How can I re-direct my anger?

Q: Is there any one book you would recommend that deals with the physical and emotional details of anger and how to reroute it?

R: The book that best suits you will depend on your personal tastes and I do not know of one that is so good it could be recommended to everyone. There are hundreds of books on anger. Most of them have the theme of ‘what to do with anger’ i.e. what to do once you experience angry feelings.

I believe that this approach is missing the point.

Wrong way around

From my own practical hands-on experience of helping people to deal with their anger over some 22 years I believe that the most important thing to focus on is to NOT get angry in the first place.

Then you do not have to find ways of dealing with it, re-routing it, or getting rid of it.

Your hot buttons

As suggested in the main section on anger the key thing is to deal with the 'hot buttons' or triggers that precipitate the angry feelings and thoughts. Once these triggers have been activated and you are feeling angry it is too late to do anything other than avoid making things worse, by acting out your anger, or working at calming yourself down.

For example, someone with the anger habit is a bit like someone who has the habit of putting their finger on the hot-plate of an electric cooker. (OK, I agree that it's a bit more complex and subtle than this - but stay with the analogy for a moment). Once you do it you do not feel good - your finger hurts and is injured. So, of course, you now have to seek treatment for the injury and relief for the pain.

But what if you spend your time, in between anger bouts, looking for better treatments for burns or better ways of handling pain? Wouldn't it be better to learn to not put your finger on the hot-plate in the first place!

I suggest that you deal with your anger habit in two ways

Start recognising your hot buttons - the things that provoke your anger. Then change how you handle these. (See the anger section for more information on this.)
Understand the physiological and emotional changes that anger produces (in general, the fight and flight response is engaged - unlike people who respond to the unknown with fear you respond with anger - you want to fight rather than flee.) so that you know how to handle the symptoms once these occur.
Deal with these symptoms - while keeping a clear focus on the priority of not getting angry so often, so easily, so heatedly, etc. Deal with the symptoms through managing your breathing, relaxing physically, calming your thinking - and LEARNING from each anger episode so it is less likely to recur.

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Anger: can I re-direct it?