|
|
Section
12 Question
12 found at the bottom of this page In the early morning hours of January 7th, 43-year-old
Derrick K. Miller walked up to a security guard at the entrance to the San Diego
Courthouse, where a family court had recently ruled against him on overdue child
support. Clutching court papers in one hand, he drew out a gun with the other.
Declaring: "You did this to me!!" he fatally shot himself through the
skull. Miller's suicide is symbolic of a frightening global trend. That trend
is an alarming rise in male suicides. I told Neil to begin recording his anger experiences. "Every night before you go to bed," I told him, "write down all the incidents of the day that have made you angry and how you handled them. Here are some specific items to include in an entry: the date, time and place of each anger-provoking experience, the person and or condition involved, the external events that provoked the anger, both the negative and positive self-talk that you used before, during, and after the anger-provoking experience, and how you behaved in response to the provocation. Also, write down the intensity of the anger you felt and an evaluation of how well you dealt with that anger." I told Neil that his anger diary would help him to get a better idea of how often and how intense his anger incidents were. Also, I told him that the anger diary would help me to see what kinds of things were provoking his anger. From there, we could decide the best way to go about treating his depression. At the beginning, Neil was skeptical. He knew that something was wrong, or at least that his girlfriend Maggie had told him he was too volatile. However, he didn't see his anger as a problem. When Neil came back the next week, he said he was surprised by what he recorded in his anger diary. Neil told me that he hadn't realized how much he got angry. He began to recognize a pattern in his anger experiences. "I guess I got mad the most after meetings at work, especially meetings that were really non-productive. Then I'd get home and still be angry." He also noticed that he "lashed out" most of the time in response to his anger. I asked Neil what he thought of his anger diary. He said, "I had no idea how much of a problem this was. I think I'm beginning to see what my girlfriend was talking about." In order to treat Neil's depression as a whole, we had to first work with and begin to reduce his harmful anger. After Neil's twelfth and final session, he had actually reduced the intensity of his anger, even when he felt frustrated by coworkers. Also, was doing less "lashing out" from anger in the past few weeks. Do you have a client who may be unaware of the intensity of his angry outbursts and how they affect the people around him? Consider sharing this technique with him. In the next track, we'll look at systematic desensitization, another method you can use with angry male clients. QUESTION
12 Answer
Booklet
for this course |
