IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU (HARDLY EVER)

• An elderly woman is sitting at a table in a restaurant waiting for the waitress. When the waitress appears, she walks right past the woman to wait on a table of a young couple. “Sure”, the woman thinks, “she could care less about me because I am old”.

• When Fred went to the DMV his number was called after a long wait. As soon as he approached the woman behind the counter, she grabbed his papers and was rude to him. “See”, Fred thinks, “nobody ever respects me”.

• Andrea is exhausted. She is driving home after a long workday. At the light around the corner from her house, a car cuts in front of her and makes her miss the light. She is angry and thinks “The nerve of him to do that to me!”

What do these 3 scenarios have in common? What cognitive error are all parties making? Each person is surprised that they got so angry and they don’t know why. What each did was to take the behavior of another “personally”. One key anger management tools is: “Don’t take things personally” and with good reason

In each scenario the person “assumed” what the other was thinking and got angry as a result. An important fact to remember is “people do what they do because of who they are, not because of who you are”. When come to understand this you have a powerful anger management tool.

• What the elderly woman didn’t know was that her table was not in the waitress’s station.

• Fred did not witness that the rude clerk spoke to everyone who approached her counter the same way.

• Andrea took another person’s behavior personally although the driver didn’t even know her.

Our “self talk” (what we tell ourselves) has an enormous impact on whether or not we get angry and how angry we get. Nobody is out to get us. Other people pretty much behave in a way that works for them and are not singling us out for harm or abuse.

So if you have a situation in which you feel slighted or disrespected, it’s almost never about “you”. Remember: People do what they do because of who they are, not because of who you are.

Susan Levy, MA

Daybreak Counseling Service
www.daybreakservices.com
http://angermanagementvideo.net
twitter.com/angryinLA
310-995-1202