Combat Stress Center.com

Managing Anger in Iraq

 

LTC John P. Allen 785^th Med. Co (Combat Stress Control)

 

SPC Marcela V. Baisan (E 75MC 215 FSB 1CD)

 

 

Along with love, joy, sadness, and fear, anger is a common human emotion.  Surveys report that the average person gets angry a few times a week.  Over half of these episodes involve people raising their voices.  Around 10% include at least minor physical aggression, usually throwing small objects or shoving other people.  Anger is especially frequent in the work place and a Gallup poll has found that a fourth of adults describe themselves as being “generally or somewhat angry at work.”  Their main source of anger is actions by the supervisor.  Secondary causes are actions by co-workers, assignment to a job with unproductive people, and unrealistic deadlines or excessive work loads.

 

Of course, getting angry is not limited to civilians.  Anger issues are also frequent reasons for military personnel in Iraq to visit mental health professionals.  There are many sources of anger for service members.  Some are here-and-now situations, such as not getting along in the unit or long hours and extreme work demands.  Other sources of anger are more distant, but nevertheless, real.  These include problems with a spouse or family member at home.  Even memories of past events when one was taken advantage of or abused can continue to act as triggers for anger now.

 

Effects of Anger.  There are positive effects of expressing anger--gaining a sense of power, getting others’ attention, and sometimes getting them to do what one wants.  In most ways, though, anger hurts the angry person more than it does the target of the anger.  Anger often leads to anxiety, guilt, depression, and social isolation.  The physical side effects of anger are equally serious.  When one is angry, heart rate may rise to 180 beats per minute, three times the normal pulse.  Blood pressure can go up to or beyond 220/130, well above the normal blood pressure of 120/80.  Anger can lead to and worsen life-threatening medical problems, such as stroke, heart disease, cancer, and ulcers.  A study published earlier this year even linked anger to gum disease!  People who are consistently angry are five times more likely to die before the age of 50 than are calmer people.

 

Although some people believe that it is better to vent their anger than to keep it “bottled up inside,” research shows that the negative effects of expressing anger are about as dangerous as those of holding it in (beyond the fact that directly expressing anger often leads to violence and that anger displayed by one person typically leads others to become angry also).  The best solution is to develop skills to feel less anger in the first place.

 

This article describes some of the things that service members can do on their own to reduce anger as well as treatments that mental health professionals use to solve anger problems.

 

Self-Help Tips for Reducing Anger.    The most important thing to keep in mind about anger is that it is not automatic.  People can determine the amount of anger they have.  Taking care of basic physical needs for rest, food, and exercise make a person less irritable and thus keeps down the risk of a full blown bout of anger.

 

If they recognize early on when they are becoming angry, people can make critical decisions, such as whether or not to leave the situation or, if it is not possible to physically separate themselves from the situation, to calm themselves, to think about different possible ways of responding, to consider the effects of escalating or acting on their anger, and to try various ways to cool the situation down.

 

Thinking through one’s expectations for the behavior of others is also helpful since sometimes these are unrealistic.  Communicating clearly and listening carefully can also go a long way in keeping anger down.

 

When anger or resentment deals with events that aren’t currently present, it helps to write about the feelings or talk to a friend about them.  For some people, redirecting their anger to a physical activity, such as vigorous exercise, may also work.  People can also easily shift attention from a nagging source of anger by a simple activity, like flicking a rubber band on their wrist.  Even the slight pain from this can cut short the downward spiral of anger.

 

Individuals differ in terms of what makes them angry, how they show anger, how severe their anger is, and how they work it out.  They can learn a lot about their own styles of anger by keeping a log of anger incidents.  The information to be recorded should include what brought about the anger, what one did to reduce it, and how well this strategy worked.  Just keeping the log can itself lower the anger because it forces the person to be more aware of his or her angers in life!

 

Treatments for Reducing Anger.  Raymond DiGiuseppe, the Chairman of the Psychology Department of St. Johns University, recently completed a thorough review and analysis on the effectiveness of various treatments for managing anger.  He found that four anger management treatments had especially strong success records:

          

           Relaxation Training.  Since it is not possible to feel at ease and angry at the same time, the therapist teaches relaxation skills, such as deep breathing, muscle relaxation, vividly imagining calming scenes, yoga, etc.  Once people learn the relaxation procedure they can use it as soon as they start to feel angry.    Although the therapist can teach the basics of the technique, practice outside of session is essential until it becomes automatic.

 

           Cognitive Restructuring.  People often believe that events make them angry, but it is not so much the event itself, but how they size it up that makes them angry.  In cognitive restructuring, people learn to identify their errors in thinking or blind spots and how to more accurately evaluate situations instead of simply reacting based on their first impressions.

 

           Positive Alternative Behaviors.  Often people lack important social skills, such as how to directly and appropriately express their needs to others, how to compromise, how to disagree, and how to listen effectively.  These social skills can be taught using the same strategy as for mastering other skills, such as firing a weapon.  Clear instruction, practice, specific and timely feedback, showing examples, and reinforcement for correct performance make learning of social skills possible.

 

           Combined Treatments.  The scientific studies on anger management generally show that combining different strategies is even more effective that relying on a single strategy.

 

The four treatments identified by Dr. DiGiuseppe were found to work well with various kinds of people regardless of their age, gender or life circumstances.  The effects also appeared to last a long time after treatment ended.

 

Military service in Iraq often causes anger in personnel.  Beyond the usual situations that lead to anger in a non-combat garrison or in the civilian community, additional sources of frustration and anger from service in theater include being largely unable to work out family problems, having one’s freedom of movement and activity pretty limited, and being forced to live and work with a small number of people, some of whom one might naturally dislike.  The need to learn effective ways of decreasing anger is, therefore, especially important here.