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The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anger: Using DBT Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation Skills to Manage Anger
Do you struggle with anger? Is it hurting your relationships and holding you back from living the life you want? This book offers powerful, proven-effective dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) skills to help you understand and manage anger before it gets the better of you. Anger is a natural human emotion, and everyone feels it at some point in their lives. But if you suffer from chronic anger, it can throw your life out of balance and wreak havoc on relationships with family, friends, romantic partners, and work colleagues. So, how can you get your anger under control before it causes real consequences? Written by two world-renowned researchers in the field of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anger offers evidence-based skills designed to help you understand, accept, and regulate chronic anger and other intense emotions. DBT is a powerful and proven-effective treatment for regulating intense emotions such as anger. With its dialectical focus on acceptance and change, its roots in basic behavioral and emotion science, and its practical, easy-to-use skills, DBT provides a unique and effective approach for understanding and managing anger. If you're ready to move past your anger once and for all―and start living a better life―this book will show you how.
200 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2015
107 people are currently reading
281 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 11, 2022
I read the other book in this series, The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook and found this one to be better.
In Chapter 1 - Understanding Anger From the Inside Out, the common cues for anger are:
1. Situations we perceive as threatening.
2. Being prevented or blocked from reaching an important goal.
3. Unpleasant physical sensations and physical & emotional pain.
On page 15 in this chapter they talk about rumination amplifying anger and that rumination is a common thinking pattern that accompanies anger. They discuss rumination further on in Chapter 9 - Managing Angry Thoughts. Rumination involves repetitively thinking about and focusing on the problem that is making you angry. You might feel like you're doing something productive when you are ruminating because you are focusing on your problems, however, rumination doesn't solve your problems and can make your anger worse. They list the signs that you might be ruminating. They are:
• Asking yourself why things are the way they are.
• Wondering what's wrong with yourself for feeling or thinking the way you do.
• Thinking that whatever problem you're stressed or angry about always happens to you.
• Asking yourself why this kind of thing keeps happening to you.
• Thinking over and over about whatever you're angry about.
• Having a hard time stopping yourself from thinking about something.
• Thinking and rethinking until you feel more angry.
• Feeling burned-out, tired, or exhausted from thinking about why you're angry.
I found this section most useful for me since I have seasonal affective disorder and part of that involves managing my depressive symptoms. Rumination is a common symptom. It does feel true that ruminating feels productive but it really isn't.
Strategies they talk about include developing mindfulness skills and distress tolerance skills. There are two types of distress tolerance skills; crisis survival skills and reality acceptance skills. Crisis survival skills involves using distraction, self-soothing, leaving the situation, and practicing breathing & muscle relaxation. They don't really get into the reality acceptive skills in this book and suggest the book DBT Skills Training Manual by Linehan, 2015. They also suggest Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance.
One exercise in Chapter 3 - Getting and Staying Motivated to Work on Your Anger involves writing out how you would like things to be in various areas of your life and writing down if anger interferes with that area. Examples of areas are relationships with friends/family, financial goals, occupational goals, etc. Another exercise in this chapter involves writing out what your life would be like if you could cope with anger effectively.
Chapter 7 - How to Avoid Making Things Worse When You're Angry talks about strategies to use when you're angry. Strategies include leaving the situation, do an activity to distract yourself, think about something else, or get in tune with your 5 senses. At the end of this chapter, there is an exercise to write out the positive consequences of not acting on urges to engage in destructive behaviours in areas of your life such as relationship, job/school, or emotional/health consequences. I didn't do this exercise but I have used this technique mentally prior to reading about it in this book and I think it's useful because it's showing you that it can be rewarding to practice self-restraint.
In Chapter 11 - Express Anger Effectively there is a section where they talk about developing scripts for expressing your anger and asserting your needs. They seem to believe that most anger is fueled by thwarted goals which is usually cued by another person. They do list non-human cues such as loss of electricity or a computer malfunction. One of the script exercises involves asking yourself the following questions:
• What is my anger telling me?
• What do I want out of this interaction?
• What do I want this person to do or say?
• What changes, if any, do I want this person to make?
This book was a short read so I think it's worth taking it out from the library. On page 24 they write "If you listen carefully, anger can tell you something about what you want or need." and I think they are right. Anger has messages for us and it's worth taking the time to listen to this emotion.
In Chapter 1 - Understanding Anger From the Inside Out, the common cues for anger are:
1. Situations we perceive as threatening.
2. Being prevented or blocked from reaching an important goal.
3. Unpleasant physical sensations and physical & emotional pain.
On page 15 in this chapter they talk about rumination amplifying anger and that rumination is a common thinking pattern that accompanies anger. They discuss rumination further on in Chapter 9 - Managing Angry Thoughts. Rumination involves repetitively thinking about and focusing on the problem that is making you angry. You might feel like you're doing something productive when you are ruminating because you are focusing on your problems, however, rumination doesn't solve your problems and can make your anger worse. They list the signs that you might be ruminating. They are:
• Asking yourself why things are the way they are.
• Wondering what's wrong with yourself for feeling or thinking the way you do.
• Thinking that whatever problem you're stressed or angry about always happens to you.
• Asking yourself why this kind of thing keeps happening to you.
• Thinking over and over about whatever you're angry about.
• Having a hard time stopping yourself from thinking about something.
• Thinking and rethinking until you feel more angry.
• Feeling burned-out, tired, or exhausted from thinking about why you're angry.
I found this section most useful for me since I have seasonal affective disorder and part of that involves managing my depressive symptoms. Rumination is a common symptom. It does feel true that ruminating feels productive but it really isn't.
Strategies they talk about include developing mindfulness skills and distress tolerance skills. There are two types of distress tolerance skills; crisis survival skills and reality acceptance skills. Crisis survival skills involves using distraction, self-soothing, leaving the situation, and practicing breathing & muscle relaxation. They don't really get into the reality acceptive skills in this book and suggest the book DBT Skills Training Manual by Linehan, 2015. They also suggest Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance.
One exercise in Chapter 3 - Getting and Staying Motivated to Work on Your Anger involves writing out how you would like things to be in various areas of your life and writing down if anger interferes with that area. Examples of areas are relationships with friends/family, financial goals, occupational goals, etc. Another exercise in this chapter involves writing out what your life would be like if you could cope with anger effectively.
Chapter 7 - How to Avoid Making Things Worse When You're Angry talks about strategies to use when you're angry. Strategies include leaving the situation, do an activity to distract yourself, think about something else, or get in tune with your 5 senses. At the end of this chapter, there is an exercise to write out the positive consequences of not acting on urges to engage in destructive behaviours in areas of your life such as relationship, job/school, or emotional/health consequences. I didn't do this exercise but I have used this technique mentally prior to reading about it in this book and I think it's useful because it's showing you that it can be rewarding to practice self-restraint.
In Chapter 11 - Express Anger Effectively there is a section where they talk about developing scripts for expressing your anger and asserting your needs. They seem to believe that most anger is fueled by thwarted goals which is usually cued by another person. They do list non-human cues such as loss of electricity or a computer malfunction. One of the script exercises involves asking yourself the following questions:
• What is my anger telling me?
• What do I want out of this interaction?
• What do I want this person to do or say?
• What changes, if any, do I want this person to make?
This book was a short read so I think it's worth taking it out from the library. On page 24 they write "If you listen carefully, anger can tell you something about what you want or need." and I think they are right. Anger has messages for us and it's worth taking the time to listen to this emotion.
April 8, 2016
Great Guide!
Excellent workbook to work with clients. I highly recommend it! Clients can put into practice the exercises included. These exercises are easy to follow and yet very helpful.
Excellent workbook to work with clients. I highly recommend it! Clients can put into practice the exercises included. These exercises are easy to follow and yet very helpful.
November 18, 2017
I work as an adolescent psychotherapist and this workbook has relatively easy to understand activities that work well as homework assignments. Depending on the reading level of the client some of the content might be difficult for them to understand .
February 11, 2021
An interesting book to read when you want to work on identifying what triggers and angers you. It helps you try to deal with and find alternative ways to cope with such situations. You can come back to it whenever you want in order to check out and deal with a specific situation and approach.
August 13, 2018
Great book about anger and anger management.
January 12, 2019
A good primer on DBT with some helpful exercises designed to create insights.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews