ANGRY THOUGHT PATTERNS: WORKBENCH EXERCISE

Managing Anger > 1. Intro > 2. Our Anger > Workbench Exercise

Reflecting on your anger

Reflecting on our anger will help us to better understand ourselves and make lasting change.

A quick debrief on your anger

Part 2. Our Anger: Thought Patterns: Workbench Exercise

Consider the following thought patterns:
  • Overgeneralizing 
  • Thinking in terms of ‘should’ and ‘must’
  • Unfairly blaming yourself or others
  • Catastrophizing
  • Jumping to conclusions
  • Focusing on negatives
  • Thinking in terms of ‘black and white’
  • Taking things personally
  • Or other negative thinking patterns related to anger? 

For example: If we imagine being cut off in traffic by an aggressive driver and getting really upset by it, we might realise that we took the driver’s action as a personal affront.

Thinking ‘This guy just cut ME off!’ Rather than this person is just cutting off whoever was in front of him. It was still a jerk thing to do by the driver, but there was no personal malice against us specifically. 

Try to think of how negative thinking patterns play a role in your anger. Do any of these sound familiar?
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Once you’ve taken a few minutes to go over the above, let’s move ahead to learning about warning signs of anger.

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