Customer Reviews

The Anger Diet: Thirty Days to Stress-Free Living

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

MARIE JONES, Book Reviewer, BOOKIDEAS.COM:
Forget food-based diets and think "stress-reduction" as the real way to a healthy, happy life. Psychologist and therapist Brenda Shoshanna, Ph.D. knows that a very important diet has been long overlooked and her book aims to set the record straight. "The Anger Diet" is a 30-day plan to help reduce stress and get to the root causes of anger.

Why is anger so important to deal with? Because, as the author states, it's a powerful toxin with the ability to affect every aspect of health, and well-being. Anger often goes hand in hand with overwhelming stress, depression, social anxiety, eating disorders, rage and even suicide, and if we don't deal with WHY we are angry, we very well may not be able to control WHEN we are angry, or the damage anger does to our bodies, inside and out.

Using her experience in private practice for more than 25 years, Shoshanna presents the twenty-four forms of anger and how they express their presence in your life. She also talks about how some forms of anger, say suspicion, can escalate into more extreme forms, say paranoia. Each chapter presents tools and exercises you can use to identify the anger and what initially caused it, then work to replace it with more positive, empowering emotions.

The idea behind "The Anger Diet" is to free the body of the toxic diseases of anger, rage, resentment, depression and even boredom and take the steps to make the changes necessary for a happier, less stressful life.

I found the information in this book to be comprehensive and useful, and I learned so much about my own battles with various forms of anger, many of it related to things that happened during childhood. Because the author is a therapist, she has a wonderful ability to treat the reader like a respected patient, and the tone is never condescending. She also presents plenty of personal cases of patients she worked with and how they overcame the anger issues in their own lives. This is one diet that will leave you empowered as it works to help free you of the habits, addictions and reactions that are associated with anger.

Stress is crippling our society and anger is right there at the top of so much of our emotional stress nowadays, and until we treat the cause, we cannot ever hope to rid ourselves of the symptoms. "The Anger Diet" is highly recommended for anyone who wants to lose the weight of emotional negativity, disharmony and distress.

And you don't even have to give up chocolate!

I have been buying books on 'anger' for a while. This one really helped me. I have read it over and over and did the exercises. She is so absolutely clear about all the ways anger expresses itself, illustrates it with easy 'real-life'examples, and then gives you all kinds of exercises and tasks. I am very grateful to have found this book. Very enlightening, but also very practical.

I wandered in life wondering what was wrong with me. About 5 years ago I was diagnosed with depression, not knowing that after reading only 1/2 this book, I found out that the root of my depression was anger. I have been looking for the tools for many years, but never able to find them until I bought this book. I have applied a few of the exercises to my every day life and they have made a phenomenal change in my world. Well worth reading if you're looking for those unanswered questions that noone has been able to answer.

As I worked through all the manifestations of anger, some of which are quite original but accurate, I fought acceptance of each one; however, I did the exercises and spent much more than a day on each one - at least a month because anger is a real problem for me. Not until I approached the end of the book did I realize how full of hate I had been in the past because I had poorly processed past emotional injuries. By the end of the book, as I became increasingly skilled at processing past negative experiences, I realized that anger and hatred had been replaced by compassion and love for all.

I like this book's format and found it to be unusually concise and user-friendly. While I agree with most of the praise offered here by other reviewers, I was disappointed in some of the sweeping genralizations that the author makes, especially regarding spiritual issues. I found the use of "always" and "never" with regard to causes and expressions of anger immature and therefor paradoxically limiting in their application. I found the author's use of the term "karma" overly simplistic and her examples of only two religous thought systems much too narrow for the application of the principles she describes.

I would have expected more mention of other personality traits that factor into the syndromes she describes. Even the briefest mention of how character and personality disorders, organic disease, psycho- and socio-pathologies affect the individual and their subjective interpretations and behaviors would have added credibility to her other remarks.

Ruling out the role of randomness seems a huge and serious mistake that undermines the author's basic premise.

Still, I found this book to be useful for self-help, but something a lay person would have written.

I've read many, many books in this area, both professionally (as a pastor) and for personal reasons (as a 'victim' of divorce who would really like to get over it), and I've found them to be uniformly worthless. Self-help anger management books tend to suffer from a number of deficiencies, including an excessive focus on "information" rather than technique and ineffective technique when it is offered. That's not the case here! Read the book. Do the exercises, and you will be changed. The first chapter alone is an eye-opener, and the presentation of the "emergency technique", while in itself nothing unique, is very well done and by itself worth the price of the book. The daily exercises are challenging and they WILL challenge you. You will not be allowed to "float" on top of this book--the exercises force you to confront your own issues, and they force you to go deep.

A lot of authors have tried to do what Dr. Shoshanna has done here, but none have done it so well, so artfully, or so thoroughly. I really can't say enough nice things about this book. And, let it be said, I'm not in the habit of writing rave reviews.

I definitely recommend this book. Results are immediate, and lasting. This book is very insightful and practical. It is easy to understand and apply, because the author uses a step-by-step approach so that it is not overwhelming. There is no blame and no shame in the author's approach. Self respect and respect for others is the amazing result that is realized quite quickly after applying the daily recommendations.

Anger controls our lives and we don't realize how much of a hold it has on our emotions and the situations we face. We lash out out at others and say that's natural. Or worse, we take that whip and attack ourselves. We say we are bad, we are terrible, we don't deserve happiness and love. We won't know just how full our lives can be. Anger Diet can be a gentle, soothing reminder of what will the best in our lives and a sledgehammer breaking down our destructive patterns. Brenda Shoshanna has written a work that reveals the role of anger in our lives as addiction and personal identity. This is Step One. Step Two is a daily workbook and journal hitting attitudes we thought were normal. It starts with understanding grudges, judgmental attitudes and insults. This wasn't easy to deal with. The hardest is yet to come with suspicion, self-sabotage, revenge and more. Almost every action we've taken in our lives will be hit with a bright light and shown an alternative in a positive way. If you're tired of the negativity residing in your bones, Anger Diet will help you release that negativity. I promise the path will not be easy and the effects will be a soothing feather or sledgehammer. For me, they were both. The results are less tension, a greater understanding of others, personal happineess, and breaking down our destructive patterns. For those who claim you've got to be tough in this life, fine. Go through Anger Diet and see just how tough you really are. No hyperbole, this book will change your life and strengthen your relationships with others around you. Stop attacking yourself, you don't nned to.

I love this book and have ordered several copies. It has really helped me and provides an excellent plan for lasting change which has provided me with more peace of mind. I highly recommend it.

The book is helpful in identifying anger in all its forms. You may be surprised, as was I, to learn how deep and strongly felt anger is in your life. But with that identification in hand, the book proceeds to offer simplistic solutions, unworkable and ineffective for all but the most shallow emotions. Much of Shoshana's advice can be summed up by saying "you're doing something wrong, and you should stop doing it." It's unhelpful.