Anger Management Options You Don’t Have
By Michael Ballard, MA, LPC on Saturday, December 24th, 2016 in Anger Management. No Comments
Anger Management Options
Anger Management OptionsMany people think the best way to solve their anger problems is to change someone else. But there is a problem with this line of thinking. Relying on someone else to change to help you get better is not good strategy. It is not going to work. Relationship therapists understand this and direct the angry partners into anger management therapy.
Can’t Control Other People
You have to do the work if you are going to get better. You have to control what you can control, and you can’t control other people. You don’t get better by waiting for someone else to improve. In all of the statements above someone else has control of your anger management. But the truth is, if you are going to get better, you have to take control of your anger. Not them. You.
For a lot of people, they have allowed someone else to have control of their anger. Whether they get angry or not is entirely dependent on what someone else does. For these people, their anger is dependent on another person.
For instance, if a car cuts them off, they get angry. If car drives well, they don’t. If someone treats them with respect, then everything will be ok. But if someone is rude, then they get mad.
I once had a client walk in the office with a t-shirt that said, “I don’t have any anger problem, I have an idiot problem.” He told me that if there weren’t so many idiots in this world he would be find (and he wouldn’t need my help!).
The problem with this thinking
This client’s reasoning doesn’t work. Let’s think about it for a minute.
Do you really think that you are going to improve your anger management by waiting until everyone around you gets better? It’s just not going to happen that way.
Let’s say, for instance, that you have problems with road rage. Do you honestly think the best strategy for dealing with your road rage is to wait for all the people in your town to learn how to drive? If you are waiting for that, you re going to be waiting a long time! You could come to anger management class every week for the next ten years, and you would still be angry.
I am not saying that this is easy. But it doesn’t work for you to wait for them to improve before you get better.
Can’t Change Others
The hard truth is that you can’t change any other person in this world other than yourself.
I often have clients come in and say, “my wife is so critical and it makes me angry and I explode. How do I get her to stop being critical?”
This client is asking the wrong question. The key is not getting someone else to change; the key is getting you to change. We can’t wait for th outside world to get better before we control our anger. It doesn’t work that way. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn’t.
When navigating your options, it is important to understand that there are limits to what you can control. You have to control what you can control.
And getting someone else to change is NOT an option, because it is not something that you can control. You can’t change another person. That’s not possible. You only have control of your actions.
As we said earlier, you can threat a person. You can argue with a person. You can give a convincing, logical presentation to a person. You can bribe a person. You can make them a power point presentation. You can even hold a gun up to a person’s head. But no matter what you try, you do not have the power to control another person. You cannot make another person do anything. You just can’t.
Michael Ballard, MA, LPC
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