A MENTAL HEALTH STORYTELLING SERIES
“All this self work and acceptance of my anger problem began because I found myself in a terrifying, abusive relationship with a man who barely knew me. Although it was a brief chapter, I never want anyone to feel the way this man made me feel.
He destroyed me for a period of time. He screamed things at me that should never be said to another human, he drove recklessly with me in the car – swerving as I dodged his punches – then essentially tried to run me over and left me bloodied in the street.
The way he made me feel took everything away from me. Like, everything. My confidence, my life, my mental health. I had to take leave from work and eventually resign from my amazing job. It just made me feel really, really, really, really, really low.
Therapy and medication have really helped me, but I've never taken anger management. I've only heard of other people doing it.
I started reading this book, ‘Yell Less, Love More’ and I also got an anger control workbook. It gives you the medical and physical of what anger does to your body and what it does to the people around you. Then it gives you tool kits and exercises to keep track of things. You keep a log of every time you get angry with somebody.
You also write down: whatever the pain or stressor was, the provocative situation, and your triggering thoughts. Then you rate your anger from zero to a hundred, describe your behavior, and then you write down the outcomes to yourself and the outcomes to others – on a scale from negative ten to positive ten.
Tracking my anger in this workbook really puts things into perspective.
I’d been keeping logs and taking notes and being really good keeping my anger in check. I went three months without yelling at someone. And for me, that is next level progress.”
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