Customer Reviews

When Anger Hurts: Quieting the Storm Within

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Curtis.Neimeister@hpinc.com from Tulsa, OK., USA Nov. 5, 1999 I consider this to be an excellent book on the subject of anger! Why? Because it helped me!

I read the reviews of this book on Amazon, and I am pleased to say I am one of the extremists. I thought it was well written and direct, not clouded with excessive rhetoric or "powdered sugar". It places the responsibility for anger right where it can be fixed, on me. It does not involve itself with painstaking research into the "Why" of anger, although that may come out through the use of the Anger Journal. It does contain many suggested causal areas, and my mind was quick to point out my guilty participation. I have gone from multiple angry outbursts per day to one or so mild angry responses per week in less than two weeks. Learning about "Shoulds" and "Blamers" can do that! And was I surprised to learn that I was contributing to my cholesterol problem by being angry! Anger was killing me!

It is behavioral in nature, and for those looking for, and brave enough to use, a path to correcting anger as a response to problems, this is your book! I strongly recommend it!

When Anger Hurts (chapters)

Understanding Anger

1. When Anger Helps 2. The Myths of Anger 3. The Physiological Costs of Anger 4. The Interpersonal Costs of Anger 5. Anger As A Choice - The Two-Step Model 6. Who's Responsible? 7. Combating Trigger Thoughts 8. Controlling Stress Step By Step 9. Stopping Escalation 10. Coping Through Healthy Self-Talk 11. Response Choice Rehearsal 12. Problem-Solving Communication 13. Images Of Anger 14. Anger As A Defense

Anger At Home

15. Anger And Children 16. Spouse Abuse

I have made a detailed outline of the book. If you'd like to have it, e-mail me.

"When Anger Hurts" is an excellent book. I had mistakenly believed that to hold in anger was bad for your health both physically and psychologically. Although I never got angry with my casual friends, my "loved ones" were not spared. I realized something wasn't right about the way I was expressing my anger. This book was an excellent source of information for me. It made me look at how anger is good if we use it to propel us to positive action. If you read this book, you will gain tremendous insight on what triggers anger. It will amaze you! This knowledge alone will help you to use your anger more effectively and appropriately. We need not make our lives painful. Holding onto anger and blaming only make our lives less joyous. This book will help you live a life that is more fulfilling. It will at least give you a wonderful start.

I picked up the book in a library, and have been looking for a copy to own ever since. The book painstakingly talks you through the argument that anger is not in itself bad, but that anger is a response which at some level is a choice.

The chapters take you through the process of identifying the patterns of thoughts which trigger anger, such as blaming, globalisation (making a mountain out of a molehill) etc. Once these triggers have been identified, the book offers a number of strategies to cope with them.

The book emphasises that by controlling your response to the trigger thoughts you can choose not to be angry. It's hard work, and no quick-fix, but I found it more helpful than anything else I've tried.

As a bit of background, I am a happly married family man with two kids, but I found I had this bullying side to my nature which was out of all proportion to the stimuli received. It's still there, but the techniques in the book kind of slow down and separate the stages of becoming angry in this way, and so have given me a chance to choose a different way of coping with the stimuli.

Anyway, it's a book I would recommend.

This book takes a cognitive-behavioral approach to anger management. It is fairly dense material, well-written and offers many valuable insights. Some of this material can be found in other books, but it is well-researched and you will definitely benefit by reading it.

What I didn't like about this book is that it is based on some unexamined or at least unexplained assumptions that the average person with a problem with anger might not understand. I also found the almost exclusive reliance on a cognitive-behavioral approach too narrow.

While I think it's useful and effective to identify automatic thoughts that lead to acting out. I also think it is equally important to cultivate compassion and the ability to hold multiple perspectives on a problem. While this book offered some material along these lines, I think it feel short of what full anger management might look like.

I also would have liked to have seen more material on the physiology of anger such as can be found in EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE by Daniel Goleman. While there was some information on this topic, I don't think there was enough for someone having issues in this area.

In general, this guy is a good author and he has a wealth of clinical experience. The tools he suggests are practical, but to get people to comply, I think he needed to make a stronger argument for the causes of anger and the effectiveness of his recommendations. I was not completely sold on his line of thought, but I did pick up many useful ideas.

If you are looking for books on anger management, this is certainly worth considering. However, I would augment it with other material written from other points of view.

This book doesn't get 5 stars for literary merit, but for the simple,but shocking idea that anger is not real. As I understand what they say, anger is the label we learn to put on a host of other feelings(that we don't learn the names for, or how to talk about them or deal with them in any way but simmering,screaming, hitting,etc.)from the time we're born...then, watch out! Feelings of frustration, feeling treatened(two of many possibilities for us to express "anger")make us feel stressed, and we can only stand so much of that, so we do various,often anti-social,things to diminish the feeling. Even though, as the authors point out, we cannot feel guilty WHILE venting anger, afterwards we do, and a vicious circle is sustained as long as we don't go far enough into what we're feeling and thinking, we just react,either outwardly or mentally and keep attacking ourselves. For example, a frequent occurrance for me was wanting to smash into other drivers who came up behind me too fast on the street...after I read this book and relived that situation, it was clear that I felt my life was threatened by their behavior...clearly,getting irate in my car wasn't controlling their behavior,but it was harming me...now I can get out of their way and keep my cool and protect myself. This book will help anyone who'e tired of the same old knee-jerk reaction to things.Hopefully, we'll understand it and pass on the ability of decipher our feelings to our children! Ever see a baby crying really hard, after an injection or when they're really hungry, and hear an "adult" say,"Whoa, he's really angry!"? Not! Read this book if you have the courage to learn more, and understand that the people we learned from just didn't know.

This book approaches anger from a cognitive-behavioral perspective of psychology. That means it has few theoretical assumptions and focuses on WHAT works more then WHY some thing might or might work. This also frees that reader from having to sift well researched fact from the authors opinion. The book is designed for practical application. If you just want to read about anger this is not the book for you. If you want to do something about anger then you owe it too yourself to check this out.

This is a great book to read if you want to control your anger. It points out aspects of your life out that you never knew existed. The book is easy to follow, but if your can't admit that you have a problem in the first place, the book won't be of much help for you. And as far as skipping the book and heading towards a counselor as one of the reviewers mentioned, it starts with self awareness. In fact, I received this book from a counselor in the past and it has helped me tremendously. I have several books by this author and I think his material and instruction is straight to the point and very helpful. GOOD LUCK!

I got this book because my counselor recommended it as reading and it certainly has improved the effectiveness of our sessions.

Because anger is like an addiction and in the end requires an individual to change their fundamental behaviors, it is not a easy thing to deal with. This is a good book for people who are committed to making these changes because it gives you're a framework to successfully do the behavior modification.

It provides to be an excellent collection of tools and exercises to help one deal with anger issues. It is very comprehensive and deals with broad range of anger issues with friends, in the workplace and at home.

Unlike some other anger books I browsed, I found it to be objective about the downsides of some of the techniques.

If I were to rate this book for impact on my life it is 5 stars, but because it is not always easy to read, I gave it a 4 star rating.

I would thus suggest not trying to read every word in the book, but instead focus the key points and go deep where necessary so you can learn what you need to complete the exercises.

Neither counseling nor anger management classes were as instantly effective as this book. The authors present tools for understanding anger and gaining control over it that can be immediately put to use. I finally have a handle on my temper through the insights and exercises offered here. I feel more peaceful than I have in years and my family notices that I can now handle stress without getting mad.

When I first received this book, I thought to myself that is would be a waste of money. However after only reading to chapter 5, I realized that this was a great book. I have learned alot thus far in my reading. I am in the U.S. Navy and I recommended this book to the Family Service Center to use in their Anger and Stress Management Courses. This book has is wonderful and I would recommend that everyone who is battling with anger or stress to read it. It has certainly changed how I communicate with other.