(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best anger management books

What spews out? What kinds of things make you angry. How is your stress at work? Does it affect your home life and relationship?

Don't beat yourself up about your anger issues up to now. Yes, it caused problems. But instead of treating yourself like you're a bad person because you get mad, treat the anger like a Rubik's cube you're trying to solve. Right now center on what the causes of the anger are and finding reliable ways to cool off. One way is to go for a walk. Getting mad at yourself for getting mad only makes it last longer. Put everything down and go for a walk until you cool off, no cell phone, no music and no self-judgment. The goal is to treat each incident of anger as an episode you can review to figure out where you could intervene with yourself to have a better outcome next time.

You absolutely can go on medication. That's the easy part. The hard part is what is the medication for? We can offer better advice with some specific examples. I saw that you've seen a therapist in the past and that didn't really work. Consider trying a brand new person from scratch. Start over with a clean slate and share everything with them. CBT and anger management is a great combination for searching for a therapist.

The thing I would most like to share is that you won't lose yourself if you work on reducing your anger response. It doesn't change who you are. You are still living by the same values and standards. Actually you will be living more by your values because right now figuring out how to not be angry all the tim is a huge priority but you just haven't figured it out yet. So you can do that, that's at least on important change you will be adjusting in the correct direction for your own standards and goals for yourself. So keep that bar high. Ferret out the anger. But know that that doesn't mean your giving up who you are.

You can already tell that the anger is in the way. What you get by dropping the anger is deeper sharing with your partner. If you've always wanted greater intimacy, that's the way to do it. You said you have difficulty having empathy for him. It doesn't mean you have to stop protecting yourself. It sounds like this is where you're getting locked up. It means listening to him a little more than you have been. And without being as defensive. Instead of listening to just enough of what he says to interrupt with something that might be sarcastic or shuts his argument down, let him finish speaking first. That allows him to be heard and acknowledged. That's 99% of the empathy you're looking to offer him. It's right there in your grasp. Then when he's done talking, ask him a question or two to clarify anything you feel you didn't completely understand. This isn't because your'e not intelligent. It's to make sure you are getting it from his perspective. From his point of view, not clouded by what your brain automatically starts doing when he starts talking. If you can do that you're doing the whole job and it would be a huge success. Then, of course, you should share your thoughts and feelings about it. This is active listening. It's one of those skills you hear about in communications class, but can be immediately used on the people we care about the most, to make sure they feel heard.

The thing about any long term relationship, parents, spouse, even friends, is we want to let go of the need to be right all the time. Needing to be right kills relationships. So try to switch from "I'm right and you're wrong and therefore you should so things my way" to sharing. Sharing is, "your opinion is important to me and I want you to know what I'm listening and when i've heard yours I'll share mine and then we can come to a decision based on both of our needs as equal partners." Please consider reading this post of someone in a similar situation. You are not alone. We all have areas we need to improve and it can feel like we're not making any progress but like many people will tell you making the decision to change is 50% of the battle. The rest is just practice. Daily practice. Sometimes it feels like it's really hard but give it a week of vigilance followed by a week of reflection. What worked last week? What didn't?

You can keep a thought diary or what some people call a mood log to help with this process of practice. Write down what doesn't go well. Especially in the moment when everything is fresh. Take a notebook and dedicate it as a journal to writing such incidents down. You can write down persistent negative thoughts or feelings too. Then later when you've cooled off. Come back to it for a few minutes and use the guide to reflect on what happened. At what point in what happened could you intervene with yourself to help you disengage from the anger and go for a walk or apply another anger management technique. You can choose whatever technique you want because they work if we know why we're doing them. But this kind of capturing on paper what's happening makes it a lot easier to evaluate ourselves and also give us a little breathing room to think about it and not feel so trapped up in the moment. If you ever have trouble sleeping, writing any persistent thought or concerns down helps too. You don't have to worry about forgetting them because they're on the paper now, but you don't have to feel the vigilant need to hold them all in your head at once. You're allowed to get rest. Everyone is better prepared to tackle the next day's agenda if we've gotten decent rest. Protect your sleep like gold.

You can also take this notebook (journal, diary) with you to therapy sessions because it has concrete examples you can immediately share with the therapist so you don't have to spend time wondering what to think about. The thing about therapy is that the therapist gives you a lot of advice while in session with them. But the real work happens when you leave. The real work happens "between" sessions. When you are trying to apply the advice they gave you. Use the journal to take notes on what works and what doesn't. Then when you see them again, you have practical things to talk about. And never be ashamed or hesitant to report back bad news. "It didn't go well" is exactly what you should say if it's the truth. It's ok to report failure. We learn by mistakes as others always say. Especially in therapy. Let them know. They can help by adjusting their advice, or walking through a difficult situation with you. The thing is just to keep going. Once you find a good therapist stick with them for three to six months. Three months to learn everything you can about yourself and how you hope to make better or resolve. And another three months to practice and report back.

If you absolutely hate the idea of keeping a journal, consider getting a book like The Anger Management Workbook for Women and just grab a pen and write all over it. It has a lot of insightful exercises to just plow through and see if it can help.

If you're ok with self help books there's Getting Together and Staying Together for relationships, sharing and building a vision of your relationship together in which both of your needs get equally considered. There's also The Dance of Anger, specifically about anger for women by women. My power went out twice already today so I'm a little nervous trying to get this typed out for you, so i'm sorry if it's a little all over the place. I realize it's a lot but I feel like I usually get one shot to offer advice before people disappear off reddit. What I offer here is from being in therapy many years but anger didn’t reveal itself as the problem it was until just a few years ago. But it was there the whole time, I just couldn't see it. I carried my parents anger and lack of emotional self-awareness for far too long but at least we can grow at any stage in our lives. The only thing we need is awareness and you have that now. So I hope some of this helps. Hang in there!

I'm with u/Leena52 of getting professional help, BUT I suggest doing so pretty much as in item 4 below... as well as reading this entire post.

1. Medications, but only if really needed to get one stabilized enough to do the next six things on this list: Find a board certified psychopharmacologist in your area by using the clinician locator on the Psychology Today website. Getting psych meds from a GP or primary care doc can be useless or even risky. Psych diagnoses, meds and med interactions are just too complex now for most GPs and primary care docs.
   
   
2. Support Groups: AA, MA and/or NA if one is using intoxicants to try to cope with emotional pain; ACA, EA and CoDA... where you will find others in similar boats who have found explanations, answers and solutions.
   
   
3. Books and academic, professional websites including Mayo Clinic, WebMD, NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and even Wikipedia (when everything asserted is solidly documented with citations). Strongly recommended because they all understand the upshots of having been compulsively stressed for too long, including complex PTSD which is pretty likely what you have: Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Patricia Ogden, Bruce McEwen, Sonya Lupien and Robert Sapolsky. Accurate information is power.
   
   
4. Psychotherapy: I currently use Ogden's SP4T as the interoceptive 9th of the 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing to manage any "time bombs" that turn up, but had good results over the years with several of the CBTs including REBT, collegiate critical thinking, schema therapy, and CPT, as well as DBT, MBCT, ACT, MBBT, MBSR, EMDR, HBCT, SEPt, and NARM.
   
   DBT, MBCT, ACT, MBBT and MBSR are terrific for symptom management. EMDR, HBCT, SEPt, SP4T and NARM are first-rate for memory-reprocessing, sense-making and detachment from the conditioning, programming, etc.
   
   To find the clinicians who know how to use these psychotherapies, look here, and here, and here, and (for DBT specialists in particular) here. If you dig a little on each page, you will be able to see which therapies they use. Then interview them as though they were applying for a job with your company. Most MD / psychiatrists, btw, are not therapists themselves (they are medication specialists), but can refer you to those who are, and are often -- though not always -- excellent sources of referral.
   
   
5. Mindfulness Meditation: Try the Vipassana-style? (For a lot of people with anxiety, this stuff handles anxiety chop chop. Not sure about depression. Many of the modern psychotherapies for anxiety are actually based on it now.)
   
   
6. Therapy Workbooks: I got a lot of lift-off by using inexpensive workbooks like these, and these, and these, and these. And specifically for anger: this, and this, and this, all of which I have used and can recommend.
   
   
7. Moderate exercise: Because it is the single healthiest of the distractions one can use to yank oneself out of the paradigm for a while... and it can help to "massage" the brain so that it responds more quickly to psychotherapy.

I know this is a good book, check out the preview here.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook/dp/1626250219/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=The+Dialectical+Behavior+Therapy+Skills+Workbook+for+Anger&qid=1573964753&sr=8-2

You candownload it for free right now by clicking GET at the top of this page, a libgen link, safe on my honor.

My only solution other than the above is to get out ahead of it by overwhelming myself with work of some kind or exercise. That state of just complete exercise where like a bee could sting you and you'd be like "oh damn". Or your spouse could come home in a bad mood chirping you and you're like "ok, let's do that" that kind of feeling is what your hormones are just spent, but you can still process stuff. I used to do this with the punching bag and aggressive weight lifting and this would actually be short term good, but release the long term wrong kind of hormones. It's more just like steady effort, good posture, listening to your body, staying in a comfortable zone, but going for a long time until you break through, not like the runners high, like the survivors high (made that up)

The same author doesn't have a specific book for men, but this one looks good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1623157307/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1

I'm sure there are other good ones.

Maybe you could try some techniques from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The acceptance part helps you "let go of the past and move on with life" by helping you to stop struggling against the anger and misery, and the commitment part helps you decide what kind of person you want to be (e.g., someone who doesn't say mean things when angry, trusts others, reaches out to potential friends, or whatever it is that you want to be) and move towards becoming that person. Here's a possible starting point: http://www.amazon.com/Act-Life-Not-Anger-Acceptance/dp/1572244402.

It sounds like your husband is habitually angry and is currently inflicting that anger on his family. My wife and daughter went through the same thing for years, so I would like to try to give you some helpful advice.

First, if your husband does not believe he has anger issues, he is unlikely to become better at managing his anger. This was 100% necessary for me and many others. If you won't even acknowledge that you have a problem and that your problem is significant, there's little any therapist can do for you. If your husband is not ready to take responsibility for his emotions and how he expresses them, some sort of ultimatum may be necessary.

Assuming your husband is ready to concede that he has a problem, and if he simply will not see a therapist, you may ask him to take an online course (he won't need to pay for the certificate) or use a workbook. You should take the course and read the workbook too, so you can understand what he's trying to do with its content and maybe adopt strategies to help.

Here are some helpful resources for people in your situation. Please let me know if you could benefit from any additional advice or clarification. I wish you both the very best with this process!

It sounds to me like the meditation is working. Meditation is designed to help us feel our present experience fully. Frustration is an emotion, and if you are feeling it in meditation, its probably an emotion that you feel often. First, dis-identify from it. This means instead of saying "I'm so frustrated!", say "There is frustration in me." Next, observe it with open curiosity. Let go of the idea that you should feel tranquil. Instead, feel what you feel and watch it.

I think the idea that meditation is about feeling tranquil is one of the key misperceptions about meditation. People think that, if they just sit and breathe, then, automatically, they won't feel stress anymore, they won't feel "bad" emotions or "bad" thoughts, or they won't feel pain. These things are part of life and they never go away completely. Meditation is all about consistent practice. As the meditator gets better at concentrating on and accepting the present (no matter how hard or emotional it is), they begin to feel the burden of their pain less - they are more aware of how they cause themselves pain and they no longer perpetuate it.

This book is not about meditation. But if you are at all a science-minded person, and are interested in how emotions operate in your body, then read Healing the Angry Brain. I found it to be very interesting.

Good luck with your meditation.

Hi Maya, sadly I relate to your struggles. if you haven't seen a therapist or maybe haven't met a good one, I would recommend reading this book:

The Gift of Anger by Marcia Cannon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1572249668/

this book found me while browsing the self help section one day, it's an amazingly useful read. if you want to talk you can pm me anytime.

https://www.amazon.com/Keys-Eliminating-Passive-Aggressiveness-Mental-Health-ebook/dp/B00AYMFW66

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1480293709/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_dp_T2_7vGBzbA11B510

Ask and you shall receive. https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Okay-Cannibal-Addiction/dp/1592853706

probably this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626250219/?coliid=I1VG6D24DGJB50&colid=C5C06XALD9Q3&psc=0&ref_=lv_vv_lig_dp_it

Just in case...

Or, get the book on it. We use workbooks in group therapy.
https://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook/dp/1626250219

I suggest you write him a letter expressing everything that you feel, and you put it in this book. Put the book somewhere he will find it. In the letter let him know that if he needs to talk to you about this, that you're there for him.

This kind of thing has come up on reddit before and [this book](http://www.Beyond.com/ Anger: A Guide for Men: How to Free Yourself from the Grip of Anger and Get More Out of Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/1569246211/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_hXGfzbNR78E1C) was recommended by some self-proclaimed working on it/reformed dads.

There's a DBT skills workbook for anger that you might draw from:

https://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook/dp/1626250219

There is a book (ACT on Life, Not Anger), which I have not read. My guess is the authors probably focus on how the anger is negatively affecting the client's ability to live their values, using acceptance to hold the emotion while behaving in a more values-consistent manner.

That said, I think a more affect-oriented approach like Emotion-Focused Therapy would be a good adjunct. Intense anger is often a secondary emotion (in ACT terms, experiential avoidance; in psychodynamic terms, a defense); an attempt to deal with more scary and vulnerable emotions like fear or grief that occur in a more primary position. ACT doesn't really have a very systematic way of working with the different layers of emotion. Mindfulness can certainly be helpful, but can quickly turn into a strategy for experiential avoidance with clients who have lifelong issues with overwhelming emotions.

when you are acting irrationally and getting very upset, notice your physical state, and how the thoughts relate to it.... breath deeply... wait a bit and see if it passes

this book helped me a lot,

https://www.amazon.com/Cow-Parking-Lot-Approach-Overcoming-ebook/dp/B003U898WU

There's more beneath the anger you need to explore. It's not something most of us have learned to do. We're often taught that anger is a sin (at least I was).

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Anger-Uncover-Awareness-Strength/dp/1572249668/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1527741804&sr=8-3&keywords=the+gift+of+anger&dpID=41RWS2aGM6L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Try that book: the gift of anger by marcia Cannon. I recommend it to my clients. Good luck!

If physical tools of defense are not allowed, the only option for anyone, especially a physically small person, is mindset and awareness.

Learning how to talk to someone without escalating the situation is a valuable skill. Verbal Judo is a good book on the topic. ( A slightly different version - Verbal Judo )

Being able to recognize and process the sources of uneasiness and fear lets you react in a calm and planned manner instead of fear based panic. This is often enough to keep the potential Bad Thing^tm from happening at all. The Gift of Fear can help you recognize ways Bad People^tm try to manipulate 'nice' people into bad situations.

I read a few books already, including this one I recommend: Beyon Anger: A Guide for Men.

Unfortunately there is no anger management class in my area. I used to have a t-shirt saying: "My anger management class pisses me off", although I have never been to one :P

Meditation was actually recommended by my psychologist. She believes it can help me with other aspects of life as well, like less anxiety, less stress, more productivity, etc.

Thank you for you comment. I wasn't aware there were so many different kinds. I'll educate myself a bit more in the process.

It doesn't actually happen like that - when I'm snappy, I'm not snappy at him (something I've been working on for years, I get aggressive sometimes and to cope with it in a way that I thought wouldn't offend him was sorts yap out at other things. Sometimes get a tighter tone when necessary with him - but I always strove to never snap at him. Nevertheless, he found it really distressing - he's very shy and reserved, which is why I try not to let my stronger personality overwhelm his - I've also read up a lot on introversion to try to help me understand how to be a better communicator with him... but I have a very innately aggro family (Italian by birth, and we live up to the stereotype), it's habitual and it doesn't stress anyone in my family home - but my family aren't the people I want to make my own home with, of course.

The blame certainly does not rest on him - he's been telling me this makes him uncomfortable for some time. I've not done enough to fix it, and his compassion for my stress stopped him from telling me how unhappy he was until the last minute =( I've bought a book called 'Over Coming Anger' to help me now.

My apathy on this is to blame here - I couldn't understand if I wasn't directing it at him, how it was hurting him and my ignorance became a wrongful excuse =(

I'm glad this book was able to help you. I looked at reviews on amazon though, and I saw that almost all of the one star reviews on amazon have issues with the religious aspects of the book, both from secular and religious persons.

>The book manages to paraphrase a couple of well-worn points about human psychology, behavior and anger, but the work is torpedoed by the author's constant references to God and the bible. Shame on the author and publisher for not indicating the theological slant of this book to potential readers. I learned of the book from a podcast interview with the author where he also never mentioned the religious aspect so it seems obvious he is concealing this fact from the book buying public. What is more insidious is the way the God references steadily increase throughout the book. Like Michael Jackson's doctor, this quack steadily ups your drip dose of toxic garbage until you croak. Don't be fooled.

​

>Silliness...he approaches getting angry as though it always has to do with a self-interest lens of viewing situations instead of discussing how to stay calm when you're dealing with true injustices that should make people furious (so that you can arrive at real resolutions/solutions). He also appears to dismiss that there really are people with true mental health issues, and that instead these personal issues only have to do with selfishness instead of acknowledging that we don't understand why the chemicals in the brain sometimes are in dissonance....it's not because there's a pride issue! As a Christian, I found this book insultingly banal and unhelpful.

For people interested in more secular books on anger, there's at least two I know of:

Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger by Ronald Potter-Efron, a general Psychologist.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054M068A/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

the Anger Management Workbook for Men, by Nathan R. Hydes, a US Navy Psychologist

https://www.amazon.com/Anger-Management-Workbook-Men-Emotions/dp/1623157307

Glad that you wrote; I think that’s the first step, and it’s not an easy thing to admit, so the fact that you realize you need help and want to get it is huge.

I have a very short temper myself, and I have completely blown up over inconsequential things; looking back, it’s really ridiculous, if not embarrassing, reflecting on things that have set me off. My anger has ruined relationships and has severely damaged my current one (we're trying to work it out); I've said some nasty, demeaning things to those I truly love; and, while I haven’t hit my wife, I've sometimes hit things, so I’m scared that I could lose that small bit of self control that restricts my violence to inanimate objects.

We have small kids, and probably the lowest point of my life was a day where I wasn't actually angry: I was playing with my 3-year-old, and he asked, “you’re not mad today, Daddy?”

I am by no means “cured,” and it’s definitely day-by-day, sometimes moment-by-moment, but some things that worked for me:

• Admitting I have a problem, like, for real, and finally wanting to do something about it, like, for real. Took me quite a few years, and I wasted and lost a good bit of time.
  
• I'm a reader, so currently reading Beyond Anger: A Guide for Men: How to Free Yourself from the Grip of Anger and Get More Out of Life. Biggest thing so far is realizing that I don't get angry, I am angry.
  
• Forgiving my past (hard... therapy inevitable, which is also hard for me to admit). My childhood and young adult life were not that pleasant, and are, I think, the cause for much of my present-day anger. Like you, I'm not necessarily angry at my wife, but I project my anger about other things onto her. Unpacking my past is difficult and somewhat disturbing, but it does help me to understand why I'm angry. I need therapy to actually learn how to get over these things.
  
• Talking to my wife. This was/is not easy, but it has helped for me to realize the extent of my anger and has also helped to let my wife know that I don't hate her. Counseling is also inevitable here for the same reasons as above; however, it has helped us tremendously in communicating our feelings, particularly as they evolve, rather than bottle them up and then have them explode. This sounds like relationships-101; however, it's not always as easy as it sounds.
  
• Every day, I wake up and still have to make a conscious decision that I'm not going to let things bother me, that I won't let the anger consume me. If you're religious, you might pray; if you're not, you might meditate. Sure, it's still okay to get mad about stuff, but at least for me, it's more about not letting it get to the point where it's this uncontrollable rage.
  
• When I start to feel anger, sometimes physically looking away or getting out of the room for a second helps me to disconnect from the moment. Often, it's during this disconnect that I realize I've either caused the situation (and have no right to be angry in the first place) or that it's something very trivial and not worth it; sometimes, I even can laugh about it.
  
• I've started writing things down (e.g., things that bother me during the day and what I can--or maybe can't---do about them). I think this has been big for me because I typically will just keep these inside and let it stew/pressurize. Sometimes I write these thoughts privately, sometimes publicly. It also helps me to eventually do something about what's bothering me.
  
• I get outside and at the very least take a walk for 30 minutes every day; if I'm particularly bothered by something, and sometimes even if I'm not, I'll run or do some aggressive physical activity. Healthy body, healthy mind, so to speak.
  
• Talking to others who have the same issues (whether in a class, support group, etc.) has also helped me to know that I'm not alone.
  
  Didn't mean to write so much, but I understand what you're going through and have been there, am sort of still there. Good luck to you, and don't be afraid to reach out for help!

Sounds like you're living in an anger cycle: something happens which causes negative emotions to arise (anger, annoyance, resentment, disillusionment, etc.), and your immediate response is to want to break things or just go off the wall to get your aggression out. Then, afterwards, you feel guilty about what you did and you tell yourself you'll do better next time. It's very much akin to an addiction.

What you need to do is retrain your brain. I mean that literally: rewire your brain. You can achieve this through forcing yourself to see the irrationality of your actions. For example, let's say you're driving down the street and someone cuts you off. Your initial emotion is rage: you hate that they ignored you and you feel slighted. What you need to do in that moment is start challenging your rage. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. How is my anger going to help me?
   
   
2. Let's say I get really mad and flip the person off; will that make my life any easier, or will it make it harder?
   
   
3. The last time I was in a similar situation I did XYZ and I later regretted it. Why would I want to do that again?
   
   
4. Will this matter to me in 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 weeks?
   
   You need to read a great book titled Healing the Angry Brain. Here's a tl;dr of the book:
   
   When your brain receives a stimulus, the signal goes to your frontal lobe (the part of your brain responsible for critical thinking and reasoning) and your amygdala (the part of your brain responsible for initiating the fight-or-flight response). Both of these parts of your brain duel to determine the response; your frontal lobe wants to be a gentleman, and your amygdala wants to be a caveman. If you respond to everyday situations with rage too often, your amygdala starts winning every duel, making it more likely you'll respond with anger in the future. BUT, the great part is our brains are very resilient, efficient, and progressive in that our brains have the capacity to rewire themselves. If you start forcing yourself to remain calm in situations when you previously got mad, your frontal lobe starts to win its duel with the amygdala and you remain calm more frequently.
   
   I'm living proof the brain can rewire itself in this way. I walked around with an underlying rage problem most of my life. I lived in 4 apartments between the ages of 20-26 and at some point I punched a hole in the wall of each of those apartments. I used to get so angry about the smallest things that I'd have fantasies about punching people until they were dead. When I turned 28 I started to realize that I was the angriest person on earth and my anger only ever made my life miserable. I'm 31 now and I'm one of the most laid-back people you'd ever meet. I hardly ever get mad about anything - and it's all because of that book and my choice to constantly challenge my anger literally every 5 minutes for months.
   
   You can do it, man. You can improve yourself. Buy that book, read it, and start changing your brain. If you can, see a counselor as well because it's great for mental health.

Similar story from Bulgaria this past week: grown man (ex convict) repeatedly stabbed a 15 year old girl because she rejected him. This shit is indefensible. :(

As to why these things happen... I really don't know. But I can speculate.

Everyone gets rejected in life. Everyone. But people whose feelings of self-worth and identity are strongly externalised, and depend on other people's acceptance will perceive this rejection as an existential threat to the self. I've linked before this study which shows that social rejection triggers some of the same "wiring" that underlies the sensation of physical pain. In a very real way, being rejected hurts.

So, maybe these men felt like they've endured so much pain, that the only way to deal with it is to externalise it. And I'm willing to bet that they generally don't come from backgrounds where healthy strategies to do that are socially accepted. For us, the main ways to deal with negative emotions are usually stoicism (bury it) and anger (explosively release it). Don't get me wrong, anger is not a bad way to deal with some things, but this requires a lot of self-discipline. And it cannot be the ony coping mechanism you have. Anger can push you to do better for yourself, but you can't just keep pushing harder every time something bad happens in life. Human beings have limits.

And it seems, unfortunately, that for some this limit lies at murder.

Congratulations on reaching out. Chances are, if your brother is telling you to come on here, your anger is something that you should learn to deal with, and not ignore. People talk all the time on the internet or on TV about depression and all kinds of mental illnesses, but anger on its own gets little attention. From my own experience, even a small amount of anger can lead someone to lash out and make a bad decision that changes their life.

One way for you to help yourself is to read a book about anger. These two are really good, because they are written by actual psychologists and in way that anyone can understand. (I suggest these because it can be hard to find books about anger, and most of the popular ones aren't even written by psychologists). I think the first one (Rage) might be better for you, because it has lots of examples of different reasons people get angry. It will give you a chance to see how your anger compares to others, and help you decide what to do about it. Spoiler: most of the time, you should focus on figuring out what makes you angry, and then learn ways to deal with that anger. Sometimes the solution is understanding that people aren't trying to be mean to you, even if they seem like it. Sometimes it's learning that you need to leave the area when you start to feel angry. By learning what makes you angry, you can learn to calm down before you anger gets really bad, and you insult or hurt someone.

Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger by Ronald Potter-Efron, a general Psychologist.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054M068A/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

the Anger Management Workbook for Men, by Nathan R. Hydes, a US Navy Psychologist

https://www.amazon.com/Anger-Management-Workbook-Men-Emotions/dp/1623157307