Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Anger

March 6th, 2008 by Eve Stephenson

How often have you said ‘she makes me so angry……’ or something very similar? So how would you feel if I told you that SHE didn’t make you angry? Confused, maybe a little angry with me? Well read on and I will try to explain what I mean.

Firstly the statement ‘she makes me so angry..’ suggests that whoever SHE is, it is her and no one else who is responsible for your anger. Well that simply isn’t true as no one else can make you feel anything, it is not what someone says or does that results in your anger it is your reaction to it.

Take, for example the following situation……..
There are 3 customers waiting at the supermarket checkout and each of them, in turn, asks for some help with their packing.
The assistant gives the same reply to each of them ‘ We are short staffed today, there is nobody to help. Sorry.’

The first customer sighs and gets on with the packing herself, pays and leaves the store.
The second customer looks around for someone else to ask and then reluctantly does it herself, not without mentioning how disappointed she is though. Finally the third customer calls the assistant a liar, says the shop is terrible and that she will never use it again. She then walks out of the shop leaving her shopping behind.

So we have one situation with three different reactions to it, which shows us that the same event can lead to a range of emotions depending very much on how the individual interprets that event. So all this brings me back to my earlier point that no one else is responsible for the way you feel. It is your reaction to an event or behaviour that causes bad feelings like anger.

The exercise in this article is based on Cognitive Behavioural theory and is an example of how CBT can help to alter the way a person thinks or reacts to situations.
CBT has received a lot of media attention lately and is being heralded as the ‘new therapy’. It is also very helpful in dealing with

* Anxiety
* Depression
* Panic
* Agoraphobia and other phobias
* Social phobia
* Bulimia
* Obsessive compulsive disorder
* Post traumatic stress disorder
* Schizophrenia

If you think that CBT could help you with a current problem and would like to know more please contact me either by phone or e mail.
I look forward to hearing from you.