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The Anger Trap: Free Yourself from the Frustrations that Sabotage Your Life By Les Carter ( Jossey-Bass )
Release Date: 2004-09-02
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $15.95
Price: $10.85
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Product Description
It's easy to identify rage in people who lose their temper at traffic jams, unruly children, unresponsive coworkers, and unrealistic bosses. But we may not recognize more subtle manifestations of anger, such as being uncomfortable with loose ends, acting impatiently, or being overly critical. That is anger, too. And, as is so often the case, angry folks don't seem to realize that the behavior causing them problems at home or at work actually stems from unrecognized and unresolved pain and emotional injuries from the past. Is all this negative emotion inevitable, or are there choices about how to respond, choices that can improve personal relationships as well as emotional health? The Anger Trap is a landmark book that strips away the myths and misconceptions about anger and reveals how you can learn to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy anger so that you may choose-- or help someone else to choose-- a better, more spiritually enlightened path. The Anger Trap examines the root causes of anger and can help you realize your patterns and break the destructive cycles of criticism, frustration, and irritation that hurt you and others around you. Drawing insight from timeless spiritual wisdom as well as cutting-edge research, Dr. Carter offers practical techniques to free you from anger, its hidden insecurities, fears, and selfishness and thereby improve the quality of your home and workplace life. The book clearly illustrates how the change process works and The Anger Trap is filled with real-life examples of the ways people have come to terms with their anger by applying the concepts Dr. Carter outlines.
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 This book is helpful in understanding anger and how to deal with it appropriately.
This book is helpful in understanding anger and how to deal with it appropriately. I recommend this book for anyone struggling with anger.
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 Helpful, clear and encouraging ( ctsophie )
I think a lot of people don't like this short of book because there is no one answer. I finished the book and I'm still thinking of what I should do in my own life to make the changes I want. But the problem is that everyone is different and so it is impossible to have a book have everyone's answers.
The thing the book does do well, and other books try to do as well, is to create insight into your own life, not to let anyone off the hook, but rather, to approach a problem more effectively and more importantly, without creating other problems.
Even though I feel like I can communicate my frustrations effectively, I found this book very helpful. I happened to be reading it over a period of bad weeks and I found that it really would help my moods.
I actually think that this book is good for a lot of different types of people, not even those who consider themselves necessarily angry people. I believe the book offers a lot of other types of insight as well.
If you are looking for a less dry, funnier take on these things, and a faster read, Harriet Lerner's Dance of Intimacy/Anger is just one of my favorite reads.
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Very insightful as far as "things I had not taken into consideration" ( rattpoison82 )
I have quite a few books on cognitive psychology. However, I had no idea what a big component anger was to my emotional health. By now, everybody has been given the opportunity to learn that mental health is a very complex issue. However, many of us(I'm guilty of it) seem to deal with our emotions with the same thought processes, over and over. If you're like me, you end up kidding yourself that one day you're going to finally relax.. and not be so angry.
I found a lot of books kind of boring... re-stating the obvious, or talking about things in a very "clinical" way. I have to say, Les Carter put together a very good book. I used to think that I was aware of the many destructive thought processes that we can possess. Chapter after chapter, however, I was impressed with the new insight into such an old problem.
I have heard that some people will make the point that Les Carter is coming from a religious perspective. I'm an atheist and did not know of his religious background before getting halfway into the book. I can say that he does a great job of leaving religion out of the book to keep its information universally acceptable.
When buying this book, I thought it was just going to cover a small facet of my emotional well being. I, now, think that this is one of the more useful books in my collection.
When I read a book on depression, it often exposes profound insights into my own thought processes. However, this book provided a different way of interpreting the behaviors of my parents, teachers, bosses, co-workers, girlfriends, etc. I, definitely, was not expecting to get this much out of this book.
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If you struggle with anger, this book has answers ( jungefrau )
I thought the Anger Trap was very insightful and as I read through it I recognized my typical anger-generating habits of thinking. I also learned ways to retrain my thinking - slowly but surely - in order the respond to things less emotionally. I also learned that when I am "angry" I am probably really something else - disappointed, afraid, frustrated, feeling rejected or dismissed. When I start to get mad now I pause and ask myself, "what is really going on here?" and that alone has enabled me to explore other sides to my personality that I have tried to ignore for the last 30 yrs. I can get through situations that used to make me blow my top as a sane, calm person now. It helps to dialogue with myself (silently, of course, lest they get the net!) by using techniques from the book.
My only beef with the premise (it's always something...) is that the author goes with the idea that anger comes from past problems. Grow up with a dad who yells or hits and you'll yell or hit. However, there are many studies that show that a violent home does not necessarily beget a violent child, a calm home does not beget a calm child. Just as anxiety can run in families or depression, might not problems such as overreaction to stimulus? If the dad is a yeller, perhaps it is his genes that pass on the anger and not his yelling. Otherwise, why don't all people from certain types of parents exhibit the behavior? I bring this up, because it is easier to face the problem sometimes when there is no one to blame (except perhaps God, if you lean that way). Rather than bemoan the mess a parent has made of one, it might be better to treat it as a limp that runs in the family but was not bequeathed with any malice. You have the limp, now figure out how to walk with it. You have the temper, now figure out how to respond to life as a decent human being with it.
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 Not Worth the Ink ( marseleb )
I bought this for my husband, who was willing & interested in dealing with his anger issues. Both of us agreed that it was just a silly pile of psycho-babble. Really.
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Addiction
