Anger Management Workbook
Anger Busting Workbook
Page 13
Preface
Anger Management Workbook: Face
Your Anger
Yeah, we know.
You don't have an anger problem. You are
just surrounded by idiots and incompetents. Your kids
are lazy and disrespectful; your wife is constantly
whining and complaining about something; your boss couldn't
manage his way out of a paper bag; and the freeway is
a parking lot for morons. Nobody appreciates how hard
you work or how brilliant you are. Talent like yours
is going to waste in a shop full of zombies. You work
hard all the time and some days you just get sick and
tired of putting up with people who seem to enjoy nothing
quite so much as pushing your buttons so they can make
your life miserable. Anger? Man, they have no idea what
it would be like if you ever really got angry. Just
once, it would be nice if they would just shut their
yaps and let you have some peace and quiet. But no!
It is always something! You don't have an anger
problem, you have a people problem. People just
won't leave you alone! You don't want to get angry,
but they just don't give you any choice. Yeah, we know.
Here is something
else we know. You probably actually believe all the
lies you tell yourself and all the smoke you blow at
other people. We have met a thousand guys like you.
They all tell different stories but they all live in
the same houseboat in the same river called "De-Nial."
You have been making excuses for the outrageous ways
that you treat other people for so long that it is beginning
to seem normal to you. You have been blaming other people
for your raging, irresponsible attitudes for so long
that you actually believe it is okay to traumatize and
intimidate the people you love because it makes you
feel like you are in control, at least for a little
while. The technical term for this the play on
words we used above is denial. It is a trick
that people play on themselves when the truth is just
too hard to face. So, you just pretend that it didn't
happen, at least not the way other people say it did.
Or you pretend that it wasn't as bad as other people
say it was (another trick called minimizing).
But here is
a term that might make better sense to you brainwashing.
You have been lying
to yourself brainwashing yourself for so
long that you programmed yourself into really
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