Extract from Behaviour Skills for Parents, Teachers and Support People – A focus on Autism, by Trevor Lewis
ANGER MANAGEMENT
The Dior Method
This chapter has been written in a way that it can be utilised by either the person with the anger management issue or by someone supporting them. It has been written in a way that will guide you to write down, understand and follow your own anger management strategy. Or, to guide you writing an anger management strategy that will help you with your support of the person who needs the strategy.
Anger Management is maybe the one issue that if perfected by us all, could well cut our violent crime rate dramatically, or at the very least would lessen the impact of domestic and schoolyard problems.
Understanding Anger
Anger is not a bad emotion. Many people do not realise this, and view anger as something we should never have, yet it is simply another ‘emotion’, which we have for a reason. Emotions tell us and often others around us that something is not quite right, and we need to do something to change the situation. The feeling of anger provides one of many messages. Firstly, it tells us that something has happened or is happening that is either not safe or not fair to what we believe should be happening. It also tells us that we need to do something to either stop what is happening, or to remove ourselves from the situation.
I base what I teach in this anger management chapter on what I term the Dior Method. What the Dior Method refers to is scientifically based strategies that are based on behavioural principles. This means I base the advice I provide on what can be observed by others, either visually (what we see happen), what we hear, smell, or feel. Subsequently we need to base our understanding of anger on these principles, rather than just the emotive descriptions of anger, ‘hate, vengeance, despise’.
All behaviours have a function, and it is what we do when we are angry that serves a function for us. For example, if we hit a person when we are angry with what they have just said – the function of this behaviour is to either stop them from saying what they are saying, or to reduce the likelihood they will say these things again as we have just inflicted a punishment on them. We obviously need to work on modifying this behaviour, and to do that successfully we need to introduce an appropriate behaviour to take its place that fulfils the same function.
“The feeling of anger puts across one of many messages.”
Life is about rules. If we break those rules, often we will face the consequences, and regret that we did break them. We need our own set of rules to get through life without getting ourselves either into jail, or into a fight where we get hurt.
The last three opening paragraphs you read have introduced the three main steps of the Dior Method anger management strategy.
Those three steps are:
Knowing what our body feels like and what we do when we get angry
Having a plan about what we will do in future when our body feels like that
Having our own personal rules that relate to our anger that we will endeavor to never break
As this chapter progresses, we go through each of these three steps, explaining how you can work out the best way to follow them and subsequently form them into your own strategy. The reasoning behind you writing your own strategy is all related to how we all react to the emotion of anger differently. Where some of us who are constantly teased or verbally bullied by others may simply react by walking away and ignoring it, others will react with violence. Yet, there are also many other reactions that may be shown by some people in exactly the same situation. This is why different things will work for each of us in controlling our anger. Though we provide examples and suggestions, only YOU can decide on what will work for you.
A person who wants to learn a strategy to stop smoking, is wasting their time unless they actually WANT TO STOP. Anger management is exactly …
For more information on anger management, behaviour, and autism get your copy of Behaviour Skills for Parents, Teachers and Support People – A focus on Autism, by Trevor Lewis