What is the Link Between Anger Management and Domestic Violence?
Anger Management has become highly publicized, and statistics show that one of the most insidious forms of violence, domestic violence, is on the rise, and the old adage that you hurt the ones you love proves, all too often, to be true. Men commit 95% of all violent crimes.
Domestic violence is the top cause of emergency room visits by women. During the Vietnam War, more women were murdered at home than men killed on the battlefield.
Just like anger management is a learned behavior, so are the cycles of violence that define domestic violence in all its forms. Abuse of marital, or life partners, has seen a steady increase in all socioeconomic statuses of people everywhere. Child abuse has escalated steadily over the years, and more and more angry parents are in counseling with equally angry, out of control children. It seems clear that better methods of communicating, dealing with the most intimate of interpersonal relationships, and productive methods of anger management are vital in today’s world.
Whether you blame violence on television, in movies, in video games, or within the families themselves, everyone realizes some proactive steps need to be taken to stop the cycle of violence, and teaching good anger management techniques seems to be the most popular choice to accomplish that task. Domestic violence often has its root in men with low self-esteem, who over react to imagined wrongs and rejections, and is most prevalent in homes of young, unskilled males, who are substance abusers.
It is never right for anyone to be abused. Many female victims of spousal abuse are often coerced into believing they are to blame for the violence against them, but nobody deserves to be abused. Everyone deserves to live and be safe, and any victim of domestic violence should seek legal and professional help centered in positive anger management techniques.
Find more detailed information on all the aspects of anger management on http://www.tipsforangermanagement.com Discover also where to search for free anger management activities.
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Tags: Anger Management, Domestic Violence
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”’Domestic violence often has its root in men with low self-esteem, who over react to imagined wrongs and rejections, and is most prevalent in homes of young, unskilled males, who are substance abusers.”’
How is anger management going to control imagined wrongs and rejections?
Domestic abuse can’t be controlled by anger management in my opinion. That’s one portion that may seem to be the surface, but it doesn’t target the cause. The cause seems to be custom with every human, and YES I can agree that it does have some low self esteem element to it!
If you teach a person to get their angry outbursts to NOT look so anger to the outside world - does that mean they stop being abusive? It shows them how to be more covert in their abuse, because anger isn’t the root cause.
Healing men: One cure for violence against women
Calvin Sandborn
For The Calgary Herald
Saturday, December 06, 2008
“Real men cry bullets instead of tears.”
–William Pollock
—
My sister was murdered by a stranger in 1979. So on the National Day of Action on Violence against Women I ask myself, “What can a man do?”
Marc Lepine was clearly crazy. And the men who carried out the Mumbai terrorist attacks were fanatics too. But male anger and violence is embedded in our culture –from Alec Baldwin’s tirade at his 11-year-old daughter to the local Starbucks customer who vents on a sales clerk; from your dad’s slow burn at Thanksgiving dinner to Stephen Harper’s slow burn in Parliament; from Rush Limbaugh’s tantrums on network radio to the hockey coach’s tantrum at a kids’ game. What can we do about this pervasive anger?
Demanding that men feel a politically correct “gender guilt” probably won’t change much. But here’s an action that could really change things –men need to learn to love themselves.
Scratch an angry man, and you’ll find a man who is angry at himself, cruel to himself. Too often, men have learned from their fathers to be harsh to themselves. Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather described the patriarchal dynamic: “My father was frightened of his father. I was frightened of my father. And I am damn well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.”
In the traditional family the boy is apprenticed to exercise power–and to bury his own feelings. To become the future “master of the house” a boy must hide his vulnerability. When the boy skins his knee dad admonishes him that “Big boys don’t cry . . . take it like a man.” Boys learn the credo found on King George V’s office wall: “If I must suffer, let me be like a well-bred beast, that goes away to suffer in silence.”
Anger is the one permissible deep emotion. In fact it’s been encouraged. “He’s a fighter” is a compliment. Historically, the angry man was the one who became king. The “master of the house” retained power when he was angry–but might lose power if he showed vulnerability.
Having learned that vulnerable feelings are shameful, a boy learns to change his natural sadness and fear into anger. In fact, the anger becomes a standard escape from feeling.
When he begins to feel vulnerable, he blames the other person for making him feel the prohibited vulnerability. He learns to routinely summon anger’s adrenalin to banish sadness and fear–and restore a sense of power.
But this power is counterfeit. The emotional repression-anger cycle contributes to men’s early deaths–with twice the rate of heart attacks and alcoholism, four times the suicide rate and nine times the rate of ulcers experienced by women. Worse, men’s anger habit leaves men lonely and alienated from family and others. The anger habit is closely linked to the fact that almost half of all men are covertly depressed –suffering from workaholism, alcoholism, drug addiction, chronic anger, compulsive control over family or obsessions with TV, sports, and gambling.
However, there is a way out. A man can choose to treat himself with compassion. He can learn to re-parent himself, sending away the harsh father that has dominated a lifetime of self-talk. Instead, he can become a kind father to himself, daily speaking to himself with the encouraging, nurturing words that he would like to use with his own children.
He can allow himself to see what he really sees, and feel what he really feels, without shame. He can reassure himself that he has intrinsic value, simply because he is human and unique. He can accept himself as he is, not as he should be. He can become his own best friend.
In this way a man can free himself to actually experience his feelings and process them. He will learn that he won’t die if he cries. To his surprise, he will learn that sharing tender feelings with others actually leads to life’s finest moments –to honest connection and an authentic life.
In this way the self-contempt that fuels anger diminishes. By becoming kind to himself, he will naturally become kinder to others. The world will become a safer and gentler place.
Calvin Sandborn Is The Author Of Becoming The Kind Father: A Son’s Journey, A Book About Men And Anger.
© The Calgary Herald 2008