Magnanimous Jake however, loved her enough to enter into therapy with Marjorie. Although Marjorie clearly needed to stop reacting to his provocation, Jake had the greater problem. He was prone to periodic blow-ups, which Marjorie found frightening. Once he even smashed her stereo. The goal was to improve his impulse control skills in order to give Jake time to examine the logic behind his angry thought before making a behavioral response .
Anger management is generally a three-stage process.
Preventing the angry response from occurring Cooling off period Cognitive processing of angry feelings Jake learned to use the standard impulse control techniques such as walking away when angry and exercising to expend catecholamines. He also began to implement cognitive techniques such as reframing and disputing his underlying, angry thinking. But Jake's anger issues were so deeply ingrained and widespread through his personality that simple anger management training was not enough. Jake needed an overhaul of how he viewed the world. I turned to Eastern philosophy for help.