 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I want to welcome everybody back to anger management part two. If you remember, this was a two part series that we started last week. So we're going to go ahead and pick up from here. Whereas last session was more focused on identifying the root causes of anger, leading to anger outbursts. Today, we're going to really talk more about what clients can do to deal with that anger and what to do when their threat system gets activated. We'll explore multiple skills necessary, including mindful self-awareness, distress tolerance, values, clarification and goal setting, motivational enhancement skills, cognitive behavioral skills, cognitive processing skills, communication skills, compassion focused skills, self-esteem building skills and ultimately wellness skills. So the first thing clients need to do in order to deal with anything, whether it's anxiety or anger or depression, is become more self-aware. So helping clients become more mindfully aware of what's going on with them moment by moment is really going to help them not only understand where they are at a given time, but they'll become more aware when things start to go a little bit awry and they'll be like, okay, I'm starting to feel a little bit wonky and they'll be able to intervene before it becomes a big thing. So clients need to become aware of their physical, emotional and mental state in the present moment. Not just, you know, how am I feeling, but really focus on emotionally where am I at, am I happy, am I sad, am I bored, any of those feelings? And I usually encourage clients to identify at least two feelings because rarely are we just feeling one. Content can be one, but generally content goes with something else. So have them identify their emotions. Then their mental state. Are they foggy? Are they able to concentrate? Are they being feeling like they're being kind of negative? And most of their thoughts tend to be negative and critical or are they relatively optimistic today and creative? And physically, how are they feeling? Are they achy? Do they need to take a time out and roll their shoulders because they've been typing on a keyboard all day? Does their neck hurt? Do they need to stretch? Do they need to get up and walk around or go to the bathroom? How are they feeling? Too often, you know, I think we're all guilty of this. We will be sitting there and we'll be doing something and we'll kind of be in the groove. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm really hungry and you look down and you haven't eaten for five hours. So it's important for clients to become more mindful of how they feel moment to moment. And, you know, normally I talk about having them do a mindful scan three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Well, I've added to that because, you know, I like to, when they first wake up in the morning before they get out of bed and when they're laying down in bed at night to do a mindfulness scan. So that's five times a day. You know, once they master the initial three, add two more because before they get out of bed, it's going to kind of set the tone for the entire day. One thing some research has shown is that our filters are autopilot filters aren't kicked in when we first wake up in the morning, but once we get up and start moving around, then we start operating more on autopilot. So if people do a mindfulness scan when they first wake up in the morning before they get out of bed, before they have their coffee, they'll probably be a little bit more in tune to exactly how they're feeling. This is especially true if they can avoid waking up to a really loud alarm that they have to like fly across the room to turn off, but whatever it takes. And in the evening, likely they will improve their sleep quality if they do a mindfulness scan so they can identify anything that is increasing their anxiety and deal with it. They can identify anything that may be making the physically uncomfortable and deal with it. And they can also identify their emotional state and maybe work to improve that. So as they're going to sleep, they're focusing on the positive and something that makes them happy instead of dreading going to work in the morning or replaying something bad that happened the day before. So again, mindful self-awareness. Start people out with breakfast, lunch and dinner because you know, everybody does that and then add first thing in the morning and last thing before you go to bed. When I worked in residential, we had worksheets that the clients were expected to do and turn into their primary counselor that had them basically doing a mindfulness scan at each one of those points. They would turn their things in at the end of the week and then they and their counselor would look to see if there were any patterns throughout the day of, you know, if you woke up and you felt this way. What did you do and how did the rest of your day go? Did it get progressively worse or were you able to arrest it because you found out what was going on or you at least realized that you weren't feeling great and you moved on? We know that if we get up in the morning for most people, if we are not in a good mindset, if we're in pain, if we're grumpy for whatever reason, we're going to be more likely to be irritable. And you know, I'm not saying fly off in a rage, but just be irritable and cranky and unpleasant to be around because we don't feel well. So we want to make sure that people identify their vulnerabilities as they are in the present moment and adjust accordingly if they didn't sleep well and they're foggy headed, making sure that, you know, they get what has to be done done, but they don't try to get six other things done, you know, give them self a break and say, let's just get what has to be done done today because that'll be as much as I can do and being compassionate with themselves. We also want to encourage them to identify the components of their feelings. And if you think back to emotion efficacy, then this will sound a little bit familiar. The emotional component of their feelings. How do they feel? Happy, sad, glad, mad, scared, any of those words. What are their thoughts that are going through their head right now that are supporting that emotion that they're labeling? Because generally we label thoughts with an emotion and then they feed on each other. If you are having negative thoughts, then you may have in a negative emotional state, which will contribute to negative thoughts. You see where we're going. We want them to identify physical sensations that are associated with that emotion and eventually they're going to learn to differentiate the physical sensations associated with a threat, which may cause anger or fear, you know, with your fight or flight versus physical sensations associated with too much caffeine or too little sleep or low blood sugar. And then we want people to identify what behavioral urges they have with each and every feeling. So they develop sort of a catalog. And if they start feeling this urge, they may not have noticed the physical sensations, the thoughts or the emotions, but if they start having this urge to just like, I don't exactly know what that is, but you get the idea. Then they know to check in with themselves because they know that urge is associated with being angry. So they can check in and go, all right, what's going on with me? If they start having sweaty palms, if they start flushing, if they start grinding their teeth, whatever some of their physical sensations are that are associated with anger, if they start feeling those, they can take a break and go, okay, something must be bothering me that I'm trying to avoid dealing with. For me, I know I clench my teeth. If I start getting stressed, I'll clench my teeth. And before I know it, you know, I'm like, oh, my jaw really hurts. And then I have to go, well, you know, what's going on that would make me grind my teeth even when I'm awake. So physical sensations may be your leading indicator, if you will, or if you just notice that you're being a negative Nellie and you find fault with everything. You're looking at the glass is half empty. You are looking at the day as partly cloudy. Then we want to say, okay, if you're having these negative thoughts, what's putting you in that frame of mind. So there's a lot that can be done with mindful self-awareness to prevent vulnerabilities or to help people identify days when they're going to be more likely to be irritable, more likely to have an anger episode. And they can also identify leading indicators of when they are heading down that anger path so they can arrest it before they're rageful. They can stop it at like mildly irritated. Think about if you know somebody who hates standing in line and this used to be a much bigger deal before smartphones and all that kind of stuff when people had nothing to do and they would just get so frustrated. But think about how people react in line. Some people start fidgeting and getting antsy looking around trying to find another aisle they can get in. Some people start talking more loudly. Some people start criticizing the cashier. You can listen in and see how different people have a different leading edge for their anger, but you can identify that, you know, they're starting to get upset. So once they're aware of their anger, their anxiety, their distress, whatever label they want to put on it, we need to help clients learn distress tolerance skills. Distract don't react. So when they first start getting upset, they have that adrenaline haze going on, you know, the body is said, okay, there's a threat. We need to decide whether we're going to fight or we're going to flee. At that point in time, the person's automatic reaction, if you will, is the one that's going to be reward, going to be the one the person has had rewarded the most. Most of our clients, if they're in seeing us because they have anger management issues or anger issues, we can pretty well assume that anger has worked for them and that's their go to response, which has led to over generalization and all kinds of other stuff. So we know that they're likely going to respond with anger. Okay, we don't want them to do that. So we need to help them figure out how they can distract. So they can move past that adrenaline kind of tunnel vision and make a conscious choice about what behavior to choose instead of just relying on the most automatic urge. They can ride the wave when they start to get angry, they can identify how big the wave is, are we talking it's one of those monsoon waves or is it just one of those little gentle rolling waves and then where are you on the wave? Are you at the crest where it's just going to get better from here or are you are you building? Are you still building momentum on that anger? If you're building momentum, we can help them identify strategies to help diffuse that and ask themselves questions like what is it about this situation that's making me angry? As they try to address that, it'll give their body time to get rid of some of the adrenaline. Another thing they can do when they're riding the wave is just experience it. They identify this is where I'm not on the wave. So I guess I might as well just buckle up and hang on because it's make it a little bit worse before it gets better, but I can do this. So using mindfulness skills to just be aware of it, identify it and let it go without trying to fight it going. I should feel differently, but you don't. So let's just let it come and go and then you can decide what to do about it. Positive coping thoughts or affirmations when something happens, if somebody can say, okay, I've got this or it's all good or I can handle this some sort of positive affirmation that tells them this is not worth my getting all wrapped up and upset about because I can handle it. Remember anger and fear, you know, and primarily we're talking about anger here. It's a reaction to a threat. So if the person can say this is not that big of a threat, then the anger is automatically going to diffuse. Mindful breathing as we get angry, as we get upset, as our body perceives a threat, our respiration goes up, our heart rate goes up. If you can bring the respiration down, the heart rate will go down. The body associates that with calming. So, you know, there will be a cascade effect that's positive if people focus on their breathing and this doesn't have to be four in and four out or six in and six out. It's just focusing on their breath as it comes in and as it goes out. When you focus on it, you don't tend to hyperventilate. You know, if you're focusing on inhaling deeply and exhaling, you're not going to be doing the, you know, rapid shallow breathing that most people do when they start to get really upset. Do the opposite. If somebody says something that snarky to you or if something happens that makes you feel like you would get this rush of anger, put a smile on your face. This isn't the way to cope. This doesn't fix the situation, but if you are doing the opposite, it helps deescalate the situation so you can make a more rational choice. You know, sometimes somebody will say something snarky and it's not the time or the place to handle it, but you need to figure out a way to get control of your own anger. So if you just plaster a smile on your face and you're like, all right, it's all good. I got this. It can help your body kind of trick your mind into saying this isn't as much of a threat as I might have initially perceived. And then sublimation, which is sort of a Freudian defense mechanism, but you know, Freud and I kind of get along in some respects. It's taking energy that would normally be used for something that is antisocial like breaking stuff or screaming or whatever and using it for something pro social. So instead of getting angry and throwing something across the room, take that energy and go for a walk. Do something proactive with it. I pull weeds. If I've had a bad day, my kids can rate the level of my mood by the size of the power tool that I'm using. If I'm just pulling weeds by hand, I'm good. You know, they can come out and ask me whatever. If I'm using the chainsaw, probably ought to give mom some space. So you can have an idea of different ways that you can use your energy. So if you have a lot of pent up energy and frustration, maybe you need to go dig a hole out in your garden or do something that's really energy intensive to deal with that intense feeling until you can figure out exactly how to deal with it using the rational your more rational mind. Now going back to and this is part of dbt, but it's also part of a CT and many of your other behavioral therapies. Ultimately, we're trying to help people work towards their goals. So what are their values and if you Google values worksheets or values list, you can come up with a whole slew of different worksheets that you can download for your clients that list different values like compassion, creativity, loyalty, patience, tolerance, determination, honesty, faithfulness, courage, optimism, integrity and more. I have them identify which ones are important to them and in what way those affect their goals in their relationships with their family and what ways those impact their goals at work and what ways those impact their goals and how they interact with society in general and themselves. So I asked them to look at that and set kind of set goals. If I want to be considered compassionate. Great. That's my goal out here. You know, maybe I already am, but if that's something I need to work for or work towards, then I know that when I have an anger situation, I need to stop and remember. Okay, I want to think of myself and I want others to think of me as compassionate. So it's getting all up in Bubba's face and screaming going to do any good and is it going to get me closer to where I want to go and the answer is no. So understanding your values or having clients understand their values can help them make better choices in their responses to distress. Distress happens. Anger happens. You know, that's just the way we're wired, but the way we choose to deal with it is well within our wheelhouse. Another thing we can do is ask clients what's important to you in five years. What do you need to have to be content? Because sometimes they'll go through that values list and they'll check off like half of them things on there and we can't possibly right goals for all of those and have them focus on those. That's just too much. So what do you need to have to be content? Do you need to have a half a million dollar house? Do you need to have a Ferrari? You know, you may want to but what do you need? And we have a big discussion between the difference between needing and wanting. An alternate exercise that I've used is asking people what 20 things they need to be happy and this is before we have the need versus want discussion. And then I say, okay, now I want everybody to eliminate to, you know, you can't have all 20 now. You can only have 18 so eliminate to and we keep going through and doing this and talking about why they eliminated what they did until we get down to where each person only has six things left. Now by the time you get down to six, that's pretty bare bones and that's identifying what is really core in this person's value system and we can set goals around those. So ACT interventions. One of the things we can do is ask clients why they consider anger to be a problem. Anger is a feeling we have and instead of resisting it and trying to tell yourself you shouldn't be angry, accept it. Anger is what it is and it's really kind of cool because it's your body's way or your brain's way of saying there's a threat and you need to be protected. So what is it about anger that's a problem and most of the time it comes down to their responses to anger, not anger itself, which is the problem. Determinative anger is part of experiential avoidance. That means do they get angry instead of having to face uncomfortable emotions like fear and depression that are very overwhelming or make them feel vulnerable, do they instead lash out with anger so they don't have to feel vulnerable or feel emotions that for them are more painful. Determinative anger is instrumental. Are you using it to manipulate others and is this part, is this where you want to be? Is this part of your goals and your value system or is manipulation really not one of your values? Distinguish feeling angry from acting aggressively. You can feel angry without acting aggressively. And again, validating that anger is a very natural innate feeling that we have and it's going to happen. It's just how we deal with it. Increase body awareness, mindfulness of physical sensations that indicate anger is rising. We've talked, we talked about that earlier. Diffusion around unhelpful cognitions that feed anger or justify aggressive behavior. So what does that mean? That means when you start getting angry, if you start telling yourself negative things, telling yourself aggressive things or you become very critical of everything or a lot of things around you. These are all unhelpful cognitions that are going to keep you in that negative. I'm under threat mindset. So helping people diffuse. One way they can do that is every time they have a negative thought, they have to have a positive thought. So it makes them stop. Increase awareness of anger triggers. We've talked about that. We talked about that last time. What is it that really ticks you off? But also we're not just a lot of times when you talk about anger, people think rage, the things that make them really, really irritable and angry. We also want to talk about what things irritate you of what things are you jealous or envious because all of those are different sort of permutations of anger. But if you just ask what makes you angry, you're not going to get a full picture. Why is this important? Because it helps us understand the underpinnings of a certain person's anger, what values, what things are going on that are motivating this person's anger. If they believe that or if they want to be seen as powerful and successful, that's one of their main values and they get angry if they fail at something or if someone else wins and they don't, you know, I can understand why that happens. Then we need to look and talk about that therapeutically and figure out other ways to deal with it because at this point, anger is probably not getting them where they want to be. Learn to surf the anger. Ride that wave. Identify that you're angry and just ride your wave until the adrenaline subsides and go, okay, it's all good. And a lot of times when people surf, anger surf or ride the wave, at least my clients will get up and go out on a walk or something. It's just like, okay, I need to ride this through. I'm not going to think about it for two or three minutes. And oftentimes that's like a lap around the building. Connect with values. What sort of partner, parent, friend or worker and or worker do you want to be? Keep a list of those on your phone. Keep a list of those ever present, you know, somewhere where you can see them and remind yourself constantly and review them when you do your mindfulness scans. This is the kind of person I am. So when the person is in under stress, they keep, they've been reminding themselves of the kind of person that they want to be or the kind of person that they know they are once they get their anger under control and it's easier to remember why they don't want to lash out. Encourage them to do imaginary rehearsal of values, consistent responses. And I think we've talked about this before. They can imagine situations that really get under their skin that really get their anger or irritability going and figure out how they're going to deal with those and practice in their mind dealing with those practice in session in individual or in group dealing with those because what's a trigger for one person is likely a trigger for multiple others. But they can also do things and I've done this before I've brought in clips from different television shows like Dr. Phil or back in back in the day Jerry Springer. You know, there's a lot of stuff that can get people irritable on there and we talk about, you know, what was it about this that triggered your anger or got you all fired up and how could you best handle it? We also look at what happened, especially on the Springer show where people would really demonstrate poor anger management and we would rewind and say, okay, now what anger behaviors did you see leading up to this? Did you see the person start fidgeting in their seat? Did you see them start clenching their jaw? Did their facial expression change? So they become more aware of what anger looks like in other people and they can also at the same time become more aware of their own anger clues motivational enhancement. Okay, we're going to work on anger management. Great. But you know what anger and anger outbursts serve a purpose and the person uses them as their go-to response because they have produced the most benefit. So we've got to figure out why is it again that I'm giving this up. So we want to look at motivational enhancement again. What are the benefits of staying angry continuing with this behavior the way it is? Why are we highlighting this? Because we need to find other ways to meet those needs. So if one of the benefits of staying angry is the fact that you know they have more control over situations and people do what they want them to do, we say, okay, aside from intimidating them, how else could we help you or could you learn to get people to do what you want them to do? Let's talk about communication skills. Let's talk about assertiveness. So I go through each dimension and then we talk about the drawbacks of anger and generally that's a pretty easy list too because they thought about that before they came to counseling. Then we think about the benefits of changing and they've probably thought about that at some too, but change and letting go of the anger is not a panacea because sometimes they're going to feel vulnerable and that may be a drawback to changing. So how did they handle that? So we want to eliminate the benefits of staying angry and we want to eliminate the drawbacks to changing or to anger management in order to maximize people's motivation. CBT, cognitive distortions and unhelpful thoughts. A lot of times when we think about anger and we look at the thoughts that were leading up to an anger episode, there are a lot of unhelpful thoughts and behaviors that happen. All or nothing thinking. You always do this or you never hold up to your end of the bargain, which leads to you know also over generalizing. You never do this at home, which means you must never do it ever and always. Mind reading or intention forecasting. If somebody comes up and says something to you asks you to do something and you get irritated because you just know that they're doing that because they want to make you look stupid or you know they did that because they were trying to embarrass you. Really? How do you know what they're thinking? Feelings or facts. I felt angry for a minute. Therefore, it must be threatening. Not necessarily. We've already identified the fact that a lot of times people's feelings tend to be over generalized. So a lot of times things that they get feel angry about like really angry about are more like down on the irritation level of the scale. Tunnel vision only seeing one thing and what's going on. I don't care what happened in your life. I don't care what's going on with you. You are going really slow right now at getting me checked out and I feel annoyed. Therefore, you must be trying to annoy me. I don't know any cashier. Well, that generally does things to try to annoy people. I'm sure there are that just kind of get snarky every once in a while, but a lot of times if somebody feels angry, then they find a way to justify their anger instead of saying is this anger justified? Personalization, taking it personally. Anytime somebody says something, maybe you're sitting in a meeting and the CEO of the company criticizes a proposal that you worked on and you take it as a personal affront and you get all angry that nothing you ever do gets any recognition and she's always criticizing you. So that's personalization and all or none thinking kind of wrapped up in one. Blaming a lot of times. Blaming is used when people get angry because they they feel vulnerable. Whatever the threat was, you know, let's go back to that thing that was turned into the CEO. When somebody feels vulnerable and feels attacked, then they may try to diffuse or deflect attention to everybody else in the group. Well, so and so only showed up for three of the meetings and so and so didn't get his thing in on time. And if so and so would have done whatever, then I would have been able to do a better job. Maybe, maybe not, but blaming tends to be a way of reacting somewhat passive aggressively, somewhat aggressively depending on how you do it. When people feel vulnerable or threatened and a lot of times blaming comes up when only when people feel angry. It's like, okay, I'm going to spread the misery. Magnification making a mountain out of a molehill something relatively minor happens and you just blow it completely out of proportion. The fallacy of fairness sometimes people get angry because something isn't fair and helping clients understand that you know what life's not fair and it really stinks sometimes. This is one of the harder ones to help people kind of wrap their head around because they want to find meaning behind it, but helping them also understand and look around and see really good people who've had bad things happen to them can help them also understand that they're not unique. You know, bad things do happen to good people and collecting straws is a nice name for creating a whole list of done me wrongs and just building them up instead of addressing things as they come up people will collect little straws and then finally there will be the straw that broke the camel's back and you just get this litany of done me wrongs kind of dumped and whoever is getting dumped on is just like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, you know, let me get up to speed here because I didn't realize I did any of this or that it was bothering you. So part of CBT cognitive behavioral therapy is using the ABCs the activating event. What was it that happened? The consequences you got angry. So what beliefs in there led you to get angry? Did you believe? Did you have the thought that you were disrespected which led you to the thought that they were being rejecting or critical? Okay, well then identify it. So then you're going to go back and dispute the beliefs and go. Was the person being rejecting? Maybe, maybe not, you know, I can't forecast what's going to be unhelpful and what's going to be as they would say irrational without seeing each individual situation, but okay, they mark out the ones that are unhelpful. Then they may be left with some that are still negative, you know, maybe this person that they're interacting with is just an unhappy person. So you need to decide at that point is getting angry with this person. The best use of your energy. Is it going to change anything? Is it going to help you achieve your goals? A lot of times the answer is going to be no because anything you do is probably just going to make the situation worse and draw you further away from your goals and values of being compassionate and you know, hardworking and all that other kind of stuff. CPT or cognitive processing therapy encourages people to play out the tape. If something happens and you get angry, that's fine. It happened. I got angry because which is related to my fear or threat, feeling of threat of rejection, failure, loss of control or unknown. If and this is where we start, you know, playing the tape all the way through. If I lash out or if I act out in a certain way towards this person, what are the consequences? It may make me feel better in the short term, but in the long term, what are the effects? What is the evidence for and against my beliefs that are underlying my anger? Do I have tunnel vision? Am I focused on just one aspect of the situation? Like what happened in this particular meeting? Am I considering that the person may have been less than tactful? Maybe they had a bad day leading up to this meeting and they're just there. They're not in a good frame of mind. A lot of times when we get angry, the tunnel vision kicks in and all you can see is what happened and how it made you feel and the other person's part in it without seeing your part. Am I using all or none terms? Every time this happens or catastrophizing, this little thing happened and oh my gosh, it ruined the entire week. Am I confusing something that's possible with something that's likely? Yes, if your proposal gets rejected, it's possible that you could get your job cut and then you would be unemployed. How likely is that to happen? Are your reactions based on feelings or facts? That keeps coming up in the cognitive part of any of our cognitive behavioral therapies. Communication, we find that a lot of times when we're dealing with people who have anger management issues, one of the biggest stumbling blocks that's led them to where they're at right now is they haven't had the ability to effectively communicate their wants, needs and feelings prior to now. So they feel misunderstood. They feel like nobody listens. They feel like they're being ignored because they're not effectively communicating. Part of communication too though is listening. So they're not hearing what the other person needs and wants. Then they may both be kind of fighting against the same brick wall. So effective communication. One person talks at a time. Person number one states her position. Person number two listens and paraphrases what she thinks she heard. Now, if person number one says something and person number two says, so what I'm hearing is you think I never show up for any of these meetings and the reason we failed to get our proposal accepted was all my fault. Person one would be like, where'd you get that from? So then person number two, person number one can come back and go either. Well, yeah, that's right or no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is and states it again, go back and forth until person number one's message is understood by person number two. Then person number two gets to say, well, my perspective is blah, blah, blah and person number one has to paraphrase until they're both understanding one another. Once people practice this a little bit, generally the first few times people have this kind of discussion. It goes back and forth quite a bit because they're so used to mind reading and they're so used to forecasting and they're so used to anticipating that a lot of that goes on. But once they get used to paraphrasing and actually stopping and listening without imposing their own expectations on a conversation, it goes a lot faster. When communicating, try to start out with something positive. I appreciate that you came in here to talk to talk with me today or I appreciate, you know, have this conversation with my kids a lot. I appreciate how hard you've been working to get your chores done every single day. One thing I'd like for you to do focus on a little bit more is, you know, for me, it's getting the corners underneath the cabinets when you mop the floor. It just, it bugs me when there's gunk in the corners. I try not to use the word but because but nullifies everything that you said before that. I really appreciate what you were doing but you need to do this, which says, you know, I'm just kind of using a lead-in and I don't really mean it. Try to eliminate but and try to eliminate however. I had one employee who used to, every time she'd get ready to say but, she would stop and go, however, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I was like, well, that's the same as but. So let's talk about what the issue is. No interrupting. If someone is talking, let them talk. Let them say what they need to say before you expect or forecast that you know what they're going to say. So you can just cut them off. One problem at a time. No lit needs have done me wrongs. Focus on one thing. If you're irritable or frustrated with your kids because they're not bringing down their laundry but you're also frustrated because they haven't been doing their homework and they haven't been going to bed on time and they haven't been, you know, the litany. Don't dump all that on them at once. Talk about one thing. Then move on to the next. Identify your part in the situation. If any, you know, sometimes, you know, especially like as a parent, I can identify where it's my fault that I have let them get away with doing without doing something for a while before I called them on it. So I can identify my part in it and then we talk about what the solutions are. Use objective measurable language. Starting off a conversation by going, you are so stupid. No, not so much. Doesn't help anybody for anything. Objective measurable language. Own your feelings and say, I get frustrated when you leave your underwear in the middle of your bedroom floor. That is something the person can address. If I say I get frustrated because you're such a slob, then the person may be going, well, I don't see a problem, so I'm not sure what you're honing in on and telling me I'm a slob. And slob is not nice and it will put the other person on defensive. Yeah. Avoid using all or nothing terms. You never do the dishes. You never pick up after yourself. Avoid catastrophizing. Well, you know, we've kind of talked about that and always propose solutions. So, you know, when I have a discussion with my kids about, you know, their chores not getting done, then I propose one to three solutions of, well, we could do this, this or this. What do you think would work best for you? And generally, I have a part in it too because I'm addressing what my part in the situation was. Compassion. Instead of staying angry at yourself for doing something wrong or failing at something, think about what your values are regarding how to treat people and would you treat and treat yourself that way? So, if you view yourself as compassionate, if you view yourself as caring, treat yourself that way. If you're saying things to yourself that you would never say to anybody else, yes, it's a clue, think what you would say to your child. And, you know, if you do something wrong or you fail at something, identify what you can learn from the situation. The only way we learn is if we kind of get outside of our comfort zone. Instead of staying angry at others, using compassion by thinking about what your values are regarding how to treat them and choosing a consistent course of action. If somebody does something that really gets under your skin, how can you be compassionate towards them? Take a breath, let it go. Maybe, maybe if it's a co-worker, take a breath and let it go and then go find them, you know, 15 minutes or half an hour later or something and be like, hey, you seem like you're having a bad day today. Is there anything I can do to help? Identify three alternate reasons, something that irritated you may have happened. And I use the slow cashier because most of us have experienced that. If you get irritated or if, you know, your kids are getting frustrated, they're like, really, are we ever going to get home? And they start blaming the cashier for being too slow. You know, I'm like, let's think about why he or she may be going slow. Are they doing the best they can do? You know, we're very blessed that we have, you know, a lot of skills and tools at our disposal. Not everybody has that. What might have happened leading up to this that causes them to go slower today? Or just, you know, think about if you were in that person's position and you were going really slow, what might it be like in your head? What might be going on that's just slowing up the works? If it's trying to manipulate others to do something for you or to get attention, do it yourself. So if you're getting angry at somebody because you want them to get up and get something to drink, get you something to drink and they're just sitting there watching TV, get up and do it yourself. You know, anger at them is only trying to manipulate them and train them to do what you want them to do. Self-esteem, lack of self-esteem contributes to constantly seeking external approval and being hypersensitive, hypersensitive to threats of rejection or isolation. Anytime somebody looks at you cross-side, you're just offended. So working on self-esteem, being confident in who you are, confident in your values and not needing every single other person in the world to say, you're all right. Now we all need some people to give us validation. You know, that's just part of being in an interdependent society, but needing everyone to like you is very, very different. Values-based activities build self-esteem. So it's important that people do things that are consistent with their values intentionally. So if you have a value of being compassionate, each day, try to do something compassionate for someone else. People with self-esteem issues may get very angry if they perceive rejection because maybe a stranger on the street gives them an ugly look. So if their initial response is to get offended and get angry and be like, I wonder what was wrong with him, that's going to have a much different outcome than if their response was, oh, golly, that person must be having a really bad day. If somebody does something and you automatically take it as a personal rejection, figure out where that fits into your values of being confident and being selfish word or whatever, you know. If your initial response is to lash out, again, you want to look at what are your values and what activities can you do that are consistent instead of lashing out? Part of this is also generally modeling because you're modeling effective coping skills to everyone around you, not just your kids, people, just any old person that you work with, that you encounter, they see and through observational learning, we learn a lot of stuff. You know, I learned a ton from my first two practicum advisors and it wasn't so much what they actually sat down and taught me. It was observing how they worked with clients and how they worked with fellow staff, team members. And if somebody, you know, seems like they're having a bad day, what happens if you smile and say good morning? If your initial reaction may be just to be like, well, if you're having a bad day, you know, you can just go jump in a lake somewhere. But if you force yourself to do the opposite and smile and say good morning, they may not reciprocate or they may, but at least you didn't contribute to making their day worse. So self-esteem enhancement planning. I didn't want to say treatment planning because, you know, it's not always treatment. First thing people want to do is figure out who they are. What are their values? What do they stand for right now? If somebody had to write a description of them or a biography of them right now, what would it be like? And then who they want to be. And this really focuses on not who your mom wants you to be, not who your spouse wants you to be, not who the media tells you you should be, but who do you want to be? What values are important to you? Go back to those top five values. Identify things you can do each and every week or even each and every day to build on them or to reinforce them. Keep a journal each day of what you did to embody your values. Five values, five pages in a journal. Each day, add something to each page or focus on a value a day. So you have five values. There's five days in a work week. So Monday's Compassion, Tuesday is forgiveness, Wednesday is dedication, whatever it is for you. And then write a journal or at least reflect on how it felt to embody that particular value that day. Self-esteem can also be done or self-esteem work can be done through the mirror exercises. You are the friends you keep. So I would say to somebody, I want you to tell me about your friends, your good friends. What characteristics do they have? Because generally the characteristics they have are the same ones you have. So we go through and make a list of the characteristics they have, but then I encourage clients to write those characteristics in, you know, eyebrow pencil or whatever on their mirror because their friends are a reflection of themselves. So if their friends are really awesome, then guess what? They probably are really awesome too. The way to go list and you can do this. I've done this as either tearing down a brick wall or building up eggs. If there are things that somebody wants to accomplish, if there are goals they have in order to become the person they want to be, we make a brick wall out of construction paper and each brick is a goal they have to help them achieve being who they want to be. And each time they achieve one of those goals, they take a brick out and by the time they finish their treatment plan, the brick wall is gone, which means the obstacle to them becoming who they want to be is gone. The other one which kind of works in the opposite is building up eggs and forgive me for my impersonation right now, but we have chickens and when our chickens lay an egg, they make this sound and my son identified when he was really little, we first started having chickens. He said the chicken did a good thing and I said, what and the chickens make a sound something like and in his mind that was the chicken saying I did a good thing. I did a good thing and I know y'all are just like rolling in the aisles laughing right now, but you know it's all good but building up eggs and this works a little bit better for kids because you're building up something instead of tearing it down, but every time they do something on their treatment plan or every time they do something that embodies their values, they get an egg and it sits under their chicken and their pile of eggs just builds up as they do more and more good things. So their self-esteem also builds up and there I'm sure there are other metaphors that you can use, but those are the two that I generally use. People also need to develop motivational sayings to repeat to themselves when they feel rejected. What's a saying they can tell themselves about acceptance? Whether they're accepting themselves or whether they have other people that accept them. When they feel like they failed, what can they tell them about prior success themselves about prior successes or about what they can learn what they gained from that failure. When they feel uneasy about the unknown, what can they tell themselves about taking chances and the benefits that those have had before and in the past when they felt a loss of control, what's happened and what can they tell themselves about trusting the process or trusting themselves or having faith in themselves or the higher power or other people. So for our basic threats, we want to have some motivational and strengths-based sayings that when we start to feel that threat, we can go, I got this. Wellness skills and I know we're running short of time here. Increase the happy. You can't be angry and happy at the same time. So if you focus on saying, you know, today I am going to be happy and make sure you put things in there. Don't just tell yourself, I'm going to be happy, but put things in your day that make you happy and focus on the small things. You know, I love jumping spiders and so I ended up reading about jumping spiders this morning while I was drinking my coffee. They're just like little fuzzy eight-legged teddy bears that eat ants and I don't like ants. Anyhow, don't sweat the small stuff. It's a good book, but it also is just a good principle. If you're going to stay healthy and well, getting caught up in every little hiccup is going to be exhausting and you won't have energy left to be happy. Keep a gratitude journal, things that you're grateful for each day. Add one or two things to it every single day. Put a priority on relaxation. We need to relax to let our body rejuvenate. So it's not optional. It's not something that, okay, I'll relax on Saturday. Even if it's only 15 minutes, give yourself a relaxation break every day. Limit as many irritants as possible. We can only handle so much in a day. So, you know, try to portion out any irritants that you have to do. So they're not all on one day. So maybe do the bills one day and return phone calls the next day or return phone calls in the morning and do bills in the afternoon. Counter every negative with a positive that helps you keep a balance, get quality sleep, eat a healthy diet, exercise because we know that reduces pain and improves serotonin and improves mood and address pain issues. Know yourself and be your best friend. That goes back to temperament, too. And we've talked about temperament and treatment. If you need downtime every day, make sure to take it. If you need more of a schedule, if you don't do so well, if everything's just kind of all up in the air and loosey-goosey, know that and assert that that's something that you need in your relationships. But be your best friend. Try to be accommodating to your own needs. Develop a social support system and make your environments plural, welcoming and comfortable. This can be your home, your office and your car or whatever you it is that you ride on the way to work. Try to make as many of your environments as pleasurable as possible. Angers are a response to a threat. Children perceive many things as threatening. So a single event like a barking dog can be overgeneralized. As adults, we can help them challenge those beliefs, but a lot of us as adults haven't challenged our own beliefs that have been overgeneralized. So we may need to go back and do that. Level the playing field by taking care of yourself like you would take care of your child, which means be compassionate. Don't push through just because you're grown up and you're supposed to be compassionate to yourself. Address your vulnerabilities. Learn about your anger triggers. Develop coping strategies to deal with threats of rejection, isolation, failure, the unknown and loss of control. Identify your values and values consistent reactions to threats and put them on a note card or on your smartphone so you can access them when you are triggered because then you're not thinking as clearly and you're not as able to come up with the new solutions. Learn ways to deescalate yourself, whether that's through breathing, using a strength-based coping mantra, disengaging either mentally and or physically, taking a walk, phoning a friend, distracting yourself for a minute and urge or feelings surf. Practice, practice, practice. If you practice using these when you are not in the midst of an anger situation with someone else, you will be more able to do it when you are with other people. And keep an anger log to track your progress because progress can be incremental, but you can look back over three months of an anger log and go, hey, I'm doing good. So encourage people to keep an anger log. Are there any questions? If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceuse.com slash counselor toolbox. This episode has been brought to you in part by allceuse.com, providing 24-7 multi-media continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. Use coupon code counselor toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.