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Section 7
Smorgasbord

Question 7 | Test | Table of Contents | Printable Page

Seventh counseling session—November 12th

JACK, CLIENT: Okay, I’m back for another lesson. What’s on the menu today?

ELI, THERAPIST: Funny you should ask. Today I have a banquet for you. It’s a smorgasbord of some other wonderful anger management tools you can use while you count to ten.

JACK, CLIENT: I love smorgasbord; did you know I’m one-half Swedish?
ELI, THERAPIST: Really, so am I.

Okay, now let’s start with the appetizer. How do you breathe when you are angry? How do you breathe when you are anxious?

JACK, CLIENT: Breathe? . . . When I’m angry or anxious . . . hmmm . . . it’s with short and quick breaths . . . almost a pant. Sometimes, if I’m mad enough I don’t breathe at all!

ELI, THERAPIST: That’s right, when someone is angry they breathe shallow and rapidly. However, when we breathe deeply and slowly, a corresponding calming effect occurs. This calmness helps us to manage those strong emotions.

You can tell how deeply you are breathing by watching your stomach. If it rises when you inhale, you will experience an enjoyable relaxing sensation.

JACK, CLIENT: How do you do that?

ELI, THERAPIST: Put your hands on your stomach . . . now breathe deeply . . . get your stomach to push your hands up.

JACK, CLIENT: My stomach has been pushing up all by itself for years!

ELI, THERAPIST: Well, many people suck in their stomachs when breathing and it is hard to change that habit and push out instead.
Okay, now take three or four deep breaths as you get your stomach to push up when you breathe . . . deeply and slowly.

JACK, CLIENT: Yeah, doing deep breathing really works, I do feel rather relaxed.

Use deep breathing to manage strong emotions,
such as anger and anxiety.

ELI, THERAPIST: For many years, I taught a court-ordered anger management course for the Baton Rouge City Court. Part of the course curriculum was teaching deep breathing. After demonstrating this principle in one session, one participant came back the second day with this story:

He said, "I came home very late and discovered I was locked out of my house! I felt rage boiling up inside of me. I was going to bust down that door! I thought, ‘They can’t do that to me!’ Then I remembered to use deep breathing.

I want you to picture this". . . he went on to say, "It is 2:30 in the morning, I’m in my backyard locked out of my house, doing deep breathing and I’m thinking about you, Eli, Therapist!"

By doing the deep breathing, he was able to calm down enough to do something appropriate, like maybe knock on the door.
JACK, CLIENT: Deep breathing can do that?

And he was thinking about you. He doesn’t sound like someone I would want to be thinking about me.

ELI, THERAPIST: True. I hadn’t thought about that until you mentioned it.
So now, let’s continue the smorgasbord with the salad. If a person is sitting down in a chair and someone says something disrespectful, what might you expect their reaction to be?

JACK, CLIENT: Instant anger, especially if they were emotionally drunk!
ELI, THERAPIST: Correct. Would they remain sitting or would they get on their feet?

JACK, CLIENT: They would jump up to confront this insult, right?

ELI, THERAPIST: Right. They would jump up . . . getting to our feet is a normal reaction when our anger is triggered.

JACK, CLIENT: That is a natural protection, getting ready for fighting or running away.

ELI, THERAPIST: Correct. We stand up when we are angry, probably because the anger is providing a warning. We are not that many generations removed from swinging out of the trees expecting to be attacked by "lions, and tigers, and bears"!

JACK, CLIENT: Oh, my! Are we still in Kansas, Toto?

ELI, THERAPIST: How we physically react can help us to manage our emotions.

When we want to manage our anger, we can do the opposite of what the anger tells us. Instead of standing up, we can remain seated . . . or if we’re already standing, we can just sit down.

JACK, CLIENT: Like when we see the weigh-in of a professional boxing match and the two fighters go nose to nose staring at each other, trying intimidation tactics or before two guys get into a schoolyard fight, there is a lot of posturing, like stepping forward into the other guy’s space.

Exactly, if you find yourself in that situation and want to de-escalate the probability of going to "fist-city", take a step backward. This does not decrease your ability to defend yourself, but it does send a message that you are willing to diffuse the situation.

JACK, CLIENT: The message is "I’m willing if you’re willing."

ELI, THERAPIST: And hopefully, the other person will want a way out of the conflict. So by stepping back you provide the space, the reason, to slow the action.

JACK, CLIENT: Hopefully, indeed.

ELI, THERAPIST: Here’s a little lagniappe.

JACK, CLIENT: A lawn-a-who?

ELI, THERAPIST: It’s what Cajun people say. . . It means providing something extra. The kids want their "lagniappe" when they are in the grocery store, usually in the form of candy.

JACK, CLIENT: Okay, so what’s the lagniappe today?

ELI, THERAPIST: Let’s use your ex-wife for the example.

JACK, CLIENT: Do we have to? Just kidding.

ELI, THERAPIST: Okay, when she would get angry, what would you do?

JACK, CLIENT: Of course. . . I’d get angry . . . I didn’t know I had a choice.

ELI, THERAPIST: Well, here is something you can say to yourself whenever the opportunity occurs. So when she’s angry, now you will know you have a choice. . . you can get angry with her, or you can use this wonderful little statement. . . a phrase from the book, Crucial Conversations. . . "You can get furious . . . or. . . you can get curious." The co-author, Kerry Patterson, calls it a "Decision Question".

Remember that you can choose to be angry . . . or you can choose not to be angry.

JACK, CLIENT: I got that one. It’s up to me.

You told me in our very first session that life is simple . . . not easy, but simple.

ELI, THERAPIST: We’re not talking rocket science here.

JACK, CLIENT: So, if I choose to be curious, then I have to wonder why she is angry. Instead of reacting to her anger, I can be curious about her feelings.

ELI, THERAPIST: Right.

JACK, CLIENT: You know, although I didn’t know about this technique, I actually did that the other day.

ELI, THERAPIST: You did? Tell me about it.

JACK, CLIENT: Well, she called me when she was angry about something, and instead of reacting to her anger as I normally did, I listened. Because I was listening, I did not hear the anger. This time I heard something that was beneath her anger.

ELI, THERAPIST: What did you hear?

JACK, CLIENT: I heard fear. All these years I thought she was an angry person. She wasn’t angry. She was fearful. When I heard the fear, I reacted differently and said, "This is scary for you." Know what she said?

ELI, THERAPIST: What?

JACK, CLIENT: She said "Yes, I am afraid,". . . and then we talked about what was so frightening for her.

ELI, THERAPIST: Instead of getting furious, you got curious.

JACK, CLIENT: Yeah.

ELI, THERAPIST: That fits into another little gem.

JACK, CLIENT: Another? You collect these gems of wisdom.

ELI, THERAPIST: Right, I can’t be much help to others if I don’t have some tools that work.

JACK, CLIENT: You’re giving me my money’s worth.

ELI, THERAPIST: Glad you think so.

Take the example you just gave. Your normal pattern of conversation would be to react angrily, correct?

JACK, CLIENT: Yeah, I’d have jumped all over her.

ELI, THERAPIST: If you had "jumped all over her", you would have bitten the bait she put out for you.

JACK, CLIENT: The bait?

ELI, THERAPIST: Yes, the invitation to join them in chaos. People often get into patterns, recognizable patterns of how they deal with one another. She says this and you do that, or you do this and she says that. A pattern. It’s as if you two are in a dance and you both know the steps so well, you’re doing them unconsciously or by rote. If I were watching you dance, it would be a graceful dance because you have danced together for so long. Unless you told me, just watching you glide across the dance floor, I wouldn’t know if it was a painful dance for one or both of you.

JACK, CLIENT: Like a dance of anger.

ELI, THERAPIST: Correct. In fact, this little analogy came from a book entitled The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner.

JACK, CLIENT: My steps sure were painful, and I guess her steps were as well.

ELI, THERAPIST: And yet you both kept dancing.

JACK, CLIENT: For twenty years . . . that same painful dance.

ELI, THERAPIST: Well, many people make that choice. When people come in for marriage counseling it’s because the steps have become too painful. They seldom seek counseling when things are wonderful. They come in expecting some relief, but often flee

the process when they discover they have to take action, and do something to make the pain go away.

Change is hard. The process of learning to act in responsible ways can be overwhelming. There is a strong tendency to go back to their old dance steps rather than to make changes. Only when you start to choose do you have a choice.

JACK, CLIENT: I’d never have come here if she hadn’t kicked me out.

ELI, THERAPIST: Exactly. So, the person with the painful dance steps has three choices. One is to continue the old painful but familiar dance steps . . . remember change can be frightening. The second choice is to develop new dance steps. If that happens, one person has the old steps and the other is dancing new steps, so the dance has now become awkward.

It is easy to see when treating substance abuse clients. If one person in a relationship enters treatment, attends a 12-Step program, and makes significant changes, and the other one does not, it puts tremendous pressure on the relationship. This is why most marriages break up in active recovery, not during the active addiction phase!

The third choice of this Dance of Anger is to stop dancing.

JACK, CLIENT: That’s what she did, she quit dancing with me.

ELI, THERAPIST: Right. But let’s look at her other options. She could have continued dancing the old steps as she’d been doing for so many years, or she could have developed new steps that were no longer painful, and hoped you would change yours.

JACK, CLIENT: So, if I had changed my dance steps there was a chance she might have had a corresponding positive change.

ELI, THERAPIST: There are no guarantees, but that’s a distinct possibility.
Sometimes I have people phone me for marriage counseling and their partner refuses to participate.

JACK, CLIENT: What do you do then?

ELI, THERAPIST: I tell them that one person can have a tremendous affect on changing the relationship. Take you and your ex-wife for example. What percentage of the problem between the two of you was hers and what part was yours?

JACK, CLIENT: When I first came in here, I thought it was entirely mine, but you have opened my eyes. I’d say now it was closer to fifty-fifty.

ELI, THERAPIST: Okay, let’s say that your part of the problem was fifty percent. If you worked on solving your part of the problem, what happens to the size of the problem? Is it larger or smaller?
JACK, CLIENT: Smaller, of course.

ELI, THERAPIST: Right. She may not have done a bit of work on her part, but what is separating the two of you now is a much smaller problem, now a good deal easier to deal with.

JACK, CLIENT: I just change my dance steps.

ELI, THERAPIST: It’s that simple.
ELI, THERAPIST: Now for the meat and potatoes. Look at all those feeling words on the feeling chart (page 74).

When a person experiences any of these emotions, there is energy associated with each one. Some feelings have more energy than others do. One of the simplest but most effective methods of maintaining emotional sobriety is to express what you are feeling. Just start saying aloud what you are feeling. For example, "I’m feeling angry, resentful, hurt, and disgusted!"
Instead of feeling words, often a person says, "I feel like . . ." That is a dead giveaway that they are expressing a thought and not an actual feeling. So be sure you are using the actual feeling words found on the feeling chart.

JACK, CLIENT: Wait a minute, you mean just by saying these words aloud, I can manage my emotions? I’m sorry, Eli, Therapist, but that is hard to believe.

ELI, THERAPIST: It may be hard to believe, but it is true.

I had a couple in my office. The man was as mad as anyone who has ever been there. He couldn’t sit down, he was hollering at his wife, cursing, shaking his fist at her. I put the feeling chart in his face and said, "What are you feeling?" He just pushed my hand away and continued to berate his cowering wife. I again stuck the chart in his face and raised my voice. "What are you feeling?" He again pushed my arm away and this time cursed at me. Again I put that chart in his face, and cussed back at him . . . I called that technique "therapeutic-cursing" . . . and demanded that he tell me what he was feeling!

JACK, CLIENT: I can see you cursing at him!

ELI, THERAPIST: He grabbed the chart and hollered, "I’m angry! Hurt! Enraged! Humiliated!" What was amazing to see, was that with each word he said, his overinflated physical bearing decreased, just like a balloon when the air is slowly released. In a few moments, he sat down, and I thanked him for letting us know what he was feeling.

Just saying the words is a wonderful release of energy, allowing the calmness to return, and sobriety to find its way back.
JACK, CLIENT: So by saying the words aloud, I can maintain my emotional sobriety?

ELI, THERAPIST: Yes, and again that simple.

JACK, CLIENT: I need to have one of those feeling charts with me at all times.
ELI, THERAPIST: The chart helps, but all you really need is five words: Mad, Glad, Sad, Hurt, and Fear.

JACK, CLIENT: So, it really is all so very simple.

ELI, THERAPIST: Not rocket science. Simple . . . but not easy.

JACK, CLIENT: Simple, just don’t become negative.

ELI, THERAPIST: Exactly. Just remember that negativity and happiness cannot exist in the same person at the same time.

JACK, CLIENT: Wow! Now that is profound. I can choose to be negative but if I do, by that action I have chosen not to be happy.

ELI, THERAPIST: You’ve got it.

JACK, CLIENT: It’s my choice.

ELI, THERAPIST: Your choice.

JACK, CLIENT: What’s next for dinner, when do we get to have dessert?

ELI, THERAPIST: Not now! We have to eat our vegetables.

I once worked for a counseling agency. The very first day I was there, the office manager told me about her pet peeve. She said, "I hate to come into the bathroom and see the commode seat lifted. Will you remember to lower it?" In this office we had only one bathroom, so I understood her concern. I like it when people tell me what they need, so I granted her request. For three years, I faithfully lowered the commode seat. I was proud of myself!

JACK, CLIENT: Proud . . . for putting down the toilet seat?

ELI, THERAPIST: Yep, proud of myself. One day when I finished, my usual practice after washing my hands was to lower the commode seat, but that day I was mad at her.

I thought, "I’m never going to lower the toilet seat again. In fact, I’ll go in after others and raise the commode seat!" Fortunately,

a little sentence flashed through my mind that said, "If you don’t speak it out, you’ll tend to act it out."

So, I lowered the seat, went into her office, and said, "I have a problem." By doing that, I didn’t have to act it out!

I told this story to a teenage girl and she looked at me, smiled, and said, "I’ve been lifting a lot of commode seats!"

Lifting commode seats is passive aggressive behavior and is an indirect expression of strong emotions.

JACK, CLIENT: Well, I’ve certainly lifted my share of commode seats!

ELI, THERAPIST: Until we have that wonderful little sentence, "If you don’t speak it out, you’ll tend to act it out", it is easy to do.

JACK, CLIENT: So vegetables are like commode seats?

ELI, THERAPIST: I’m not going there! Now we get to the dessert.

JACK, CLIENT: I thought you’d never get here.

ELI, THERAPIST: A good question that comes out of the 12- Step movement is, "How important is it?" It is a powerful question to ask. My son learned to assess his anger by putting a point value to the circumstances. He ranks each situation from one to ten with ten being the most severe, and one very insignificant. What was amazing to him was that he was expressing anger at situations he had only rated as twos and threes!

JACK, CLIENT: You know, as I think about it, I’ll bet most of my anger is also about the small numbers! How ridiculous!

ELI, THERAPIST: If everything seems important, then nothing is important. Until we practice discernment, our mental stress is increased as we place the required energy onto all these competing demands.

JACK, CLIENT: I have to admit it but I wasted a lot of energy on unimportant things and my stress increases unnecessarily.

ELI, THERAPIST: One of my clients created a question she would ask herself when she faced multiple demands: "Is anyone going to die if I do not react to this?" If no one was in danger of getting blood on the

Ground, she relaxed and asked of each competing demand, "How important is it? Will someone die?"

JACK, CLIENT: So is that it? Are we finished with the smorgasbord?

ELI, THERAPIST: Not quite. In some cultures, it is considered impolite unless there is a belch in appreciation of the meal. Therefore, we need . . .

JACK, CLIENT: A Burp?

ELI, THERAPIST: As we did in the third grade when burps and farts were fascinating.

So, here’s our burp: If you ever listen to radio or cable TV talk show hosts, most have a certain attitude. They can be a flaming liberal, or politically to the right of Genghis Khan. It doesn’t matter. Most demonstrate this trait.

JACK, CLIENT: As in, "I’ m right, and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong?"

ELI, THERAPIST: Yes. These electronic personalities express their opinions as facts. If they say something with enough emphasis, with enough conviction, and then repeat it often enough, what they say becomes fact to them, and often in the minds of their listeners.

JACK, CLIENT: You’re not saying they are opinionated are you?

ELI, THERAPIST: Indeed, I am. I see our country becoming increasingly more polarized. This polarization, this black and white point of view, or all or nothing thinking, creates a great potential for conflict. It occurs when we hold absolute positions and do not allow or respect the beliefs of others. In a political spectrum, listen to what the speaker is really screaming: "I’m right and you’re wrong".

JACK, CLIENT: You get pretty worked up about this, don’t you?

ELI, THERAPIST: Perhaps, but when opinions are expressed as facts then they must be defended. Anger is often the emotion used to convey this defense. That puts people on opposite sides of an argument and creates hostility. Politics and religion are two topics fraught with opinions we think we must defend as absolutes. If a person is emotionally drunk and is into absolutism, there is little room for understanding or healthy debate and communication ceases . . . a recipe for disaster.

Do you know what the world’s largest addictions are?

JACK, CLIENT: Alcohol and gambling?

ELI, THERAPIST: No, not even close . . . The two largest addictions affecting more people are . . . . Looking good, and being right!

JACK, CLIENT: Ha! All of us have one or both of those.

ELI, THERAPIST: My counselor used to say that.

JACK, CLIENT: You’ve been to counseling?

ELI, THERAPIST: Sure, doing just what you are doing, working on improving myself. I’ve also been to many 12- Step programs. Let me tell you . . . Eli, Therapist is a work in progress!

JACK, CLIENT: So, you are not perfect, and you still need help.

ELI, THERAPIST: We established that previously!

JACK, CLIENT: Am I committing myself to a lifetime of work on JACK, CLIENT?

ELI, THERAPIST: Only if you choose to commit. Life is about choices.
Looking good, and being right. You see this problem with opinionated talk show hosts. They are so certain that what they say is correct; they are totally convinced they are right! They want to look good by being right, they want that sense of

Omnipotence. When awarded with a worshipful audience, they begin to see their own faces in the constellations. Put this

Compulsive need to be right together with an over-inflated ego and guess what happens if anyone has a contrary opinion?

JACK, CLIENT: Arguments happen. Those talk show hosts do not seem to be happy people. To maintain that angry edge they also have to be negative, and as you say, "Negativity and happiness cannot exist in the same person at the same time!"

ELI, THERAPIST: You learn well. How about in a close relationship? Does having to be right cause problems?

JACK, CLIENT: It did in mine.

ELI, THERAPIST: Think of the times you and your wife argued.

JACK, CLIENT: The thousands of times?

ELI, THERAPIST: If you are very honest, and are looking down on yourself from above during one of your arguments, how much of the quarrel is about the topic of disagreement, and how much of it is just you arguing about your need to be right?

JACK, CLIENT: Most of it is about my being right . . . now that I think about it. I think she also argued to be right.

ELI, THERAPIST: When my wife and I first got married, she presented a slogan sentence that really helped us not fall into the "being right" trap.

JACK, CLIENT: Hey, that trap is where I live!

ELI, THERAPIST: Is that where you want to be? Would you like to move?
Here is the little sentence that offers a completely different awareness..

JACK, CLIENT: Do I need a drum roll for this one too?

ELI, THERAPIST: Yes, maestro . . . Hit it!

JACK, CLIENT: Ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom!

ELI, THERAPIST: Here it is: "Would you rather be right . . . or would you rather be happy?"

JACK, CLIENT: Oh, I’m happy when I’m right! Man, there are many times we fought over such stupid, silly things, and I thought they were so important but it was really my need to be right. Somehow, if I could prove my "rightness" to her obvious "wrongness" then with my shallow self-esteem, I could feel better. By putting her down somehow, I would feel better.

ELI, THERAPIST: So, being right . . . did it work for you?

JACK, CLIENT: Not at all, because even when I won the fight, even when I could prove my magnificence compared to her . . . in the end, I lost.

ELI, THERAPIST: Even when you won, you lost what an insight that is!
JACK, CLIENT: So many wasted moments, wasted opportunities, and my God, a lot of wasted love. I wonder what had happened if instead of arguing with her, I just held her hand and discussed our differences.

ELI, THERAPIST: How beautiful, maybe you could use that technique in your future?

JACK, CLIENT: Thank you for all your help.

ELI, THERAPIST: You are welcome.

QUESTION 7
This little analogy came from a book entitled The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner?
To select and enter your answer go to Test.

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