Anger Classes – How Different Views Cause Anger Filled Relationships

Anger classes should teach is that none of us experience the world in the same way. Everyone has his or her own particular interpretation of the way things are. If you were raised in a beach town on the California coast the way you see things is probably going to be different than somebody from Cleveland. Things random and diverse as being born agile or all thumbs, first born or the middle child, shy, outgoing or blended in with the crowd cause you to develop a way of seeing the world that is based upon your experiences.

The take home from this is that how you see things is unique to you and based upon the experiences that you have had in life. It tells you what is really important, what you should pay attention to and what you should tune out, it tells you how to interpret where other people are coming from and why they do the things they do. For example, the person who is very shy might place enormous importance on hard work as a way to get ahead and tend to see people who utilize their networking skills as a means of getting ahead as lazy and manipulative.

What this means is that you don’t experience the world directly. Its actually an interpretation of what happened that is unique to you and based on what’s happened to you in life. And this idea of the world becomes your reality. The old cliche of twelve people witnessing the same car accident and having twelve different versions of what happened is true because we all have different models of the world that shapes the particular details that we pay attention to and how we interpret those details. Because of our unique experiences our interpretations of what happened are as unique to us as snowflake patterns. While they may be similar, no two are alike.

What does this have to do with anger classes or relationships? Most misunderstandings I see in my practice as a couples therapist are a result of the two well intentioned having clashing impressions of what just happened to them. You don’t stop and think about this because the way you look at the world is so much a part of who you are that you automatically think that your partner is out to hurt you or the way they are reacting to something is just plain nuts.

If you take nothing else from this article on anger classes it should be that no matter how strange it might seem to you, everyone’s actions makes sense when you are able to see it through the filter of the experiences they’ve had in life. Let me say that again, because its an incredibly important concept to get – No matter how strange it might seem to you, everyone’s actions makes sense when you are able to see it through the filter of the experiences they’ve had in life.

This gets to be a problem with couples because most people don’t normally slow down and think that “because of the model I have of the world, I chose to focus on these details and to interpret those details in this fashion which led me to this conclusion” We usually just think “it happened this way, why can’t you see it my way?”

How do you get around this? Well the first thing to ask yourself if you really think in your heart of hearts that your partner is always deliberately out to do you wrong. If the answer is yes than maybe you should think really had about why you are with this person. If the answer is no it may help you to understand that there is no right and no wrong, just different ways of looking at things.  Empathy and understanding that there are always two sides to every story should be at the heart of all anger classes.

A different way of approaching this dilemma that I teach in my anger classes is to think of your partner has being from a different country than you and because of that has a different culture than you. Its kind of like your American and celebrate Christmas and your Partner Jewish and celebrates Hanukkah. Chances are you wouldn’t get upset at this. Instead you would try to understand and find some middle ground. It might be hard to see sometimes, but the same principal applies in most fight you have with your partner.