Anger and Stress Management

Personal Development Club

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Tables of Contents
Anger Management
1. Anger – The Definition
2. Sources of Anger
3. Types and Levels of Anger
4. Benefits and Drawbacks of Anger
5. 12 Steps to Calm Yourself
6. Letting Go and Forgiveness
7. 12 Steps to Use Anger Constructively
8. 10 Anger-Free Thoughts
9. Gaining Supports

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Tables of Contents
Stress Management
1. Stress – The Definition
2. Types of Stress
3. Sources of Stress
4. Factors Influencing Reaction to Stress
5. Coping with Stress – Effective Coping
5.1. Adopting Hardy Personalities
5.2. Staying in Good Mood
5.3. Becoming a Type B Personality
5.4. Changing Health-Related Habits
6. Coping with Stress – Ineffective Coping

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ANGER MANAGEMENT

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1. Anger – The Definition
• Anger – the emotion that makes us instinctively
detect and respond to a threatening situation.
• Anger Myths:
 Males are more angrier than females
 Anger is bad (or anger is good)
 The older you get, the more irritable you are
 Anger is all in the mind
 Anger is all about getting even
 Only certain types of people have a problem with anger
 Anger result from human conflict

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2. Sources of Anger
• Hurt
• Frustration
• Harassment
• Personal attack
• Threat to people, things or
ideas that we hold dearly.

Anger management focuses on managing your response to

anger, not anger itself.

“Avoid 5 minutes of anger, survive from 5 years of regret.”

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3. Types and Level of Anger

Episodic irritation

Episodic anger

Episodic rage

Chronic irritation

Chronic anger

Chronic rage
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4. Benefits and Drawbacks of Anger
• Motives behind anger
 Seeking vengeance
 Bringing about a positive change
 Letting off the stream

• Benefits of anger
 Anger is a built-in resource
 Anger is invigorating
 Anger serves as a catalyst for new behavior
 Anger communicates
 Anger protects you from harm
 Anger is an antidote to impotence

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4. Benefits and Drawbacks of Anger
• Drawbacks of anger
 Robbing your energy
 Affect your health indirectly
 Smoking, drinking, obesity, high blood
pressure, high cholesterol – etc.
 Affect your health directly
 Unsafe sex, on-the-job injuries, road rage, violence
 Sabotage your career
 Getting off the track easily, heading in the wrong direction, ask the
wrong question, engaging in counter-productive behavior
 Ruin your marriage and/or other relationships
 Affect those who you care about
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5. 12 Steps to Calm Yourself
• Step 1: Keep a “hostility log”
 Record what make you angry and how frequent
• Step 2: Acknowledge yourself
 Identify and accept that anger is your roadblock
• Step 3: Use your support network
 Gain support and motivation from your important
people
• Step 4: Interrupt anger cycle
 Pause and take deep breaths
 Tell your self you can handle the situation
 Stop the negative thoughts

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5. 12 Steps to Calm Yourself (cont.)
• Step 5: Use empathy
 See from the perspective of those who make you angry.
 Keep in mind that people make mistakes, and through
mistakes that people learn how to improve.
• Step 6: Laugh at yourself
 Keep sense of humor, don’t take things so seriously.
• Step 7: Relax
 Remember! The little things will not give you away.
• Step 8: Build trust
 Building trust with other people helps to reduce the
likelihood of anger.

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5. 12 Steps to Calm Yourself (cont.)
• Step 9: Listen
 Miscommunication contributes to frustrating and
mistrusting situations.
• Step 10: Be assertive
 Learn to assert yourself and let other people know your
expectations, boundaries, issues – etc.
• Step 11: Live each day as if it is your last
 Life is short; better spend positively than negatively.
• Step 12: Forgive
 It’s not easy to let go past hurts and resentment, but the
way to move your anger is to ‘forgive’.

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 6. Letting Go and Forgiveness
Human are born with instinctual capacity for anger, but
forgiving is a skill need to learn.

• Forgiveness takes time.

• Forgiveness requires supports.
• Forgiveness demands sacrifice.
• You have to be safe.
• You have to accept the frailty of human nature.
• You don’t have to forget the past.

Holding to anger is like grasping a hot charcoal with an intent of

throwing it to someone else. You are the one who gets burned.
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6. Letting Go and Forgiveness (cont.)
• Cost of holding anger
 You constantly relive the painful past
 Old anger finds its way into your present
& future relationship
 You feel drained as a result of all that anger
 You continue to feel like a victim
 You lose sight of the positives in your life
 You remain in a constant state of mourning
 Your health is compromised
 You have difficulty also forgiving yourself
 You remain in a constant state of tension
 Your unresolved anger turn into bitterness & hostility
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6. Letting Go and Forgiveness (cont.)
• Benefits of letting go
 Your energy is freed up for constructive use
 Your life is now focused on present rather than the past
 You no longer feel so vulnerable
 Your outlook becomes much more optimistic
 When you forgive, others tend to forgive you
 It becomes easier to forgive yourself – for being human
 Your health improves
 You experience an inner peace that you haven’t felt before
 You have a newfound sense of maturity
 You move beyond the pain of past transgressions

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6. Letting Go and Forgiveness (cont.)
• How to forgive
 Identify the source of your anger
 Acknowledge your angry feelings
 Legitimize your anger
 Give yourself permission to express anger
 List 3 ways in which your life is better off by letting go of anger
 Express anger without hurting yourself or others
 Acknowledge your fear
 Acknowledge that being nice doesn’t mean powerless
 Trying the 10-minute rant
 Living without resolution
 Time’s up: let it go!

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7. 12 Steps to Use Anger Constructively

• Step 1: Decide how you want to feel after anger

• Step 2: Acknowledge your anger
• Step 3: Focus your anger on problem, not person
• Step 4: Identify the source of problem
• Step 5: Accept that the problem can be solved
• Step 6: Walk in the other party’s shoes
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7. 12 Steps to Use Anger Constructively
• Step 7: Co-op with the other party
• Step 8: Keep a civil tone throughout
• Step 9: Avoid disrespectful behavior
• Step 10: Leave some space and time
• Step 11: Make it two-way communication
• Step 12: Acknowledge that you’ve made progress

You will not be punished for your anger,

but by your anger.
“Treat others the ways you want to be treated.”
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8. 10 Anger-Free Thoughts
1. No one can make you angry without your consent
2. Anger is boomerang – so does love
3. It’s only money
4. Other people are not the enemy
5. Life isn’t fair – not even at the top
6. Energy is a terrible thing to waste
7. Don’t kid yourself: we’re all bozos
8. This isn’t the hill you want to die on
9. There is nothing you can achieve in anger that you
can’t achieve without it
10. When you’re dealing with people, you’re not entitled to
a damn thing
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9. Gaining Supports for your Anger

• Emotional support
• Informational support
• Tangible support
• Appraisal support

To get those supports, keep in mind:

 Most people want to be supportive, give them chance
 Be willing to give support to your friends and family
 No one person can satisfy all your needed supports

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STRESS MANAGEMENT

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1. Stress – The Definition
• Stress - a condition or feeling experienced when a
person perceives that demands exceed the personal
and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.
Two primary stressors:

Minor stressors Major stressors

Daily hassles, hurrying to meet
deadline, being interrupted
while talking, being disturbed
while taking nap, driving in
heavy traffic, misplacing an
important thing – etc
Critical life events, being fired
from your job, having chronic
life-threatening disease, the
death of loved one, separating
from your spouse, bankruptcy,
natural disaster, crimes – etc.

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2. Types of Stress
• Chronic stress
Stress that just won’t go
away. It stays with you all
time.

• Cumulative stress
Stress that accumulates
over time. It’s one thing
adding to another and
another, until you can’t
take it anymore.
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2. Types of Stress
• Catastrophic stress
The horrific stress
resulted from life
threatening event.

• Control stress
Stress resulted when
a person feel over-
whelmed of his/her life.

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3. Sources of Stress
Frustration
The result of being unable to
satisfy a motive.

Pressure
The result from the
threat of negative events.

Conflict
The state in which two or
more motives cannot be
satisfied because they
interfere with one another.
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3. Sources of Stress (cont.)
Life events
Psychologically significant
events that occur in a
person’s life such as divorce,
terrorism, tragedy – etc.

Environment condition
The aspects of the
environment in which we
live such as temperature, air
pollution, noise, humidity –
etc.

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4. Factors Influencing Reaction to Stress
In term of stress, better ask what type of person has a
disease rather than what type of disease a person has.
• Prior experience with stress
• Developmental factors
• Predictability and control
• Social supports
• Cognition
• Personality
• Gender
• Ethnicity
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5. Coping with Stress – Effective Coping
• Removing stress
 Identify and eliminate sources of stress from our lives.

• Cognitive coping
 Change how we think about and/or interpret the
stressful events.

• Managing stress reactions

 When the source of stress cannot be removed or
changed, manage your psychological and physiological
reactions to the stress.

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5.1. Adopting Hardy Personalities
1. Be the master of your own destiny
 Believe in your own ability to deal
with adversity.

2. Be a player, not a spectator

 Wholeheartedly involve in everyday
activities and social relationship,
rather being alienated.

3. Transform catastrophes into challenges

 View life’s stressors as opportunities
for personal growth rather than a burden
to be endured.

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5.2. Staying in Good Mood
• Laughter – the best medicine
 Laughter reduce pain sensitivity for both physical and
emotional pain. So make yourself and people around
you laugh as much as you can.
• Hanging around with optimists
 Stress is contagious. Envision a hopeful future with
your optimist peers.

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5.2. Staying in Good Mood (cont.)
• Finding the good in the bad
 Try to identify at least one benefit from a bad situation.

• Calculating your positivity ratio

 Create your daily emotion log.
 Count positive & negative emotions you experienced.
 Divide positive emotions by negative ones.
 If the ratio is less than 2.9, you’re in trouble. If it’s 2.9 or
higher, you’re more than okay.

Stress is not what happens to us. It's our response TO what

happens. And RESPONSE is something we can choose. 31
5.3. Becoming a Type B Personality
Type A personality
The behavior pattern that is associated with multiphasic
activity, in which the person engages in several activities at
once as part of a continual effort to do more and more in less
and less time.
Type A characteristics
Are always moving, walking, and
eating rapidly
Strive to think or do two or more
things at once
Cannot cope with leisure time
Are obsessed with numbers,
measuring their success in term of how
much or how many of everything they
acquire…
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5.3. Becoming a Type B Personality (cont.)
Type B personality
Behavior pattern characterized by patience, an even temper, and
willingness to do a limited number of things in a reasonable
amount of time.

Moving from A to B:
Focus on who you are rather than what you do
Look at your own competitive streak
Converse without numbers
Take off your watch
Resist what society tells you to do
Seek diversity in relationships
Cultivate the arts
Let curiosity rein
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5.4. Changing Health-Related Habits
• Learning to relax
 Practice relaxation methods: progressive relaxation,
relaxation response, yoga, meditation – etc.
• Improving eating habits
 Maintain healthy diet to avoid high cholesterol, high
blood pressure, heart attack, stroke – etc.
• Doing regular aerobic exercise
 Reduce the rate of high cholesterol, high blood pressure,
heart attack, stroke – etc.
• Adopting medical compliance
 Reduce the likelihood of high cholesterol, high blood
pressure, heart attack, stroke – etc.
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More Health Tips
• Moderate or no use of alcohol
• Sleeping seven to eight hours nightly
• Never or rarely eating between meals
• Being at or near your ideal weight for your height
• Regular physical exercise
• Never smoking cigarettes
• Eating breakfast almost everyday

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6. Coping with Stress – Ineffective Coping

Aggression Withdrawal
A common reaction to Dealing with stress by
frustration. avoiding it (escapism).

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6. Coping with Stress – Ineffective Coping
Self-medication Defense mechanisms
Using of alcohol & other The unrealistic strategies
drugs to soothe their emo- used by the ego to
tional reaction to stress. discharge tension.

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More about “Defense Mechanisms”
Defense mechanisms can be effective in the short-run in
helping us feel better, but they interfere long-term
solutions to stress if they distort reality to a great extent.

 Displacement: angry the bull, hit the cart.

 Sublimation: convert impulse into socially approved
activities: schoolwork, sports – etc.
 Projection: one’s own dangerous or unacceptable desires
or emotions are seen not as one’s own but as the desires or
feelings of others.
 Reaction formation: conflicts over dangerous motives or
feelings are avoided by unconsciously transforming them
into opposite desire.
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More about “Defense Mechanisms” (cont.)
 Regression: stress is reduced by returning to an earlier
pattern of behavior.
 Rationalization: stress is reduced by explaining it
away in ways that sound logical about the breakup.
 Repression: when potentially stressful, unacceptable
desire are kept out of consciousness without the person
being consciously aware.
 Denial: conscious denial of upsetting feelings & ideas.
 Intellectualization : the emotional nature of stressful
events is lessened at times by reducing it to cold,
intellectual logic.

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List of References
• W. Doyle Gentry, PhD, Anger Management for Dummies,
Wiley Publishing Inc. 2007, ISBN: 0-470-03715-6

• Benjamin B. Lahey, Psychology : An Introduction –

Eighth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2004, ISBN: 0-07-256314-1

• Lester M. Sdorow & Cheryl A. Rickabaugh, Psychology,

Quebecor World Versailles Inc. 2002, ISBN: 0-07-235832-7

• http://www.mindtools.com

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