Stress, the Holidays and Anger Management
Posted on April 13, 2010 by Moira Killoran, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
How well do you handle your anger? This article suggests the SAFER approach for dealing with our hot buttons in times of stress.
Just recently, a few days before a family holiday, I was driving my 5 and 8 year old daughters to a dance class, when I gave them an impromptu vocabulary lesson. A guy (in a white pick-up, in case you see him) pulled around me and cut me off. I rolled down my window, and started to say to him “excuse me I was making a turn” when he looked me right in the eye and yelled “B*tch!” I was so shocked I paused for a split second and yelled “a**hole” right back at him. You can imagine my delight when my daughters asked what “a**hole” meant. Anger is human. We all get angry. I am sure all of you have some kind of similar story (although perhaps you used better language…). When you add to the picture the stresses that the holidays can bring, such as extra responsibilities, shopping, social settings that bring on intrusive questions, the pressure of the current economy, it can be a challenging time. People often struggle with a wide range of emotions, due to high expectations and disappointments, both for the holidays and for reflecting on the passing of another year. Overindulgence in food and drink also can contribute to the stress. A recent local news story amplifies the importance of greater self-awareness of our emotional triggers (from the subtle intrusive question to the not-so-subtle “b*tch” yelled in your face). A young mother needed to “get out of the kitchen” suddenly in the middle of cooking a holiday dinner— and was rescued the next day after spending the night lost in the woods with just a light jacket to keep her warm. So what can we do? “Short fuse” situations, like my vocabulary-teaching car incident, is a time when we can most clearly feel how anger is not just “all in the mind” but is very much in our bodies. With my little incident, I felt hot, I felt like I had been slapped. When people are angry, they often say things like “I felt like I had a big fist in my chest.” And our bodies do of course, respond very physically, the hairs do stand up on the back of your neck, the muscles throughout your body do tense up, your heart and respiration rate do increase dramatically. And not only is anger very physical in nature, but our sense of time becomes distorted. We become locked so firmly in the moment that we can’t think about the possible consequences of yelling “a**hole “ at a (young, tough looking) stranger. Conquering our own anger is one step. This usually involves becoming more aware of our own body signals, when we are getting more “pumped up,” so that we listen more carefully to when we are about to “boil over.” An acronym that I have developed for this is S.A.F.E. “S” stands for stepping back: This is best done by a physical action to counter the physicality of the anger we are experiencing. We can do this by pinching ourselves, or take many deep breathes. “A” is for ask: what’s the story I am telling myself? The victim story is the most common, as in, “how dare he drive in front of me!” The question is to get ourselves out of the immediate moment and into an observer mode. If we can break ourselves out of the moment, we can see how we need to examine the Frame (“F”) for the encounter. How am I going to see this situation at a later date? Will it be a story about how important it was to make that right turn when it was my turn or about teaching my kids profanity… And finally “E” is for exit, in this case, letting him pass, setting a boundary, and leaving the current scenario so that we can find a way out of the immediacy of the present moment and chart a new course. Sometimes however, our stress is compounded by being with chronically angry people, whether at home or at work. S.A.F.E. works there as well, with an added “R” for Response (S.A.F.E.R). Angry situations escalate because usually we are “mirroring” the other person’s state. They raise their voices, we raise our voices. They use bad language, we use bad language. They tense up their muscles, get their heart rates going, we do the same. To de-escalate angry situations, we need to stop matching behavior. Anger is really just an attempt to get control of a situation. If you remain in control of yourself, you have less motivation to stay angry. Rather than “mirror” the other person, you can hold the mirror up to the other person, so that they feel heard: “I can tell by your voice that you are upset. I would like to discuss this with you, but I will be better able to focus if we talk more quietly, can we start again?” In some instances however, we need to send with the E for Exit strategy, until the person is in a better position to hear your response. In my situation, whether or not he heard me match his anger with “a**hole,” I am glad I had at least learned the Exit piece of my plan, and let him speed along on his merry way.