HAVOCA Anger

	Help for Adult Victims Of Child Abuse. A non-profit making organisation based in the UK dedicated to provide help, support and information to any adult who is suffering from past childhood abuse.
		18 August 2006

The Mechanics: How Anger Occurs

Understanding the 'mechanics' of your anger is the first step in mastering this mood.

Anger: The 'Shoulds'

One common way of setting yourself up to become angry is to have a version of how things should be and to continuously compare reality with your version - and then feel angry when reality gets it wrong!

As part of this process you have mental list of triggers against which you test reality and when reality gets it 'wrong' you feel angry. These triggers are situations that cause you to explode - or implode if you tend to suppress your anger.

Anger: Mind Reading

This often works alongside the 'should' habit. Not only do we get annoyed with what a person does or does not do - but we also get annoyed with what we perceive to be their intention in acting like they did.

Anger: "Collecting Straws"

In this way of making ourselves angry we look out for things to get annoyed about - and we then 'link' these so that the emotion accumulates until a quite insignificant event becomes 'the straw that breaks the camels back'. Then we have a tantrum.

Anger: Self Criticism

Where we give ourselves a really hard time - and push ourselves to meet unreasonably high standards.