Anger In The News

Empathy Predicts Marital Success

Empathy, the ability to see and experience things from the point of view of another person, is related to marital success, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Family Psychology. In couples who tested as more satisfied and well-adjusted, both men and women showed greater empathy. It was concluded that empathy was more inportant than affection for good marital adjustment.

Based on numerous studies showing the value of empathy, we have included this trait as one of the eight core tools in our model of anger control featured in our books and trainings. We have discovered that developing the skill of empathy is crucial for anger management in adults, teens and couples - and for society in general in terms of learning to get along with each other through increased understanding.  

How to Deal With a Bully

Emotional bullying occurs when someone tries to gain control by making others feel angry or afraid.  It is often characterized by yelling, and name-calling, sarcasm, mocking, putting down, belittling, embarassing or intimidating. While research shows that most bullies are unable to make deep changes to their personality, they are sometimes able to modify their behavior to the extent that they are more tolerable.

To learn more about how to survive with a bully, read the online November issue of Taming The Anger Bee by clicking  for pdf version or  for flashpaper version.

 

Anger and Christianity

"It's not in the experience, but in the expression"
............Rev. Beverly Glass

Read full story click here

Managing Conflict at the End of Life

"In tens of thousands of cases each year, patients and families handle catastrophic illness or injury without going to court. They do so with unsung courage, in the face of fear, anguish, and sometimes bitterness. Every loss of a loved one is, in part, a loss of hope — hope for healing of old rifts and fulfillment of thwarted possibilities. Anger and denial are common, especially when relationships were conflict-ridden beforehand. Cast-off parents, rival siblings, children who never measured up to their parents' expectations bring much to the bedside beyond their religious and philosophical leanings

Anger, denial, and other nonrational influences can lock family members into warring stances over whether to treat a devastating illness aggressively or discontinue life-sustaining measures. What is remarkable, given the intensity of the feelings at stake, is how rarely such conflicts make their way to court. It is a measure of how discreetly such squabbles are handled that we know little about how often they arise. And it is a measure of people's character under this pressure that families usually come together to make these judgments or to honor the preferences their loved ones have expressed. ^"

^{Full story in the New England Journal of Medicine}

Blink, Marriage and Anger

Malcolm Gladwell, in his new best-seller book "Blink," sites the marital research of  John Gottman showing that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one. I (Tony Fiore, Ph.D.) studied recently with the Gottman Institute in Seattle, and can attest to the validity of this marital truth: Few marriages can survive more negativity (like anger or contempt) than positivity for very long.  For relationships to have a chance, a couple must find a way to increase their positive interactions or least interprete problems or issues in a more positive way. All couples have problems and issues; what separates successful from unsuccessful couples is  ability to repair the emotional damage done during conflicts.