“Clinical psychologist suggests supplanting your rage with a healthy dose of personal change. Dennis O’Grady contends anger is deeply and emotionally entrenched in our culture, but it doesn’t have to be that way.” Written by Kevin Lamb, Health Reporter, Dayton Daily News.
At first, the notion that anger can be constructive sounds like a brass band off key.
Yeah, right. Just like cheesecake can be healthy.
People tend to think of anger in only one way, says Dennis O’Grady, a clinical psychologist in Dayton. As a classic example, he talks about the “anger orgies” on television talk shows. “We kind of hang that unhealthy anger up on a flag pole and salute it,” he says.
“We recognize that explosion of tempers as normal, reasonable behavior,” Dr O’Grady says, “and no one is challenging that.”
So he challenged it. He created a six hour, audio-tape guide to making anger constructive instead of “the thief that is robbing you of happiness.” He called it No Hard Feelings: Managing Anger and Conflict in Your Work, Family and Love Life.
Anger itself is only an emotion, O’Grady says, not a reaction. There are different ways to express it. There are the standard shouting and bulling and pouting and other variations on the theme of a howling infant with a heavy diaper. Or a person can direct that energy toward solving the problem that caused the anger, toward meeting an unmet need.
“The positive consequences that people want are happiness and peace of mind,” O’Grady says, but when they think about the ways they’re using anger, they start to see how it might be taking them in the opposite direction.
Unhealthy anger is a three-spoked cycle, as O’Grady describes it. Rejection fosters, resentment, which leads to revenge, which brings about further rejection. The words are alliterative memory pegs for the ways most of us learn to respond to slights, which are usually the difference between our expectations and realities.
We typically blame the person who slighted or disappointed us. We say, “make them change, and my life will be better,” as O’Grady puts it. But we can’t do that, of course. The only ones we can change are ourselves, not the parents or boss or spouse who’s infuriating us. What good will that do?
Actually, lots. That’s what O’Grady says, anyway, and he counsels couples and consults at businesses, which pretty much cover the places most folks meet people who make them angry.
It’s true, he says, that we cannot control significant parts of our emotional lives. How they’re stimulated or who stimulates them or how intense they are.
“I can’t control what someone does or says to me, perhaps,” he says. “But I can have a say about how long I let them live in my mind, as one of my clients says, rent-free. “We can let go, for example, of that grudge that’s grinding away at our spirits like sandpaper on a coffee table, but doesn’t it seem to be bothering the dumb jerk it’s aimed at even a little bit.
But then what? If a person decides to stop fuming or raging in anger, says O’Grady, “then what am I going to feel? I’ll feel loss and perhaps grief and fear and anxiety and joy and happiness and loneliness. Some of that’s not too comfortable.”
By the time people are very old, their unhealthy anger can feel as comfortable as fingernails on an itch. Matter-of-fact, says O’Grady, “we’re an anger-addicted society.” So the decision to replace unhealthy anger with constructive anger must be similar to an addict’s commitment to give up he drug, to forgo the short-term high of crack, smack or alcohol for the long-term benefits of health and happiness.
It just won’t happen, he says, without understanding “the positive consequences of letting anger go.”
Those consequences aren’t necessarily obvious to someone who has noticed how he can get his own way often by raising his voice or leveling threats. Studies have connected anger with two of the country’s most expensive health problems–heart disease and depression–but if health costs were much of a motivator, no one would be able to find a hot-fudge sundae to go with after dinner coffee.
O’Grady suggests an experiment. Just for a week, he tells clients, try giving up combat driving on the way to work. “And they see the positive rewards for that are peace of mind, they’re enjoying the road and they’re watching other people who are crazed with unhealthy anger on the road and they’re going, ‘that’s ridiculous.’ Or take a day to compliment or smile at people, he says, and see how many warm fuzzies bounce back.
“I believe what probably costs us the most is we’re still very, very frightened as a populace,” O’Grady says. “There’s a real cost in lost peace of mind, and I would say there’s a huge cost in our spiritual development.”
Along with the traditional home flare-ups, O’Grady is finding more and more anger. “in a wide variety of businesses. They’re good folks. They feel that their good ideas aren’t heard or used or wanted by these different companies. I think that’s the No. 1 cause of resentment in business.”
The workshops he conducts in workplaces are designed to foster cultures of “we can solve problems here” – by using people’s good ideas and lowering the resentment level to raise the profit level. That correlation exists, he says.
The idea isn’t to eliminate conflict. In fact, healthy anger brings conflict out from the shadows. That scares people, O’Grady says. To them, conflict means they’re going to get yelled at, put down or beat up by unhealthy anger.
“But when they have the experience of resolving conflicts without raising voices, without all the junk that goes into an unfair fight, they’re like, ‘Wow! We can solve problems.'”
Kevin Lamb can be reached at the Dayton Daily News by calling (937) 225-2129 or e-mail Kevin at kevin.lamb@coxohio.com.
AN ANGER UPDATE…What Is IT…ARE YOU ANGRY?
In general, good people don’t like to feel healthy anger. Kind people want to “get rid of” anger, so transformational anger keeps sneaking back into our lives through the very window we just threw it out of. Anger, of course, is too often used defensively…as a defense to avoid feeling more painful feelings that make a person feel vulnerable and not totally in control.
However, anger is also an original feeling designed to make tough changes bearable and lasting. Typically, negative anger is used to get rid of people while positive anger is used to bridge communication gaps and bring people closer together. Genuine anger is warm and real and isn’t fakery, chicanery or shaming and blaming. The positive purpose of anger is to put energy behind changes that people feel too chicken to make until their stars line up just right in the opportunity sky.
Unused positive anger turns stale, making the communicator cold, ruthless, heartless and promotes relationships of convenience in which people are used as objects and then discarded.
WHO ARE YOU ANGRY AT AND WHAT IS YOUR ANGER DUE TO?
What anger problem would you like to solve? Who are you angry at and what is your anger due to?
- Anger AT drivers DUE TO a stress-filled situation(s)
- Anger AT a partner DUE TO depression (dysphoria)
- Anger AT coworkers DUE TO a bad job or boss
- Anger AT kids DUE TO mood swings (bipolar mood disorder)
- Anger AT God DUE TO personal loss or bereavement (post-traumatic stress disorder)
- Anger AT a wife or husband DUE TO a first-time pregnancy
- Anger AT beauty magazines DUE TO myths about aging
- Anger AT politicians DUE TO a war or sputtering economy
- Anger AT self DUE TO acting lazy or demotivated
- Anger AT the opposite sex DUE TO having more benefits
- Anger AT a mother/father DUE TO being the perfect worrier
Do you know what is the cause of your anger besides your attitude towards your own anger…both positive and negative hues of anger?
A Phase of Grief?
I’ve worked with anger as an “emotional behavior” in the five stages of grief model detailed in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ bestselling book Death and Dying. SO what is IT?
Anger is both tricky and complex. For example, there is a time to feel the anger and not let it go…and there is a time to feel the anger and hold it close. Knowing the difference, makes all the difference in the world. If you need help telling, talk to an anger educator or counselor who knows their way around in a world of anger…someone who “travels light…without anger baggage.”
Dr. Dennis O’Grady is an anger management expert and anger education workshop leader. His anger theory speaks about “The Anger Game” talking bases of rejection…resentment…revenge that create an ANGER ESCALATION CYCLE that also becomes a negative relationship pattern that causes loneliness and alienation at work and home. Dr. O’Grady writes extensively about healing relationship resentments in his audio program NO HARD FEELINGS.