Being AWARE of Anger

Aaron T. Beck., the founder of cognitive therapy, and his colleagues introduced the acronym “AWARE” in their first treatment manual for anxiety disorders: Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, Anxiety Disorders & Phobias: A Cognitive Perspective (2005). It provides a convenient tool, which many people find useful as a way of reminding themselves how to cope with anxiety. I’ve also taught it to many clients who are learning to overcome their anger. (Anger and anxiety are often closely-related emotions.)

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Photo by Dmytro Tolokonov on UnsplashHow to be AWARE

The letters of the word AWARE were used by Beck to stand for: Accept, Watch, Act, Repeat, and Expect.

Accept

Accept your initial automatic feelings as natural, transient and harmless. Anger is often preceded by another emotion, such as emotional hurt or anxiety, which it can distract us from or even mask completely. Stay with your initial feelings for a while, acknowledge how you feel and accept the discomfort. Allow yourself to feel anxiety or anger without becoming annoyed or frustrated with yourself. You can accept the feelings without having to struggle with them, dwell on them, or act on them. Just let them come and go. Most unpleasant feelings, if you do nothing but accept them, will tend to run their course, and begin to fade naturally, or evolve into other feelings, in their own time. Look out for early-warning signs of your anger, and notice things you hadn’t previously noticed. Fill in the gaps or blind-spots in your self-awareness, as this will often make it easier to nip your anger in the bud. Deepening your self-awareness can sometimes make it feel as if time has slowed down a little bit, as the more you really notice about the sequence of events, in the here and now, the more opportunities you have to act differently. Accepting your feelings can deepen your self-awareness and give you more control over your actions. Just be patient.

Bonus. Look out for early-warning signs of anger by thinking much more deeply than normal about what you look or sound like. What do other people see and hear that tells them you’re beginning to get angry? What would you see in the mirror? Notice where muscular tension is located in your body, how that affects your breathing, and how that, in turn, changes your voice. Notice your facial expression, eye movements, and what you’re doing with your jaw and mouth. Charles Darwin, for instance, observed how common it was for people to tense their foreheads and frown when angry, across cultures, but we seldom actually observe ourselves starting to do this. If you can notice things that previously went unnoticed, you will often gain more control over the whole sequence of psychological events, and may find it much easier to prevent your anger from escalating.

Watch

Watch your angry thoughts from a detached perspective. Observe yourself non-judgmentally, without strongly evaluating your thoughts or feelings as bad, or yourself as flawed for having them. Just imagine you’re observing your them from a distance, as if you’re watching someone else saying these things. You are not your thoughts or your feelings; rather you’re the person watching them. You may find it helpful to actually say to yourself: “Right now, I notice that [your name] is angering himself/herself by saying ‘______’”, and state the thought slowly as if you’re observing it with curiosity from a detached perspective. Angry thoughts tend to draw our attention toward the future and things that hypothetically might happen, or what we might do, and our focus also tends to shift on to the person with whom we’re angry, and away from ourselves. Reverse that by grounding your attention in the present moment and turning your focus toward your own actions, including the activity of having angry thoughts. You don’t need to dwell on these automatic thoughts or act upon them, just accept them but do so from a different perspective than normal.

Ask yourself: “What does me more harm, my anger or the things I’m angry about?”

Act

Act contrary to your anger. At the very least, decouple your actions from your automatic thoughts and feelings. You don’t need to do what anger is telling you to do — you can listen to your anger without agreeing with what it’s saying. At first, you’ll probably find the easiest option is simply to do nothing when you notice the early-warning signs of anger. Realize that you’re in an angry state of mind (termed the “hostility mode” in cognitive therapy). If you were drunk, you would wait until you’d naturally sobered up before driving a car. In much the same way, when you’re drunk on anger, you might want to wait until you’ve calmed down before responding. This is sometimes called the “time out” or postponement strategy, and it’s common in anger management — it was also a common way of dealing with anger among ancient philosophers. As your confidence grows, you may introduce more assertive or empathic ways of behaving, and other healthy coping strategies. Always ask yourself, though, whether your actions are in accord with your core values or against them — is this the sort of person you want to be in life? Ask yourself: “What does me more harm, my anger or the things I’m angry about?” Try to maintain a strong psychological connection between your actions and your values.

Repeat

Repeat these coping strategies every time you can. Practice, practice, practice. You break old habits by creating new ones. When you notice the early-warning signs of anger, get into the habit of responding with emotional acceptance, detached observation of your thoughts, and by acting differently than normal, in accord with your core values. On days when you don’t notice anger occuring, that’s great, but you should practice anyway, by using mental imagery to review recent situations where you did become angry, and rehearsing your new ways of coping using the AWARE strategy. In times of peace, prepare for war, if you want to develop lasting emotional resilience. Don’t grow complacent. Don’t let a day go by without improving your ability to cope wisely with the incipient feelings of anger — until you reach the point that you’re confident it’s no longer a problem for you. Practice leads to improved coping skills, but also increased confidence.

Expect

Expect to make progress, as long as you practice. Be hopeful, confident, and optimistic but don’t rush things. Be realistic about the possibility of encountering setbacks but also see them as temporary and surmountable. Approach them as opportunities to improve your coping skills. Expect that anger and anxiety may return, because it’s human nature. However, you can learn better ways of coping and experience more improvements as long as you keep persevering. Your confidence and optimism will grow with practice. Believe in yourself, and remain committed to your core values.

You might just find it helpful to learn this acronym. Some people find it useful to turn it into a cue by writing it on a sticky note and putting it somewhere convenient, such as beside their computer screen, or on the door to their office. Others go a step further and actually say to themselves “Right now, I am going to be AWARE”, when they notice the early-warning signs of anger. Or, if you want to be more thorough, you could repeat this self-statement before, during, and after a challenging situation. You can talk yourself slowly through the steps, going over each letter in turn.

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