Anger

From WikEd

Descriptions, definitions, synonyms, organizer terms, types of

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, anger is a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism or rage.

Words used to describe the "triggers" of anger include being wronged, lack of justice, betrayal, mistreatment, resentment, being dumped on, having one's space or person invaded, having social norms violated, reputation hurt, being made to feel helpless, frustration, blocking of goals, lack of control, and so on. - C. George Boeree, Ph.D.

According to Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D., there are five interrelated dimensions all operating simultaneously in any angry situation. These dimensions include:

1. Cognition- our present thoughts

2. Emotion- the physiological arousal that anger produces

3. Communication- the way we display our anger to others

4. Affect-the way that we experience life when we are angry

5. Behavior- the way we behave when we are angry

Anger is an emotion that can range from mild annoyance to intense rage. It is a feeling that is accompanied by biological changes in your body. When you get angry, your heart rate and blood pressure rise and stress hormones are released. This can cause you to shake, become hot and sweaty and feel out of control. - The Australian Psychological Society (APS)

Anger Is One Reaction To An Event That Represents A Stress, Threat or Loss to You

The stress, threat or loss can be real or we can make it up in our mind.

Anger reactions happen when there is a stress, threat or loss to our...

Body Property Self esteem Values Or when we didn't get what we wanted. Entitlement--'I want it. You owe me. Give it to me now or I'll get angry' Some Dynamics of Anger

We become more angry when we are stress and body resources are down. We are rarely ever angry for the reasons we think. We are often angry when we didn't get what we needed as a child. We often become angry when we see a trait in others we can't stand in ourselves. Underneath many current angers are old disappointments, traumas and triggers. Sometimes we get angry because we were hurt as a child. We get angry when a current event brings up an old unresolved situation from the past. We often feel strong emotion when a situation has a similar content, words or energy that we have felt before. -Lynne Namka, Ed. D.

Dealing with Anger in the Classroom

- Make sure your classroom is highly structured. Kids who are angry, especially those who experience implosive anger, do not deal well with inconsistency.

- Build positive relationships with students. Make sure the environment is safe, comfortable socially, and learning takes place.

- Validate anger. Acknowledgement is important if anger is not to be buried.

- Teach kids to work through and solve problems.

- Have a plan in place for dealing with out of control situations. What kinds of things will you do and say? Plan your responses and actions.

- Model and teach positive responses to anger.

Why Punishment Does Not Work

The research literature gives clear guidelines about the ineffectiveness of punishment as the only correction procedure for children's misbehavior. Yelling, shaming, scolding, and corporal punishment backfire and create a mind set in the child where he misbehaves more. Some children do worse when words like "never," "don t," "should not," and "It's not okay" are used during correction. There are many negative side effects associated with being punished:

Punishment for aggression may stop the behavior temporarily, but may further stimulate aggressive behavior.

The child may stop the punished behavior but may increase another aggressive behavior.

Punishment may serve as a model for aggression. Children imitate what they see adults do.

The punished behavior may stop only in the presence of the adult and increase in other settings.

The child may strike back at the punishing adult or displace his anger at someone else.

Frequent punishment may cause some children to withdraw and regress.

Angry children who do not fear authority may become more angry and focus on revenge.

The child may feel shame and harbor thoughts of lowered self- esteem (I'm a bad person. I'm mean.)

Punishment merely suppresses the response but does not teach the child what to do. In the short term, punishment may be effective in suppressing negative behavior when the punisher is present, but it does not teach the child positive ways to act. Punishing techniques that make the child feel bad about himself may make him act out more!

Helper Words Helps Children Change Their Thinking and Behavior Patterns

Helper words or internal self talk helps the child remember ways to handle tricky situations. The research shows what Chinese educators have known all along: kids' memory improves when they talk out loud to themselves. The child's verbalization of a positive phrase to remind himself how to act helps him store this information in the brain. Group responses, chants and repeating the positive phrases many times daily out loud will help children to internalize concepts that emphasize self esteem building. The trick to working yourself out of a job as the intervener of misbehavior is encouraging the children to remind themselves what they can do to take care of themselves during conflict. Help children learn to use these and other Helper Words statements.

I feel good about using my words to talk things out. I give up put downs. I stop myself from saying put downs. I notice and speak up about hurts. I own my mistakes. I feel good about correcting my mistakes. I don't have to hurt back after hearing about a hurt I caused. I see how my positive actions affects others. I calm my anger. I put my anger in a place where it won't hurt anyone. Cues from caring adults are a primary means of instruction for teaching social skills. Adding these positive cues will help children take responsibility for their own behavior and learn to express their feelings. Repetition is the best way for you and the children to learn new skills. Say these cues over and over again!

Some suggestions for children on how to deal with anger (from kidshealth.org):

talk to a friend you can trust
count to 10
get or give a hug
do jumping jacks or another exercise
draw a picture of your anger
play a video game
run around the outside of the house five times as fast as you can
sing along with the stereo
pull weeds in the garden
think good thoughts (maybe about a fun vacation or your favorite sport)
take a bike ride, go skateboarding, play basketball - do something active!
Never getting angry is impossible. Instead, remember that how you act when you're angry can make the situation better or worse.

Effectiveness

What Does Work

The research shows that praise for appropriate behavior, reasoning, giving consequences, withholding privileges, time out and teaching the appropriate social skills do help a frustrated child make better behavioral choices.

The child who misbehaves constantly needs to hear correction statements phrased in positive language to implant alternative ways of thinking and acting in his developing value system. Telling the child with behavior problems what not to do often guarantees that he will go and do it! Instead tell him what to do and help him to feel good just thinking about acting in positive ways. Give a choice between two alternatives.

Teaching social skills gives a process of correcting the inappropriate behavior instead of suppressing it through punishment. Social skills training offers a more humane way of giving children tools to deal with conflict so that they can take care of themselves. Learning social skills helps children reduce aggressive and violent behavior. Teaching the prosocial skills helps all of us. When children learn and use positive reciprocal ways of interacting with each other, this adds to peace in our world.

Processing Cues To Say After Conflict

What you say to an aggressive child will determine the likelihood of his decreasing the inappropriate behavior the next time. To break into the child's negative thinking patterns, process what happened and what could be different next time in a non- threatening way. The research shows that people are most ripe for change after a situation of high emotional arousal. Being corrected is generally a high arousal situation so the child should be ripe for new learning. You have a golden opportunity to help your child make the commitment to change by using this teaching approach.

If you can get to the child's vulnerability and sense of fair play after a situation of conflict, you can help him make changes. Show the child the consequences of his actions on others. Whenever possible, give him a choice. Ask him to make a value judgment on what he did. Give him solid information on how he could react in positive ways. Always leave him feeling good about himself with hope for the future.

Signed life experiences, testimonies and stories

Heather Anger, and feeling the need to punish myself are the two biggest reasons I self injure. Growing up in my family I was taught that good little girls don't get angry. I supressed the anger for years, until I found an outlet with self harm. When I cut it's like opening up a valve and releasing the steam before it bursts. It instantly calms me down. If I don't cut and end up showing my anger, I have to cut to punish myself for letting the anger out. - from LifeSIGNS

kids testimonies

BRANDON'S STORY

Sometimes our very best teachers are the children. The following story is certainly one of those ‘a little child shall lead them’ varieties. This seven year old not only proselytizes for tapping but has also written his own testimonial. My thanks go to Shari Snow who currently volunteers in a school setting in Lexington, NC, for sharing her work with 'Brandon'.

The first day Shari met Brandon she was told he was headed for a self contained class for students with emotional/behavioral problems. Brandon had experience difficulty since the day he entered school 2.5 years ago. He was considered "at-risk" before entering school.

During the current school year there had not been a day that he had not been sent to the principal’s office. This day he had just trashed his classroom and was working on trashing the principal’s office in anger. He continued to throw things as Shari talked to him about why he was so mad. When he realized she ‘got it’, and stopped a moment to breathe, Shari stretched out her hands and asked him to show how angry he was with his hands. He stretched them out as far as he could (indicating maximum anger). [Ann’s Note: Without good rapport you get nowhere. The child must see you as different from the other lecturing adults in his or her environment.]

Shari sat down on the floor in the office and said, “This looks really silly but just do what I am doing.�? Brandon stopped the ‘tantrum’, sat down, and began to follow the tapping. She tapped with him one round before adding a set up statement for the second round: "Even though I am really mad and nobody will listen to me, I am still a really good kid who people should listen to."

Two rounds later, when asked how angry he was, Brandon put his hands together (indicating little or no anger). The school counselor watching this transformation could not believe it. She described it as "watching the anger melt away". Brandon and Shari talked some more about the issue that caused the outburst and then, together, they made a plan for the future. When it was time for Brandon to return to class, he asked, “Can I tap at home when I get mad too?�? This child understood the power of this process in 5 minutes! He ‘got it’ quickly and made it a part of his life.

Shari writes: “Brandon is now a seven year old ambassador of energy therapies. He is tapping on his own and is showing classmates how to tap. He has people around him interested and looking for more information. He is teaching me lessons on how to ‘get the message’ across. He has opened doors I did not expect to open in the conservative rural community I live in. This little guy deserves ALL OF THE CREDIT. Me? I got lucky - what a wonderful teacher to learn from.�?

Brandon has not been back to the principal’s office. Several weeks after the first tapping experience Brandon told Shari he was “ready to tell the story for my friends.�? In the words of a seven year old, here is Brandon’s version of using energy therapies.

THE TAPPING STUFF

By Brandon (as told to Ms. S)

It makes the bad stuff not hurt as much.

They look at me funny. But now they know why I do it.

My friend got over his dog dying by tapping.

I showed him how to help his heart.

He told his mom to do it and she thought it was stupid.

I told him to do it anyways, just not let her see it.

He made his hands get smaller when Ms. S helped him

Ms. Lin (the counselor) reminds me to tap when I am mad.

I can tap in my classroom or ask to go see Ms. Lin.

I am teaching Ms. Lin how to tap.

She likes to tap by her nose. I like my forehead.

I like school now because I am good.

I got a treat from the principal for being good.

I never did that before.

My teachers did not like me because I was bad.

I think my teacher likes me now that I am good.

I think that is enough.

Oh yeah– I do the tapping at home when Nanna yells at me.

Teachers really need to teach student coping strategies for dealing with anger. I used to have a student who would run out of the classroom and around the school building. Once during recess he even threw a huge branch as about six classmates that were in line. There were reasons for him doing this. It might be hard, but a teacher and the support staff should try to find out what is going on with the child and why he is acting the way he is. Then come up with a plan to help the student deal with their anger in an appropriate way. S.Davila

This page includes a wealth of information on how to deal with angry children and help them to understand and manage anger. My daughter has early onset bipolar disorder and has had trouble modulating anger, especially when she was younger. We have used many of these interventions in helping her deal with her anger. What was difficult was that her anger was not not externally triggered. Rather, it was due to the extreme mood shifts or cycling that, especially in when she was younger, occurred multiple times in a 24 hour period and sometimes lasting for several hours. When I see students that have anger outbursts in schools, I'm always suspicious of undiagnosed medical or mental issues. Adults often rush to conclude that there are parenting issues that are causing this type of behavior in the classroom, but I can say from personal experience that this is not always the case. I remember a little boy in Kindergarten who would scream and cry, throw things, run out of the classroom, try to hit the teacher. His mother was often called to come and calm him down. My heart went out to this little boy who obviously had little control over his emotions. The parents were obviously exhausted and distraught. The school recommended and paid for this little boy to get an independent psychological evaluation and it turned up that he was bipolar. Once he started medication his behavior changed dramatically. My daughter had a similar experience except that she was diagnosed and on medication before she started preschool. She is now in sixth grade and is doing extremely well. Early intervention made a huge difference. M.T.