Wife2anaddict

Last night in my naranon meeting, we discussed the fear/anger connection. I was fascinated so I decided to do some perusing on the subject. I am posting from a site called hubby.net.

I don't want to get in trouble for not giving proper credit or for posting from another site, but this info was just TOO good to not share. Mods, please let me know if this is unacceptable??


One of the major problems we as men have is dealing with our anger. You have probably heard that this is because we have a hard time dealing with our emotions. Yet the fact of the matter is that men do deal with their emotions, but not necessarily in a constructive away.

Usually we deal with anger in two ways, either by stuffing it or by striking out.

Anger is an emotion, but like a cake it is made up of different ingredients. For instance, you might say, "That so and so made me angry". But under analysis you might discover that person didn't make you angry, it was just the way you responded to what they did. You could have just as well reacted in happiness or another type of emotion. It depends on the way you process the situation. The way you process the information is dependent on differing factors such as past experiences, upbringing, etc. Therefore our reaction is learned, not inherited. We learned to be angry.

Anger is an emotion and as such is reactive to the way we are thinking. Emotions follow thought and as such they are responders. What you are thinking is usually what you are feeling. If you are angry it is because you are thinking angry thoughts, or, thoughts that trigger the emotion of anger in you. Yet it is not the stimulation that makes you angry, it is your response to the stimulation. Our particular response individually is conditioned and learned over time.

Anger is an emotion. But it isn't as automatic as we often associate it. In fact, anger is a choice. Although we might excuse ourselves because we were tired, stressed, or by using a national and/or racial stereotypes, i.e.; Irish or Italian or Hispanic, or whatever. The truth none of these things have nothing to do with our anger. We get angry because we choose to be angry.

This is where we get the idea of "pushing someone's buttons". That simply means we know what we can do to get someone to act in a particular way. This is a knowledge that comes from observing them. "I know just how to get them angry!"

We all have this kind of knowledge of other people, and we like to use it too don't we? Yet we don't like it so much when other people find and push our buttons. This is why we wear such a mask all the time to hide them. Our mask is on most of the time to protect us against others who would expose our buttons.

That's why home is such a nice place to be - -sometimes. We can at least to a certain extent "let our hair down." We can take off the mask, relax our guard. We can be ourselves.

Men have a greater difficulty managing their emotions than women. The reasons for this are well known. For years we have heard that men were raised to not show their emotions. There is some truth to this assertion, although over the last twenty years or so it has changed as society norms have changed.

Most often when we talk about managing our anger we are really talking about controlling an emotion. That is really the key we are looking for. The problem is that we think that we have no control over our emotions. When we get angry we excuse ourselves by saying "I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself, I just got angry." It's like our outburst came out of the sky like a big bird and attacked us.

When I say that we choose to be angry it is because our anger is because emotions are simply responding to our thoughts. They are going to happen automatically to whatever we are thinking about. If we are thinking angry thoughts, we are going to be angry. Therefore, if we want to manage our anger, we are going to have to learn how to manage our thinking. We are going to have to modify our way of reacting to situations. We have to disable the buttons.

If we take a situation that we usually get angry at - for instance we can't find our car keys in the morning, we can dissect our reaction to see WHY we are getting angry so that we can modify our reaction. First a little values check. How much does getting angry help us find our keys? Not much when you think of it. We just get loud, wake up the family and the neighbors. But it is usually when we stop to take a breath and calm down that we find our keys. Usually right where we left them.

What happens when we notice they are gone is a process called the" Situational Reaction Matrix". The situation is that we cannot find our keys. Immediately our thoughts begin to access the problem according to the way we have learned to process this and similar situations.

Let me give you the usual thought pattern. 1) We can't find the keys. 2) We think, "Oh NO, now I'm going to be late for work!" As we continue to look for our keys we continue to get more and more agitated. The reason? Our thoughts begin to escalate towards the negative. Where we were thinking that we were going to be late, now we are thinking we are going to get into serious trouble, perhaps even fired. After that we start thinking, "Man, I'm going to get fired, lose my house, my car, I'll be on the street...."

Subsequently, because we are thinking fearful thoughts, anger becomes the result because the secondary reaction to fear is anger. It is like when you loose your kid in the store. At first you are fearful, then when you find them, you get angry and want to kill them. First the fear, then the anger.

Again, what have we really gained from all this expended energy? Not a thing. We have just produced a whole lot of energy reacting to subjective reasoning. The only real occurrence is that we have misplaced our keys. None of the other things we thought of were real. But just by thinking they were has produced anger in us. Wasted anger. Wasted energy.

In our relationship with our wife this happens all the time. While the example above shows just one of hundreds of situations that come to us every day. If we process them all in the same way we can only imagine what the result would be. We would be angry most of the day.

Many people live their entire life in the subjective realm. They fantasize about all the "could of and should haves" of life. Either living in the past or spinning furiously into the future (in their mind). This isn't reality, but fantasy -or subjective thinking.

The way to handle our anger is to keep our thinking objective. That is in the now, with what is actually happening. In the case of the keys that means to keep with the only problem present - the keys are missing. In other cases it means to keep focused only what is actually going on.

FEAR - THE REAL REASON BEHIND ANGER

Men who abuse their wives claim they just got angry. The fact is that they really are just fearful. Fear like anger is an emotion, and isn't in and of itself a wrong emotion. Fear is built into us to allow us to react to dangerous situations, just like in other animals. It is known scientifically as the "Fight or Flight" response. Many men shun the assertion that they are fearful --the macho idea that we are MEN and do not fear anyone! But we do fear, any man who doesn't think he fears of something is deceived or a liar.

Yet the problems come because we as humans have the rational ability to think in the future and past and fantasize about "what might happen". So in the case of a an abusive husband he might be fearful over finances, or his relationship with his wife, or his own mortality. This is a broad example, but typical. All that fear, most of which is based on subjective thinking, can quickly "overload" causing him to react in anger. Now this isn't an excuse for abuse, but it does tell us that there is a reason for it. I have seen it over and over again that once a man comes to understand
his anger comes from fear the abuse usually stops.

So how do we get a handle on anger?

First - Realize that anger is an emotion based on thought. Nothing makes us angry, it is OUR response to the situation that determines the emotion.We can react calm or angry depending on how we view what is going on.

Second - Because anger is based on our thinking, to modify the reaction, we have to modify our thoughts. It is how we think about the situation is what counts. In the case of the keys, we can use a little self-talk, to calm us.
"Ok, the keys are missing, now where did I put them."

Of course a little prior planning, i.e.; putting them in a prescribed location (key hook in the kitchen) so that we will always be able to find them.

Third - Since anger is a secondary reaction to fear, if we are fearful we will also have the tendency to be angry as well. Therefore we have to keep our fears in check if we want to control our anger. That is easier said than done, but we can do it if we realize that real fear is a natural reaction to a REAL circumstance. When we fear the future (projecting) or past (regression) we are experiencing fear of a phantom-a non existent circumstance.

The real difference between fear based on reality and that of imagination is TIME. The duration of a real threat may be sustained, but it is usually short lived. Our ancestors feared the creature only so long as it took to get eaten, or they killed it.

Imaginary fear has a tendency to be more prolonged because the threat never materializes. Therefore there is no crescendo. There is no end to the tension. Therefore the fear is prolonged and when prolonged over a period of time it can turn into anger. If prolonged even further this anger can turn into depression.

One way to look at depression is that it is the IMPRESSION left by FEAR.

KEY: Proper thinking. That is, keeping our thoughts in the WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW will keep our fear in check. Remember when a real threat comes our way it is perfectly natural to feel fear. It motivates us to confront or run away (a survival technique). But when it is based on imagined threats it can cause us to act out in a destructive way and without any real threat there is no real conclusion.

In part one of the Anger Series we saw that anger is an emotion and that it is controllable. The reason anger can be controlled is because anger as all emotions respond to what we are thinking about.

So if we are happy or joyful we are thinking joyful or happy thoughts. If we are angry we are thinking angry thoughts. If we are jealous we are thinking jealous thoughts. Granted there are times when things happen so fast that it appears we have no choice in the matter, but no is in control of our minds than us. We can never gain control over our emotions until we take full responsibility for them. We are not at the mercy of the elements or imps that "make us mad" or happy or anything of the kind.

The Bible has a saying, "As a man thinks in his mind, so is he" (Proverbs). Our thoughts are simply our attempt to assign meaning to an event we have encountered. How we process the information on an event is dependent on how we have learned to process similar events in the past.
Now you might be saying, "There is no way I can control my thoughts, much less my getting angry." Yet the fact of the matter is that you can and this part will show you why.

The relationship between events, thoughts and emotions is called the "A B C" theory by psychologists. This formula outlines how we process an event and act on it. The "A" refers to the event. The "B" is the thought that attempts to assign a meaning to the event. C is the resultant feelings that B produced. So in short when we are faced with an event our mind produces a thought about the event.

This thought subsequently produces an emotion. For an example, lets imagine that while coming home one night we are confronted by an intruder in our residence. Our thoughts, based on our experience and instinct produce the emotion of fear and resultant anger.* This fear/anger will prompt a reaction our of us. Either we will fight the intruder or run from them.
Now this is the way that we react to our world - without exception. There is an event, the thought that attempts to assign meaning to the event, and the emotion that follows. There can no reaction without an emotion to prompt it and no emotion without a preceding thought. Because this is way we were designed by nature for the most part it serves us well.

There is however times where it can become a problem. The most notable examples come in the
area of our personal relationships. For instance, your wife is staying out with her friends later than usual and with more frequency than usual.

When she comes home from her night out you snort, "Who's the guy?" The, "A B C's" of this scenario is that C, your emotional response would be impossible without B the thought that preceded it. Consequently the emotion of anger (that caused the outburst) wouldn't have occurred without the thought that preceded it Our emotions, especially our strongest ones like anger are determined by what is called our "internal monologue".

It is also called in some psychological circles as "self-talk". Whatever the name, the way we talk to ourselves is the way we react to others. The reason for the remark about what guy she had been out with is because of your "self-talk" about the event -your wife out with her friends. You made assumptions on her intentions and whereabouts. You knew with enough evidence that she was out with her friends, but your self-talk communicated a scenario different that the evidence. You might not even really believe she had been out with another guy, but your emotions don'' know that.

They are only going to react to the way you are thinking. Somehow the thought that she was out with another man was introduced (far too complex to get into here), and before you knew it you were responding in anger towards her. These assumptions are called "cognitive distortions". All of these distortions can be present or perhaps just a few, but we all have them in some way or another. These distortions are:


Tunnel Vision - seeing only the flaws in your mate.

Assumed Intent - Mind reading, assuming your mates motives.

Magnifying - exaggerating, or making things worse than they are.

Global Labeling - pinning a negative identity on your mate (calling them an idiot, jerk, stupid, an *******).

Good-Bad Dichotomizing - calling your mate's behavior either good or bad but never in between or neutral. (Either he/ she is doing something bad or not doing anything at all).


Fractured Logic - making a huge conclusion from little or no evidence.


Control Fallacies - making yourself the reason for your mate's unhappiness or making your partner the person at fault and you the helpless victim.


Letting it our Fallacy - assigning the fault for your unhappiness or pain to your partner -believing that they should be punished for it.


All these distortions are based on subjective thinking, or thoughts that are not based on reality. Like we saw in part one this always leads to trouble. As I said anger is controllable if we learn how anger happens. Now before we go any further there is nothing wrong with anger that stems from reality. Anger can be a healthy emotion and need not be destructive. Yet when all the above distortions come into play there can be problems, just like in the example above, you insulted your wife because you let your thoughts go to the extreme with subjective thinking. This produced anger which was not based on reality.


Here is another good example by way of a question. Have you ever been angry while sitting alone at home? Or how about while doing the dishes? Sure you have. You're sitting at home, and you start thinking about what your wife or boss or someone else said to you, maybe it was the day before. As you play the tape of what they said over and over and over again, you begin to react. Let's say you remember that she critiques the way you do the dishes. "Oh yeah, Well that's a load of crap!", You blurt. "Man, she is always criticizing me and cutting me down! I'm sick of it!"
Then as you continue to think about all of the other things you remember she has said over the years. "Yeah, and there was that time she said...." "And that other time she said, "As you continue to build up the "evidence", you start get angrier and angrier. Before you know it you're slinging those dishes around the kitchen.


Now what was the truth? Yeah, something someone said to you - in the past, was brought forward to the future. But where they there when you reacted to it? No, you were there, alone, having an argument with yourself. No one else was there. You were reacting to a phantom. Now taking the critique on the dishes. You assumed that your wife's criticism of your washing skills was meant to "pick-on" you. But what real evidence do you have for that assumption. Did she tell you, "I'm going to pick on you about how you wash the dishes"? What set you off on a emotional
tangent because of a little critique? These are some of the questions you have to ask yourself. Here are some others:


Contrary Evidence - If the evidence for their behavior or comment seems present, is there any other contrary evidence. Even if there is evidence that the remark or action was meant to injure, is there any other evidence to show there was another reason?


Alternate Explanations - Just like contrary evidence is there an alternate explanation for their behavior.


Checking our Assumptions - If we don't confront the person to inquire exactly what they meant, we are assuming. Assumptions lead to disaster most of the time. If you can't confront the person immediately, do so as soon as practical.


The Balance - What are some of the positive aspects of the person? Are we just focusing on their negative traits only? Are they all bad, always bad? To keep our anger in check and the rest of the emotions we need to have a
complete and balanced view on the person.


Bringing the Situation into Reality - Always ask yourself, "What is REALLY going on? Remember that subjective thinking is NO gage of reality. We have to be objective about the situation. We have to stay in the NOW and not project to the future things that haven't happen (and probably won't), or regress to the past, where we are not now, and we really cannot objectively recall all the facts.

These checks will help us keep our anger in check by keeping our thinking in check.