Anger Management Techniques: Stop Using Shorcuts and You'll Stop Anger

One of the best anger management techniques I know of is to become aware of your mental shortcuts and to challenge the way that you think about things.

This is a 3 step anger management technique:

Step One is to become aware of what your shortcuts are. Three of the most frequently used shortcuts are described below.

Step Two is to come up with different questions that challenge the automatic thought.

Step Three is to remind yourself several times a day of the shortcuts you use and what questions you should use to challenge them.

If you practice this anger management technique you will be surprised at how easily you begin to catch yourself going to the mental shortcuts and how quickly you can begin to think of things in a different light. With practice, you will literally begin to see a difference within a week or so.

Lets take a quick look at three of the most common shortcuts that I've seen in my anger management classes:

1) The Negative Filter is when you focus in on the one thing that didn't go the way you wanted it to when everything else went right. For example, you had a great week at work but you can't stop thinking about that one customer who took up two hours of your time and then didn't buy anything. I see this in a lot of couples - you become very good at focusing on the few things that bother you about your partner and overlook all the great things s/he does.

2) The Mind Reader is when you think you know what someone is thinking or what his/her intentions were without you being told by him/her. You just assume that you know where a person is coming from. This is also frequently seen in couples. The funny thing is sometimes the longer you know someone the less you really know them because you are constantly reading their mind instead of talking to them about what's really going on.

3) Musterbation is when you think something or someone "must" or "should" be a certain way or there is something wrong. How many times have you thought to yourself"I wouldn't get mad if s/he would do it my way"? Even though the words should or must aren't used in this example the basic idea behind the thought is that there is only one way to do something and any other way is wrong and gets you mad.

Any of these ring a bell for you?