The CENT theory of anger says:
1. You
were born with an innate capacity to develop angry, anxious and depressed responses to your social
environment - in response to frustrations, threats and losses.
2. You then encountered your mother, who already had
a ‘style of relating', based on her attachment style with her own mother and father. She would have shaped your
emotional expression by:
(a) Modelling an approach to relationship and emotions; and:
(b) Rewarding and penalizing
you for you emotion expressions, including your angry outbursts in the first couple of years of your life.
3. Your father's
approach to relationship, including emotion expression, especially his way of expressing (or suppressing) anger, would have
been the next major influence on the development of your emotion expression, including your way of being angry - implosive
or explosive.
4. If both of your parents had a secure attachment to their own parents, they would have had a warm but
assertive approach to relating to you. From them you would have learned to be secure in your relationship with them,
and, by extension, with virtually all subsequent relationships. You would have learned to express healthy anger in an
assertive way to ask for what you want, and to say no to what you do not want. You would not have any significant problems
with anger.
5. However, if one or both of your parents had an insecure attachment to their own parents, they would have
had an insecure attachment to you, and been either explosively or implosively angry with you when you frustrated them or broke
their personal rules. From them, you would have learned to engage in unhealthy anger expression of an explosive or implosive
type, or a mixture of the two, varying from situation to situation.
6. If you want to change your relationship style
today, you need to experience secure relationship with another person - possibly a romantic partner, or a good therapist who
understands how to build a secure relationship with you. You need to learn that explosive
anger costs you, in terms damage to relationships and careers, for examples; and that implosive
anger - sulking and stewing in your own angry juices - damages your ongoing happiness, your relationships at home and
at work, and ultimately you physical and mental health.
7. You can improve your relationship and attachment style by
studying and applying new ideas from emotional literacy and self-assertion. And I can teach those ideas and skills to you.
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Sometimes the reframing of an anger-inducing stimulus is the best solution to the problem.
In the case of somebody jumping in front of you on a queuing line you have a choice between two healthy options, and two unhealthy
options.
The two healthy options are as follows: (1) You can either assert yourself
with them; or (2) you can reframe the experience so you do not feel overly upset about it.
The two
unhealthy options are a follows: (1) You can make yourself irate with that individual,
and you can then confront them aggressively and start a row with them; or (2) You can make yourself irate
with them, and then sulk silently about their rotten behaviour, stewing in your own angry juices for a considerable
period of time.
So you have to learn to choose. And I can teach you how to do that.