in your belly to deal with it. Of course, as adults, you generally feel angry (or anxious) about things that won’t do you any physical harm. Plumbers ripping you off. Colleagues being rude. Fellow train passengers delightfully shoving their armpit in your face.

Anger is your power

None of these examples is life-threatening, but they are annoying! And if you want to deal with them, rather than suffer in silence, you need to feel and (healthily) express your anger. That requires assertiveness, which is the healthy expression of anger, especially when someone has treated you badly or crossed a line with you.

This would mean telling that plumber his prices were a ripoff – and that you would get help from a consumer watchdog if he didn’t reduce them pronto. Or calmly but firmly asking your colleague to speak to you respectfully. And definitely telling that guy to get his armpit out of your face!

Healthy anger also helps us protest about injustices, fuelling the Black Lives Matter protests; youth movements across the world, furious about the existential threat of climate change; the Me Too movement or, as I write this, women rightfully expressing their anger about being sexually harassed or worse by men.

If we are not in touch with our anger, or find it so scary that we squash it inside before we even feel it, or allow ourselves to feel it but then keep it inside, so it churns around in a hot, horrible stew, we lose our power. We cannot stand up for ourselves, or fight for what we believe in. And understanding that anger itself is actually neutral – it’s just distorted or destructive anger that is so harmful – is a good place to start.

You are entitled to feel angry. It’s just a normal, healthy emotion – like sadness, fear, love or joy. So don’t let your past rob you of an assertive, empowered present and future. You are worth more than that.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Have Trouble Managing Your Anger?

Anger is a tricky emotion. In pure evolutionary terms, anger is our signal to fight a threat, as part of the fight, flight or freeze response (anxiety is the emotion that tells us to freeze or flee).

This is all well and good if you are facing a hungry lion, but not so helpful if your boss has just criticised you, or another driver cuts you off in traffic. But this primitive, self-protective threat response explains why we can react so strongly, violently even, if we feel threatened – in a very crude way, that's what anger is for.

Most of my clients have some kind of problem with anger, roughly falling into two camps. The first group is scared of or uncomfortable with anger – theirs and other people's. If this describes you, it may be because one of your parents was given to angry outbursts, which as a child were very frightening.

That vulnerable child inside you learns to be scared of anger, even when you are – on the outside at least – now an adult. It's also possible that your family were rather buttoned-up, viewing any expression of anger as rude and uncivilised (a very British way to deal with anger!), so you learned to keep your angry feelings stuffed deep down inside you. As an adult, it's now hard to access and express them, even when it's appropriate to do so.

The other problematic form of anger is expressing it too often and too volcanically. This is the cause of domestic violence, bar brawls, violent crime, road/air/trolley rage and aggressive bullying. It's just as harmful as repressed anger, both to those around you and ultimately yourself – you will probably end up in serious trouble, perhaps even prison, if you cannot contain your anger and explode at the smallest provocation.

People with this 'anger style' may come from very angry, combustible families in which everyone was always shouting at/being aggressive to each other. They may also have been hurt, neglected or abused as children, so that child inside is absolutely furious at the world and can't help but express it, even when it's dangerous or destructive to do so.

The angry modes

In schema therapy, when people are expressing anger in a problematic way, we see this showing up as one of three angry modes. If you find yourself blowing up all the time, perhaps shouting or swearing at other people, being threatening or even physically violent, you are in Bully/Attack mode. This is the most problematic angry mode, so a major part of your therapy would involve learning how to respond to triggering situations in a calmer, more rational manner.

Anger-management strategies can be helpful here, as well as longer-term healing of schemas such as Abandonment, Mistrust/Abuse or Vulnerability that can trigger this attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence style of responding to threats or challenges.

The second mode, Angry Protector, is less destructive but still problematic. This is when you express anger in more subtle ways, perhaps non-verbally by scowling or with a closed-off body posture; with sarcasm or cutting humour; angrily complaining about or being harshly critical of other people.

This mode is all about keeping a distance between yourself and others, perhaps because deep down your vulnerable child is scared of attack or rejection. You may also be uncomfortable with any kind of criticism or challenge, so respond with subtle but unmistakeable shows of anger to shut that down.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

— Aristotle

The third mode is the most helpful, even if it doesn't at first appear that way! This is the Angry Child mode, and is evident in the way a person expresses their anger – often disproportionately to the perceived insult or infraction. You may have a tantrum, smashing or throwing objects (not to hurt others, just to release your anger). You might also get very tearful or upset.

And beneath the anger is always hurt, fear or sadness, so if we were working together I would help you express your anger in a non-attacking, non-destructive way, so we could contact and soothe the hurt, upset or fearful vulnerable child lying just beneath the angry surface. 

When we get people into Angry Child mode, teach them how to express their anger verbally or by doing something safe but physical, like twisting a towel or punching a cushion, they experience a tremendous sense of relief – all the anger literally drains out of their bodies. It can then be deeply healing and soothing to deal with the hurt that lies beneath – over time, your anger subsides as you feel happier, safer, stronger and calmer.

Warm wishes,

Dan

What is the Angry Protector Mode in Schema Therapy?

In schema therapy, we have a number of modes that feel, express or help us deal with anger. If you are in Angry Child mode, the anger will be felt and expressed like a child feels and expresses anger. It will feel intense and stormy, leading to shouting, swearing, breaking things or slamming doors. This is the mode people are in when they act out their aggression in road rage, air rage, etc – the anger is uncontrollable and often lands them in big trouble. Not so helpful, clearly.

The Angry Protector mode is a bit more subtle. As the name suggests, this is a protective part of you, which is always triggered in relationship to others. It can be a bit passive-aggressive, involving you looking grumpy, making snide or snippy comments, or generally showing people you are angry without necessarily telling them how you’re feeling.

Telltale signs

If you want to know how the Angry Protector appears in real life, look at this guy in the photo. Telltale signs that he’s in this mode include: grumpy expression; frowning; mouth firmly set; arms crossed; and generally giving off non-verbal signals that say, ‘I am not happy with you right now!’

But remember that underneath this angry exterior is another part, the Vulnerable Child. This is the part of him that is hurting, feeling criticised, attacked, rejected or abandoned. His Little Self feels overwhelming pain, so this protector mode gets triggered to push you away. You back off, either figuratively or literally, which makes him feel safe and in control. But of course that’s not a great way to manage relationships, because if this keeps happening he will end up isolated and lonely, because he has pushed everyone who loves him away.

Healthy Adult anger

There is a final option for feeling and expressing anger, which is your Healthy Adult. This is the part of you that feels anger in a healthy, proportionate way – not feeling uncontrollable rage if someone is a bit rude, say. In that situation, your Healthy Adult would feel, maybe 20% angry, then express that anger clearly and assertively. You might say, ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve said – and I actually think it’s quite rude, so please don’t speak to me that way.’

Now this is not easy – many of us must spend years learning how to be more assertive – but it is doable (here’s a post I wrote about assertive communication). I have taught many, many people how to be more assertive over the years (and learned those skills for myself!). Schema therapy doesn’t have the monopoly on those skills – cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) are two approaches that teach assertiveness very effectively.

So if you find yourself – or someone close to you – being grumpy, irritable and generally embodying the Angry Protector on a regular basis, you might need some help from a skilled therapist. I very much hope you get the help you need.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Anger-Management Skills Everyone Needs to Know

Image by Piermanuele Sberni

Pick up a newspaper, watch a movie or the TV news and you'll get the message, loud and clear, that anger is a Very Bad Thing. Road rage, desk rage, trolley rage – if we believe the media then anger is scary, destructive and something we should avoid at all costs.

In fact, the problem is not anger, it's aggression: the unhealthy distortion of a perfectly natural emotion. Like sadness, fear or love, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is.

The problem comes when you express anger in one of two dysfunctional ways: you become aggressive and struggle to control your angry outbursts, using threatening language and behaviour to exert control over others.

When you’re seething inside

Or passive, becoming scared of anger – both your own and other people's – meaning that you give away your power, struggling to impose yourself on the world or fight back when bullied, even though you might be seething inside.

Both distortions of anger can be extremely damaging. The first damages those around you, as you attack or intimidate them. Eventually, of course, if you keep lashing out you cause problems for yourself too – when your destructive behaviour gets you sacked, divorced or arrested.

If you belong to the second group, you mostly hurt yourself – bottling up your anger causes stress, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke... the list goes on. 

Assertiveness, not aggression

Either way, you need to learn how to express anger cleanly and healthily – responding with appropriate, proportionate anger in situations that demand it (a rude co-worker; a bullying spouse; a salesman trying to rip you off). Anger gets a very bad press, but if felt and expressed healthily it's a great source of power and strength. The whole evolutionary purpose of anger is to protect yourself and those you love from attack. So the key is to be assertive, not passive or aggressive.

Some of humanity's greatest leaders have been the living embodiment of assertiveness, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Both practised non-violence, but transformed the lives of millions of people through sheer determination: they could not be bullied or intimidated, and maintained great dignity in the face of brutality and aggression.

If you would like to be more assertive, next time someone upsets you try this exercise:

1. Get the person's attention. This won't work if they're reading the paper or fiddling with their Blackberry.

2. Describe the behaviour you found difficult. Do this without personalising it or making accusations. Just stick to the facts: 'In that meeting you kept interrupting, talking over me and dismissing my ideas.'

3. Tell them how it made you feel. Use 'I statements' and take responsibility for your feelings: 'When you constantly interrupt me I find it frustrating and annoying.' Avoid emotions like anger, hurt or jealousy, because these will undermine your attempt to be assertive.

4. Check your interpretation and ask them to respond. Your interpretation of events may have been completely inaccurate, so it's very useful to check them against reality. 'Do you think you interrupted a lot? Did you feel dismissive of my ideas?'

5. Listen to the other person's response. Try to be non-defensive (this can be hard, but it will really help) and expect their interpretation to be different than yours. That's OK – they are entitled to their opinion, but you don't have to accept it.

6. Tell them how you would like it to be. This means expressing preferences ('I would appreciate it if you stop interrupting me in meetings'), not demands ('I'm sick of you interrupting – don't ever do it again!').

Of course, this is a bit of a lengthy process. Once you've got the hang of it you can boil it down to a much shorter exchange. And if you do this, regularly, you'll be amazed at the difference it makes to the way you feel and the relationships with your partner, family and colleagues.

Because it's so important, I would like to repeat this: expressing your anger healthily does not mean attacking anyone else, either verbally or physically. That is both unhealthy and destructive for all concerned. Managing your anger is about finding ways to be more assertive, expressing what you really feel and need without lashing out or stuffing your angry feelings.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Healthy Ways to Release Your Anger

Everybody gets angry – it’s a normal human emotion, like sadness, fear or joy. And there is nothing wrong with anger, despite its bad reputation and the damage it can cause. Like all emotions, the problem is not the anger, but the ways we either try to suppress and swallow it, or let it come spilling out, harming ourselves and those around us.

One of the main lessons I teach my clients in schema therapy is how to feel, express and so release their anger. And that’s not easy, because most of us have a problematic relationship with this most volatile of emotions – we may have grown up in a family where anger was never permitted expression, so we learned that anger was scary and shameful, to be kept inside at all costs. This means we now swallow our anger, which is not good for our health, physical or mental.

Or we might have grown up in a family that expressed anger too freely or even violently, with lots of screaming, breaking things or hitting. So again we are now probably afraid of anger, seeing it as threatening and unsafe, because we associate bad things with it. We may either have learned to hold it in, or followed our family’s example and now explode all over the place (using attack as the best form of defence against other people’s threatening behaviour), raging at other drivers or screaming at our partners/kids. This too is not good.

Healthy anger-release

I only have two rules for anger expression with my clients:

1. When expressing anger, they don’t hurt themselves.

2. When expressing anger, they don’t hurt anyone else.

Bearing these rules in mind, here are two ways to let your anger out safely and healthily (releasing all the energy from your Angry Child mode, which is the part of you that is so furious). First, try writing an angry letter to the person that has hurt or upset you. This may be your boss, partner, friend, colleague – or a person from the past, such as a critical parent. Write it on a blank Word document, allowing yourself to say whatever you need – swear as much as you like, use capitals and exclamation marks. Don’t censor in any way. When you’re done, print the letter and tear it into tiny pieces or burn it, imagining all that hostility and frustration leaving your body as you do. (And remember this letter never gets sent! It’s just for you and to release all that bottled up anger energy).

Second, get a towel and twist it until it’s really tight. Then keep twisting, saying ‘I am so angry with you!’, ‘I am so *!**!** angry with you!’ over and over, twisting the towel util your arms get tired (this should be hard work!). Make sure you stick with ‘I’ statements and the way they have hurt or upset you, rather than just blaming or attacking. You will eventually find that all the anger drains out of your body and you feel tired. And other feelings might bubble up too, like hurt or sadness. Let them be there and have a cry if you need to. This will help you feel better (and be soothing for your Vulnerable Child, which is the part of you that feels all the hurt, pain or fear that lies beneath the anger).

Warm wishes,

Dan

Bibliotherapy for Anger Issues

Image by Ricardo Gomez Angel

'Bibliotherapy' is an important part of cognitive therapy, either to run alongside a course of therapy or as a self-help tool. I often recommend books to my clients, partly because there is only so much time in a session, so it's much more useful for them to read up about their particular issue and for us to discuss their findings next week.

But I also find that many people like to understand why they might be having problems and find their own strategies for solving them – another important idea in cognitive therapy, because ultimately I am trying to help my clients to be their own therapist.

You can read one or all of these books, depending on which appeal to you. You can also read the whole book or dip in to the chapters that seem most relevant to you.

1. Overcoming Anger and Irritability: A Self-help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques, by William Davies. Part of the excellent Overcoming... series, this is designed as a CBT workbook, which you can use either instead of or alongside a course of cognitive therapy.

As with any issue in CBT, problems with anger (either struggling to express or control it) are seen as a consequence of unhelpful thoughts and beliefs. So if you change the way you think, you will change the way you feel and behave.

CBT is proven to be an excellent tool for tackling unhealthy anger, with plenty of good-quality research confirming its effectiveness. This book is easy to read; packed with useful information about why we develop anger problems and how to overcome them; and provides a step-by-step programme of exercises to tackle your own problematic anger. And at just £9.99, it's a fair bit cheaper than a course of CBT too!

2. The Compassionate Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger, by Russell L Kolts. I am currently reading – and thoroughly enjoying – this warm, wise and helpful book, so can strongly recommend it. Kolts is an American clinical psychologist specialising in anger issues, with vast experience of working with groups such as prisoners, for whom destructive anger is clearly a major problem.

He draws on Paul Gilbert's compassion-focused therapy (in which have trained) to explain the evolutionary/psychological basis of anger, especially its role in protecting us from threats, either real or perceived.

As Buddhists have known for 2,500 years, compassion is a wonderful antidote to anger, aggression, hostility and hatred – a fact that is increasingly recognised by Western mental health professionals. Learning to treat ourselves and others with greater kindness, compassion and tolerance is a major step on the road to reducing the destructive impact of anger on our lives. If you only read one of these books, I would choose this one, as it is both profound and a pleasure to read.

3. The Superstress Solution, by Roberta Lee MD. Don't let the title throw you off – I have included this book in both the anger and stress sections of my bibliotherapy course, because anger and stress are often inextricably linked. Think of it this way: if you are prone to irritability, remember how you felt after your last holiday.

I'm guessing that all the little things that normally drive you to distraction didn't seem like such a big deal – and you probably dealt with them without becoming in the least bit cross or frustrated. Why? Because you had de-stressed and were relaxed, so your levels of patience and what's known as 'frustration tolerance' were far higher than in your pre-holiday, stressed-out state.

That's why, if you have a problem with anger, managing your stress levels is extremely important. Dr Lee is an integrative physician who takes a holistic approach to reducing the stress levels many of us suffer from in our always-on, over-stimulated, over-caffeinated, under-rested modern world.

Covering everything from diet and exercise to meditation and lifestyle changes, this is a wonderfully clear, sensible and helpful book. Follow her advice and both your stress and anger levels should reduce significantly.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Thoughts Racing? This Meditation Will Help

Image by Anthony Tran

When you are feeling stressed or anxious your thoughts might race, making it hard to slow down or focus on what you're doing. Although this is completely normal, it can feel really unsettling, as the content of those thoughts is likely to be negative or frightening, so it's a bit like watching a scary movie stuck on fast-forward...

If this is a problem for you, here is a simple mindfulness meditation technique that can really help:

Mindfulness of breathing – with counting

1. First, make some quiet time for yourself – take 10 minutes out of your busy day, that to-do list can wait! Switch your phone to silent and make sure you won't be disturbed. Find a comfortable position, either cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, or sitting on a straight-backed chair. Make sure your spine, neck and head are in alignment – erect but not tense, so you are sitting with a sense of calm alertness.

2. Set a repeat timer on your phone to 5 minutes, then close your eyes and settle into your body. Do a quick scan of your whole body, from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, noticing any areas of tension and allowing those parts of the body to soften and relax. You can imagine breathing into the tense area, then releasing any tension on the out-breath.

3. Bring your attention to your breath, following the entire breath cycle as it travels into the nostrils, down the back of your throat, into the lungs, then back along the throat and out of your nose. Notice the way your chest and belly rise with each in-breath, then fall on the out-breath. Don't try to change or control the breath in any way, just let your body breathe itself – which it does every second of your life, whether you notice or not.

4. Start counting after each breath cycle, beginning with 1 – so breathe in, out and mentally count 1; in, out, 2; in, out, 3 and so on until you reach 10. If you find yourself carried off by thoughts, that's fine – be kind and gentle with yourself, direct your attention back to the breath, then go back to 1.

5. If you find yourself counting 20, you have got distracted! Again, just go back to 1 and start again.

6. When you hear the first timer signalling 5 minutes, you can choose to continue counting, at the beginning of each breath cycle – so count 1, in, out; 2, in, out; 3, in, out and so on. Or, if your thoughts have settled and quietened down you can drop the counting and just focus on your breath.

7. When you hear the second timer, that's 10 minutes. Slowly open your eyes and gently move your body. Resume your day, carrying this calm, mindful attention into your next activity.

Warm wishes,

Dan