By Ja Lessa Bonds/reporter
Anger comes in different forms, a licensed clinical social worker told NE students, caregivers and licensed professionals April 1.
Jane Phillips of Millwood Hospital presented Anger Management, a workshop for people who needed advice on controlling anger or helping someone else.
Phillips shared techniques intended to help minimize and control anger outbursts.
“How do you control the wild horse within you?” student Christina Stanley asked.
To answer that question, Phillips had everyone take an anger styles quiz to identify what type of anger each had and then followed with a breakdown of each.
“Anger is the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
Anger takes various forms including anger avoidance, where people just don’t deal with their anger, and sudden anger, which she described as when a person “just blows up.” Anger can also turn to hate when the “anger becomes hardened,” she said.
“Here it becomes hard for them to let go,” Phillips said.
She also discussed sneaky anger, when the anger is never discussed and never brought to the other person’s attention, and paranoid anger, the anger and aggression seen everywhere.
Phillips said anger doesn’t stop there, though. She talked about shame-based, deliberate, addictive, habitual and moral anger.
“People with this type of anger [moral] feel like they have a right to be angry when someone breaks the rules,” she said.
She walked the class through scenarios and situations and also let them give examples and taught proper ways to handle anger with the conflict resolution model.
Phillips said a couple once came to her for help because they couldn’t seem to control their anger in their arguments. Phillips told them that in an argument it is OK to take timeouts. She said timeouts should be about 20 minutes but no longer than 24 hours.
“Use this time to diffuse your anger, not to rebuild your case,” she said.
Phillips provided some of the tools necessary to help people have “healthy” anger. She offered relaxation exercises such as deep breathing techniques and stretches.
She suggested doing physical exercise or calling someone who will help one calm down rather than someone who will just make the situation worse.
