How Do You Deal With Anger?

July 27, 2012

Interview with John Lee, author of the book The Anger Solution: The Proven Method for Achieving Calm and Developing Healthy, Long-Lasting Relationships

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Mike Carruthers:
Funny thing about anger - people get angry all the time and yet…

John Lee:
The words you will very seldom ever hear a lover, a wife, a spouse, a boss or an employee ever say to anybody is, “I’m angry”
 

John Lee, author of The Anger Solution...

Most people tend to repress it, swallow it, and bottle it up and then it comes exploding out – that does not work for most people. But it’s what we’ve grown accustom to and it’s what we’ve seen others do to us.

John says, if we express our anger at the time we’re angry instead of bottling it up it actually makes life easier. For example…

“John, I need to say I’m angry about you coming in late for work today and I don’t want it to happen again”- we’re done, let’s go eat lunch. But rage is... "I’m going to tell you about all the times you’ve come in late to work, all the times that I didn’t say anything about it" – and very often that’s filled with so much inappropriate language that you probably won’t even be listened to by anyone.

The problem with letting anger bottle up and then explode, as rage is at that point it really doesn’t help the original problem - in fact it causes new problems.

Rage pushes people out the door it has pushed millions of husbands and wives out the door, millions of adolescents out the door, millions of employees and customers - because nobody wants to be around it.