Reddit mentions of Take Charge of your Life: How to Get What you Need With Choice Theory Psychology

I am pro-therapy, as I've mentioned here many times. But one of the downsides is we really do have to be advocates for ourselves and keep our therapist on point. If we know we have clear anger management and depression or anxiety issues, we have make sure every visit our therapist addresses these issues and not let the conversation go on a half hour tangent and treat our real issues as a last minute afterthought.

Whether you have clinical depression or not is ultimately up to the therapist’s diagnosis. But it’s still unfortunate they were not able to give you better advice and guidance that could have possibly helped you prevent getting into trouble at work by simply teaching you how to communicate better with your co-workers.

I advise taking charge and changing therapists if they don't help you consistently address your most prominent issues. Just say thanks, this will be my last visit. If that's too confrontational, schedule a new one while you're in the office but as soon as you can schedule a first visit with a new therapist, then call and cancel with your old one and say you are trying someone new. Seriously whatever it takes to get to a new one. They won't be offended.

Here is a way to take matters into your own hands and have more control over your treatment. So a way to keep your treatment, healing and learning on track is to get a notebook or journal, even Google Docs, and start writing what is bothering you and how you might be abel to deal with it better. Here is a method for keeping a thought diary for anxiety specifically, but it works for any strong emotion. Here's another format in case you like more structure (like I do!), this one is a PTSD worksheet. You can cross out PTSD and write anger, depression, whatever the case may be, the approach is very similar. You can print out 20 copies and have them in your desk ready for you and just go through it when you have an anger episode. Or you can use it as a guide and write your own column headers in your notebook/journal to suit your needs. That's actually what I do. I have a minimized version.

Every time you get angry, sit down for five minutes and write out what happened. Then take a few minutes to see if you could do 2 things. 1. find a way to anticipate your anger so you can take action sooner next time. 2. Find a way you can respond better next time. The links above help with exactly this but I thought it worth mentioning the goal of all of this.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Getting mad at yourself when these thigns happen just makes the anger and anguish last longer. I know it’s cliche but treat it as a learning experience. And that’s actually harder than it sounds, which is why you want to conserve your energy when it happens and not waste it raging about it. Sit down and start writing. That’s the discipline. You know yourself better than anyone else. So you are the best person to diagnose what happened, when exactly you got pissed off and what perspective you might have used to work better in the moment.

If you are best as someone’s wingman, stay at that level. But if you desire to be team lead again and to have a team under you, take a classes in management, project management, Six Sigma, team building and team communication. Anything that will help you put a framework on the problem. Here are some books I would suggest.

Difficult Conversations

Anger Management for Dummies

Take Charge of Your Life

The Art of Living

Hope some of this helps!

My doctor put me onto this book- sounds all feathery strokey but it is made a big difference, and I think will give you a lot of ideas and help.

The ebook is super cheap.

It's made so much difference in my life (I am in no way affiliated with it or get money from it!)

Edit-removed wrong link to wrong book! sorry! It's this book! https://www.amazon.com/Take-Charge-your-Life-Psychology/dp/1462037437