The 'Angry White Male' and a possible solution.
The Angry Brain: How to Help Men With Uncontrollable Tempers
Men with anger management issues present unique problems. But there's a fascinating new route to helping them overcome their tempers.
October 26, 2012 |
Over the past 30 years, I've spent nearly 25,000 hours counseling angry men, and until about two years ago, my enthusiasm was beginning to wane. If you've worked with angry male clients, you can understand why. These men are generally highly reluctant clients, who are often in your office only because they've gotten "the ultimatum" from their wives or girlfriends or bosses or sometimes court judges: "Get therapy for your anger or get out / you're fired / you'll go to jail." Many, considered by everyone who knows them to have an "anger problem," arrive in your office convinced that they don' t have an anger problem: the real problem is their stupid coworkers, annoying girlfriends, demanding spouses, spoiled kids, or unfair probation officers. However, they arrive at your office with a shotgun at their backs, so to speak, and know they have no choice. They hate the entire situation because it makes them feel powerless.
No wonder they feel powerless: they're being coerced to lay down their anger, the only weapon they've ever had against feelings of powerlessness. They often trace their reliance upon anger to a childhood history of danger, trauma, shaming, and pain. Anger is the emotion they can trust, the one that might keep danger at bay. As they grew up, they continued to use anger to make people they regard as dangerous back away. By the time you see them, they regard just about every person in their lives as "dangerous," including loved ones. These men have become habitually angry. I liken their condition to the default option on a computer: their anger goes on automatically unless they consciously turn it off.
Of course, it isn't easy to turn off the default option when the way to do so is hidden deep within the machine's (our brain's) control panel. Furthermore, men for whom anger is a default emotional response to life's vicissitudes are often relatively untrained in experiencing and communicating other emotions. For example, one of my clients "went off"--screaming and threatening bodily harm against his father's doctors--when his father died, to the point the police had to be summoned, because he couldn't handle his grief. Anger was the only emotion he could call upon in time of need. Not surprisingly, when these men come to therapy, whether as individuals or in couples or groups, they're frequently defensive, argumentative, passive-aggressive, protective of their right to be angry, and doubtful about my competence to understand or help them in any way.
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Much more at the link:
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/angry-brain-how-help-men-uncontrollable-tempers?page=0%2C0
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