The Anger Fallacy Uncovering the Irrationality of the Angry Mindset [Paperback]

A life without anger is attainable — if you understand The Anger Fallacy.

Anger is everywhere — behind everything from road rage to wrap rage, domestic violence to international conflicts. People cling to their anger, as a tool of influence and a driver of revenge. But is anger really ever useful? And can we learn to overcome it?
In this entertaining and ground-breaking book, two of Australia’s leading clinical psychologists take a radical approach to anger management, exploding the irrational beliefs that fuel this noxious and misunderstood emotion. Through numerous examples from popular culture and the consulting room, and with a sizable dose of humour, the authors show how to combat anger by substituting empathy and understanding for righteous angry judgments. Along the way, readers will learn a new way of viewing people and their actions that is at once powerful and serene.

Constructive anger?
There’s an alarming number of popular books on anger describing a certain kind of anger expression (usually the polite, moderate kind) as ‘constructive’. Anger’s constructive, they say, when it’s framed as a mutual problem.
What?! Mutual problem? Constructive? Anger? Bollocks. Anger is in its essence adversarial. In a conflict, focusing on mutual problems, or common interests, is a very smart tactic, but it is the very antithesis of expressing anger.
Think about what a mutual problem looks like (in the absence of anger); for example, when you and a friend work together on a crossword puzzle, or when a husband and wife discuss what to do about a leaky roof.
Passing off your anger at someone as an attempt to solve a mutual problem is usually a little manipulative:
[A mother to her son] When you spend two hours on Facebook, it really ticks me off. You don’t want to tick me off now, do you? No. So it seems we both have a problem here.
Can you l#®