Anger

Ask it plainly. Do you think you are a threat to anyone you love? A vague anger problem turns into something workable the moment it has a name attached to it.

Then keep going, because the follow up questions carry most of the weight. Has there been any thought of killing someone, or of dying. What is in the…

Imagining revenge is ordinary and on its own tells you very little. What matters is whether it has started collecting details: a particular person, a method, a time, something bought or moved.

Almost everybody who is furious has run some version of a scene in their head, and treating that as alarming only teaches people not to mention it.…

Hurting yourself is not always about coping. Sometimes it is aimed at somebody else, and until you know which it is you cannot know what would help.

This is uncomfortable to ask about and it is not an accusation. An act can be a way through an unbearable hour, or a message to someone who has…

Before anything else, take seriously what self-injury is doing for a person. Pain in the body can be easier to hold than pain in the mind, and a hurt you chose yourself can feel like control coming back.

There are other honest reasons too. It can switch the world off for a while, or hold up a kind of armour: nobody can hurt me worse than I already do,…

See what you made me do to myself. When self-harm is carrying a message like that, naming the message is not dismissing it, it is looking for the thing that could be said instead.

The question can be asked kindly and straight. Do you ever get angry enough with them to want to hurt yourself so that they feel it. People often say…

An act meant to be heard rather than to end a life can still end one. Whatever you believe about the intent, lethality is a separate question and it always gets asked.

The ways this happens are ordinary and awful. A method more dangerous than the person realised. The friend who was meant to arrive, arriving late. A…

Anger rescues you from an unbearable in between by handing you something to do. The relief is real, and that is exactly why it keeps coming back.

Fear asks you to sit in a situation that has not resolved yet, which is a horrible ask. Anger says no to that and converts it into action, and the…

Fight and flight have been hyphenated together for a reason. It is one system with two exits, and which exit you take depends on how you rate yourself against whatever is in front of you.

Which means the fighting is not a fixed feature of your character. Change your sense of what you can handle and the branch changes with it. In…

The person roaring at you is very often the most frightened one in the room. Holding that in mind steadies you, and your steadiness is a good half of what settles them.

Most of us find it easy to be kind to somebody who is visibly afraid and much harder when the fear arrives as shouting. Your own alarm is the thing…

When somebody manages a partner through anger, it is worth asking what the control is guarding. Very often the answer is a fear of being left.

Telling someone that nobody else would have them is that fear turned into a weapon, and it usually arrives when the person feels furthest away.…

When someone comes at you angry, listen for the fear in it. It changes what you say next, and it changes what their anger does to you.

A raised voice usually produces apprehension, and apprehension makes people stiffen or back away. Hearing frightened rather than hostile leaves you…

Gritting your teeth works right up until you are tired, hungry or already stretched. Watching the anger from a small distance is the steadier option, because it does not need holding up.

Keeping a lid down costs effort, and the effort runs out at the end of a long day, which is exactly when you need it. The observing stance is…

You are free in principle and a good deal less free at half past eleven at night in the middle of a row. Freedom is a capacity that rises and falls, which also means it can be built.

On autopilot, hijacked, exhausted or drunk, the choice is technically yours and practically not. Knowing that without shame moves the question from…

You are free while you are still weighing something up, and once you have chosen you carry that choice until the next one comes round. So the useful thing is to have more of those moments, not to make one perfect decision.

Treat a hard evening as a run of small forks rather than one big test you pass or fail. Reply now or in an hour. Say the sentence or leave it. Stay…

There is no point reasoning with yourself while you are still lit up. Wake the part of you that does the reasoning first, then hand it the problem.

Under real arousal the clever reframes you learned are simply not available, which is why they seem to evaporate exactly when they are needed.…

There is a difference between stepping out and storming out, and most of it sits in whether the other person knows you are coming back.

Two failures sit either side of this one. The first is staying in the room until something is said that cannot be unsaid. The second is going quiet…

The alarm system in you responds to what your body does more readily than to what you tell it. Sit down, unclench, breathe out slowly, and only then try to reason with yourself.

Reasoning does work, just not at the top of the curve. Wait until the arousal has come down a little, then think about what happened, and you will…

The urge to punch a wall is the body trying to dump a load of energy. Give it somewhere to go that will not cost you a hand or a door.

Telling yourself to stop rarely holds, because the urge is doing a job. Choose the substitute in advance and keep it dull and near to hand: press…

Press ups on clenched fists give the hands something close to striking, while the effort and the counting take the story out of it.

The shape of the movement is part of why it satisfies, and the breathing it forces is what stops it being a rehearsal. Count the reps, keep the…

If one sigh helps, take another. Nothing says you have to wait for the hard part to be over first.

Waiting makes the sigh a report on something already finished. Repeating it while you are still in the middle turns it into an intervention instead.…