News

Manage Anger Before it Manages You: For Teens and Adults

June 2nd, 2008

One-on-One with Geraldine Katovich of the Anger Clinic in Chicago

By Anne Marie Cummings

"According to the Buddha's teaching, the most basic condition for happiness is freedom.  Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion.  These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons.  As long as these poisons are still in our heart, happiness cannot be possible."            Thich Nhat Hanh

The weekend I interviewed Geraldine Katovich of the Anger Clinic, there were 36 shootings, with a total of nine deaths in Chicago.   Some say the shootings and the deaths were because of the first days of summer weather, some say they were drug related, and while either of those explanations may be true, maybe the primary reason was an inability for people to manage their anger.  Using the word anger one might feel a sense of helplessness, and the reasons for that are clear, our society has had very little experience in learning how to manage escalating emotions.  With all the violence continuing in the world today, is there any wonder?

Today anger kills people.  Why?  People "stuff" anger and they don't know what to do with it, then it becomes too much.  This is when anger becomes overwhelming.  It becomes mismanaged - that's basically what anger is.  At the Anger Clinic we basically say that anger costs.  It costs you your friends, your job, and your family.  You can only be happy living life on your terms, and only your opinions matter.  That's what we try to get across to people -- that when someone else's opinion starts to matter, then you are living life on their terms.  And for couples - you're still entitled to your opinions, but we encourage goal mates, not soul mates.  That is, two people have similar goals, they're working towards those same goals, but they don't give up living life on their own terms.  Even when they fight, they are still working towards the same goals.  The moment you start living life on someone else's terms, you're both dancing, but to different music; and you can never be happy that way.

Is it negative to feel angry?  Anger is neither good nor bad; it's neutral.  It's an emotional response to a grievance.  It's how we manage it that becomes good or bad.   Some people are so angry they kill themselves, eat themselves to death, slit their wrists, hurt others - this is not managing anger, this is giving in to it, and letting it get the better of you.

Is anger ever justified?  Anger doesn't need to be justified; it is a legitimate human emotion.  But behavior that arises out of mindless, mismanaged anger cannot be justified.  Mismanaged anger is a consequence of negative, mistaken attitudes. Such attitudes have nothing to do with the requirements of the reality of the situation. The antidote would be to replace inappropriate anger attitudes with appropriate ones so anger can be expressed in constructive ways.

What do you do at the Anger Clinic to help people deal with their anger?  Being on the receiving end, we have to know how it feels.  We teach people new skills.  Anger is like a tug of war: we have the choice of either picking up the rope, or letting it go.  So one of the skills we teach is learning not to pick up the rope when someone else is conducting mischief, when someone else keeps picking up the rope and picking up the rope.  One of our anger management tools is the power of choice. People keep making the same mistakes because no one ever told them what their other options are. They come in to the Anger Clinic feeling discouraged and unable to cope, but after people meet with us about managing their anger, they leave with many new choices and specific new tools.

You used the word mischief, what do you mean by that?  There are two kinds of behavior in the world today: positive and negative.  Positive behavior is not the problem.  Positive behavior does not make us angry.  Negative behavior does.  When we don't understand the message of negative behavior, we make the following mistakes:  we take it personally, we try to make the offender understand the errors of his ways.  When those fail we then sometimes take it further by punishing the behavior, or making things worse instead of better.  Making things worse instead of better is what we call mischief.  Mischief is that which does not need to be done, that which does not need to be said.  Mischief can be active or passive, legal or illegal, overt or covert, moral or immoral. 

And the characteristics of mischief are?  Self-indulgence, counter-productive, self-destructive, escalating, exciting, but negative.

Why do people act mischievously?  People act mischievously to get across the message they are angry instead of just simply saying they are angry.  When we don't understand what is going on below the surface, we feel out of control and inadequately prepared to cope.  To relieve these painful feelings, we sometimes lash out in self-defense.  We drive people away from us with counter-productive overreactions.  And then they make the same mistake when we make mischief at their expense: they drive us away from them.  The result?  Our relationships fail, our lives are impoverished by these losses, we cannot keep these losses from happening, we have never learned what is causing them nor how to stop them.  This is why we need to learn the hidden lessons of mischief.  Some people will say they are doing something for another person out of good intentions, but good intentions are only good for the person who's having the good intentions, they're not good for the person they're intended for.  The first good intention we've each experienced was most likely from a person who's influenced us growing up - primarily it's the parents, but it can be a teacher, or a coach.  Good intentions are a form of mischievous behavior.

What's the purpose of mischievous behavior?  To maintain and perpetuate negative attitudes and feelings about oneself that were acquired in childhood.  Negative attitudes such as, "I'm still inadequate to cope," or "I'm still useless, stupid, and inferior."  The best attitude to have is to be a healthy human being.  That choice is not open to people who hold themselves in contempt. 

When someone acts mischievously, what are they hoping to achieve?  Four things:  attention, power/control, revenge, and withdrawal.  Let's start with attention.  When people want attention it can make you feel annoyed and irritated.  So if you're on the computer trying to write up a report for school and people are all around you telling you what to research, what to write, what to do, they keep you busy with them; they have your attention.  With power/control...when you're in line at the grocery store and the person behind you bumps into you with his cart, not just once but repeatedly, because he's standing in line and he's running late for his next appointment, you feel frustrated.  That's why every year we hear about these huge fights at Easter, and at Christmas time.  People are out of control, and they're trying to restore their power/control by dominating you.  With revenge...when you've been hurt and you want to get even, it can come out in four different ways: physically, emotionally, financially, or mentally.  You may end up say something to someone to get back at them, you might destroy part of their property, steal their money, or hit them to get even.  And then there's withdrawal...this is when a person gets you to give up on them, which means that that person can then give up on themselves.  So what you end up feeling is that you just don't care anymore, you're worn down, discouraged.  And this can come from your kid, your partner, a teacher, or a boss.

So how do we disengage from another person's mischief?  Do the unexpected.  Whatever he expects you to do, don't do it.  Whatever is the last thing he expects you to do, do that instead.  So first agree with him, and then reduce his mischief to absurdity, by saying something like, "Talk louder, the people next door can't hear you."  The third thing you can do is to consider the source, "It's only Fred making mischief again."  Fourth, use the power of choice: instead of reacting, you can choose how you are going to respond to his provocation, or you can choose to let it go by dropping the rope.  Fifth, take control of your emotions.  You can take control by disengaging emotionally. 

What do you mean by disengaging emotionally?  Disengage emotionally does not mean ignore.  Disengage emotionally means you know what is going on and you are responding appropriately using your adult judgment.  When you disengage emotionally you are disengaging from a person's mischief, not from him as a person.  One way is with your feet, by walking away on your own terms.  Disengage does not mean building yourself up by tearing another person down.  The sixth thing you can do is observe what happens when you disengage successfully.  Very often the mischief stops. 

What does taking it personally mean?  It means taking a negative event as if it were a reflection on your worth as a person, which it is not. You are a worthwhile human being in spite of what happened. The more self-respect you have, the sooner you will bounce back from the slights and disappointments of everyday life.

How do we learn to not take things personally? By replacing self-doubt with self-respect.  Your worth as a person is not the issue, and you can choose to stop behaving as if it were.  You can assume appropriate responsibility for identifying the problem at hand and resolving it.  When people come in for anger counseling we tell them what it means to take things personally - taking it as a reflection on our self-worth.  Most of us outgrow this literality, but some of us are still doing it thirty years later.  Parents, for example, are so caught up in their child's problems that they leave themselves out of the equation.  At the Anger Clinic we take steps to put parents back in the picture as self-respecting human beings, not as "Punching Bags," "Unsuccessful Controllers," "Misguided Pleasers," or "Suffering Martyrs."  These are all phony roles and they only make things worse.  Before we can make things better, we have to find out how we are making things worse and stop.  We cannot control our child positively if we are out of control ourselves.  We cannot control anyone positively if we do not know who we are. 

So what do I do instead of taking something personally?  First of all don't take what's being said as if it makes any sense.  Mischief words - words meant to hurt us - are being said not because they make sense in the English language, but because they have an effect on us.  They're absurd.  Do not have the good intention to teach the person who's saying mischievous things their errors.  Their behavior is not rational.  Their behavior arises out of inappropriate attitudes from the past that have never been unlearned.  You cannot make them understand.  Once you are aware of what's going on, you can disengage emotionally. 

Many parents and communities are surprised when a teenager does something like commit suicide or kill a group of students in a classroom.  Why are we not aware of the intense emotions going on in young people today?  Today kids are pushed so hard.  I've seen so many kids with what I call "Baseball Dads."  A Baseball Dad is an over ambitious parent who decides what their child should be by pushing them into a career or a college because they see that their child has some talent in a certain field.  Baseball Dads are usually fathers who were once baseball players who didn't make it all the way as a baseball player, so the Baseball Dad pushes his son, but the son doesn't want to play baseball, but because he loves his dad, he does it for him, and the dad keeps pushing him and pushing him.  These kids come and talk to me about how much they hate baseball, and how much they hate the fact that their dads are making sure they're high on the batting list.  Kids talk to me about how much they'd rather be watching a movie at night relaxing after doing their homework as opposed to going out on the batting range to practice.  Some of these kids have literally blown out their arms as pitchers so they don't have to play, some mentally break, some attempt suicide.  I can't tell you how many kids I've seen like this.

Why haven't young people learned how to express their anger in healthy ways?   Because in the moment, when a young person is angry, they act impulsively.  There's no stopping and thinking about what they're going to do or say first - it's all reaction.

So it's a good idea to express our anger.  Exactly, but for young people, it often falls into the laps of how parents teach their children or set the example for them in learning how to manage their emotions.  Some parents don't help their children express their anger.  Some parents cause their children to "stuff" their anger.

How do they do that?  By telling them, "Oh, it's going to be better - it'll be better tomorrow."  They ignore their child's feelings because they want their child to be happy, they don't want to see their child sad.  But by not acknowledging their child's feelings they cause their child to "stuff" their anger.  They don't want to accept that their child is unhappy.  When one brother has destroyed another brother's school project and says to one of his parents, "I hate my brother," the parent will sometimes say, "Oh, you don't really hate him."  By responding this way the parent is ignoring the reality that at that moment their son really does hate his brother.  The parent, without realizing it, will say things that force the child into stuffing his emotions.  What the parent is doing is "stuffing" that his brother is frustrated - when in reality the parent ought to say to their child, "Oh, this is really frustrating.  I can see why you're so angry."  This gives a child a sense of control.  It relieves the pain of his frustration.  By acknowledging what the child is feeling, then you get the feelings out, you make the child more secure, more sensitive to others, you make him smarter, you calm him down, and once he calms down, he'll know what to say to repair the situation.  He'll learn to take time.  The key thing is that the child will end up saying, "Mom gets it.  Mom understands."  This is emotional coaching.  Whenever someone is going through something stressful, we teach people to respond with, "Well this must be very frustrating.  This must be very sad for you right now."  We don't support someone saying, "Come on, buckle up, you're a guy."  You stop and let children pick up the conversation after you say, "It must be very lonely since so and so moved away." If they're having problems in a class, you say, "It must be frustrating to get through this math class."  Then you stop and let them pick it up.  It's important to a let child know - you acknowledge the feelings, you accept it, you welcome it, and then that allows the child to release the bad feelings - that way they are not holding it in.

How do you explain what's happening to the younger generation today?  Take the Columbine school killing for example, and look at the four reasons that I just mentioned that make us angry.  Those kids had our attention, they had power/control, they had revenge, and then they withdrew by committing suicide.  They had nationwide attention: they had everyone's attention when they walked into the cafeteria.  They had guns: they had power over life and death.  They got revenge:  they killed the jocks who made fun of them; and they withdrew: they knew they wouldn't get out alive, they knew the police would surround the place and arrest them, and they knew they'd be tried as adults, so they gave up by killing themselves.  Withdrawing from the world with suicide is a form of anger.  And with withdrawal there's not always a suicide ending - a woman killed her three kids and she waited to see her husband suffer through the trial.  That was her revenge, but once she got to prison she mentally withdrew - that's a case where it didn't end in death. 

What about the student from Northern Illinois University?  He had been in counseling - and counseling didn't work, so clearly he wasn't managing his anger appropriately.  But with him, he was off of his medication.  There's a line between mental illness and anger and at some point you do have to draw that line.  This kid was clearly mentally ill, so we can't blame it all on anger, he was mentally ill.  The Columbine high school - that had all the guide posts of anger, 9/11 - that was anger - they said what the revenge was and they withdrew. 

What are the attitudes behind the bully mentality?  "I'm terrified of being wrong so I had better be right."  "Anyone who says I'm wrong is a threat to my existence as I have defined it."  "If one is not perfect, one is worthless." "Anyone who does not meet my definition of perfect is worthless."  "Worthless things deserve to be destroyed."  "If I am not in perfect control, I am out of control." "I like myself the way I am.  Why should I change?  Then I'd be like you." 

How do we identify what's motivating our anger?  I have put together a list called "Could It Be."  This list consists of things we can ask ourselves after we've gotten angry.  It's important that we do our homework and learn from our emotions that are not managed.  It's important that we learn from mischievous behavior.  Here are some examples:

ü      Could it be that you wanted your own way?  You wanted to show everyone who is boss?
ü      Could it be that you wanted to hurt others as much as you feel hurt yourself?
ü      Could it be that you felt insignificant?
ü      Could it be that you felt that you were trying your best but weren't appreciated?
ü      Could it be that you had to feel successful at all costs in order to prove yourself?
ü      Could it be that you hesitated to be certain that you would not make a foolish mistake?
ü      Could it be that you wanted people to feel sorry for you and give in to you?
ü      Could it be that you didn't talk in order to frustrate someone and make them feel helpless?
ü      Could it be that you wanted to make someone feel guilty and sorry for what they did to you?

There are a lot of wonderful parents out there, but some can be like the "Baseball Dad" that you described earlier.  What traps do parents need to be careful not to fall into?  In my experience there are four detrimental traps that parents with "good intentions" want to avoid falling into.  The first is the "Over Ambitious Parent."  This is the parent I described earlier. They decide what the child will be when the child grows up.  We all have dreams and hopes for our children, but the difference comes when we push them.  A child can't go and play because they have to volunteer at the homeless shelter because that will look good on their college application.  A child has no life and all they're doing is what they're supposed to do.  The only friends a child has is whomever they run into with their projects.  What this parent ends up doing is teaching their child that until he's reached a certain point, he's nothing.  The sad thing about this is that it might take twenty years, or sixteen years before they get there, and whose terms is the child living life on?  We can only be happy living life on our own terms.  We can not be happy living life on anyone else' terms; that's the major problem.  What if the child doesn't want to do what the parents want them to do?  He becomes a lawyer when he wants to be a musician, but he's still living life on the parents' terms - the problem is he doesn't need to win the parents over.    It's always a problem when a parent says, "I'm not going to pay for you to learn music."  This pushes the child into doing what the parent wants.  If a child doesn't want to be an attorney, but a musician, he needs to say it and do it.  This is a healthy child.  Then there's the trap of becoming the "Overly Critical Parent."  This parent says, "I only want you to be the best you can be."  With this parent there is constant criticism.  "If you study harder, you'll have an A instead of a B."  "If you worked harder, you could be first instead of second."  Non-stop, non-stop criticism.  The reality is, the child could care less - it's all in the parent's head, but by the time the child is five years old, they're either no longer making decisions, or every decision they make has to be perfect.  They end up driving everyone crazy trying to be perfect, or they give up making decisions entirely because they've been robbed of their ability of making decisions.  The "Over Indulgent Parent" spoils their child.  It's one of the worst traps for a parent and for the child it's nearly irreversible.  You can identify this person by how terribly they treat service people.  They get angry often because they're not used to the word no because someone in their life never said it.  These children grow up to be completely incapable of saving money because they think there's more around the corner.  Spoiling a child is the worst thing you can do to a child.  And last there's the "Over Protective Parent."  This is the parent who walks their child to the bus station when they're old enough to do that themselves.  In these situations, the parent is teaching the child that danger is always around the corner and that it's only a matter of time before something bad will happen.  Falling into this trap, the parent robs the child of believing that they do not deserve love, happiness, or success.  And when those good things do come around, the child will end up pushing them away because they believe something bad will happen; they sabotage goodness.  Usually these children pick one area of their life to sabotage.  For instance they might be okay on the love and job fronts, but when it comes to relationships, they go in and out of them. 

What would you say to children who have parents that have unfortunately fallen into the traps that you've mentioned above?  I would tell them to live life on their own independent terms.  I would tell them to catch themselves protecting others from the consequences of their actions.  I would tell them to do whatever reality requires, no more and no less, to use adult judgment, not inappropriate attitudes, roles, and expectations.  I would tell them to choose not to react out of attitudes from the past, and to not require perfection.  At the Anger Clinic we teach others to seek improvement, not perfection. 

The Anger Clinic was established in 1972 by Mitchell H. Messer, M.A. Its purpose was to fill the gap left by most practitioners who were reluctant to concentrate on anger issues. The feeling among counselors then was that anger was a "secondary" emotion, a distraction from the "real" issues confronting their clients. Most often, they sidestepped anger because of its volatility, intensity and destructive potential. Typically, anger was medicated out of existence, denied or punished. One symptom of mismanaged anger stems from suppression. People hold back their anger completely until it builds out of control and explodes, often at the wrong time and for the wrong reason. The headlines are full of these events: child abuse, domestic violence, suicide, homicide, mass murder.


Geraldine M. Katovich MS, MHP, is the Executive Director of the Anger Clinic in Chicago.   A graduate of Southern Illinois University and Reid College, Geraldine is the proud mother of four grown children.  She was previously Vice President and Director of Quality Assurance at a community behavioral health center on the West Side of Chicago.  She has long been involved as a liaison with the Departments of Correction, Probation, Circuit Court, and Drug & Substance Abuse to provide services to clients leaving their facilities to meet mandates and is keenly aware of the rules, and regulations to be followed, as well as HIPAA and state confidentiality guidelines. She is a State of Illinois licensed polygraph examiner and a qualified HIV counselor and tester. Having been involved in not-for-profit organizations, Geraldine is also aware of the lack of services for anger counseling available to the above populations, who need it most and often can not afford it.  She negotiates a win-win solution with clients who need services, but have no ability to pay, by offering them job contacts, vocational training linkage, and a generous sliding scale arrangement along with anger management counseling/education.

 

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