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Coping With Anger: Overview

Introduction

Dealing with angry individuals is a highly challenging task for most people. If not handled effectively, angry behavior can cause emotional and physical damage to those exposed to it. Angry actions can elicit extreme reactions from others, ranging from social withdrawal to aggression. Managed well, anger can lead to positive changes in behavior, and to solutions to difficult interpersonal problems. The following program demonstrates methods which children can use to effectively cope with another's angry behavior.

Teacher Note:

ANGER/OTHER vs. ANGER/SELF

The focus of Module 4 (Coping With Anger From Others) is on responding to the other person's anger. He/She is angry with us and we must reply. Initially, we are not angry ourselves, the anger is introduced from the outside. In these situations, anger confronts us. As illustrated by the characters in the videos, there are three basic ways we can react:

COLD, HOT and COOL.

Module 5 (Coping With One's Own Anger) addresses self anger. We are angry, we do the confronting, we introduce our anger into the situation.

We can direct our angry feelings at the other person(s) by being COLD, HOT or COOL. As we continue to see, the COOL, assertive mode is the most successful in resolving conflict.

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ANGER Module Objectives

This program will teach students to:

  1. Understand what angry behavior is.
  2. Understand why people become angry.
  3. Distinguish fair anger from unfair anger.
  4. Recognize when angry behavior becomes dangerous.
  5. Identify characteristics of: A COLD (passive) response to another's anger. A HOT (aggressive) response to another's anger.
  6. Identify drawbacks of the HOT and COLD responses to another's anger.
  7. Identify the three steps of the COOL response to anger:

A LOOK COOL: Calm Down

B THINK COOL: Self-Talk

C ACT COOL: Take Assertive Action by-

  1. Accept/Apologize/Make Amends - Lesson 1
  2. Take A Break/Talk It Over - Lesson 2
  3. Leave/Get Help - Lesson 3
  4. Recall and perform the steps of assertive/COOL responses to angry behavior in roleplay and real situations