In Control: No More Snapping at Your Family, Sulking at Work, Steaming in the Grocery Line, Seething in Meetings, Stuffing your Frustration

by Dr Redford Williams M.D., Virginia Williams

In this life-changing book―now available in paperback―the creators of the internationally acclaimed Lifeskills workshops draw on groundbreaking research to show readers how to deal with the stresses in their lives that often cause them to lose control. Working equally well for "hot reactors," who tend to blow up when things don't go their way, and "cool reactors," who are more likely to repress their emotions, the easy-to-follow 8-week program will help anyone to cope effectively with a variety of difficult circumstances, from volatile situations at home and at work to smaller annoyances like traffic jams and long checkout lines.

274 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2006

Reviews

[Gemini]

There were so many aspects of this book I could relate to. I found it very interesting & seeing how being able to properly think about certain things. I even showed it to my therapist & she got a kick out of it. Me & my hard wiring makes some type of changes difficult, but sometimes the way your mind works & processes is not something that can be easily manipulated. I guess there is always a time & place just like which battles to fight since I like to fight all of them all the time. This has more substance than an anger management type of book which is why I checked it out. There's a whole aspect of how to relate & the deeper meaning behind certain things. A few chapters delve into a more philosophical aspect of different historical examples & how what happened had an effect on people in that point in time.

[Heather]

OK now you know my dirty little secret. My family doesn't get the best parts of me. Instead they get the frayed part that's left over once I'm done being run throught the ringer. I'm tired it being angry about the ringer, and expressing it with little snaps. This book is good for getting me refocused, and giving me some perspective. It's written for real ragers, but I found plenty that applied and was helpful for me.

[Kim]

I'm a little embarrassed that I would have a need to read this kind of book, but overall, I didn't find it very helpful. It gives a lot of narrative examples of people who struggle with hot tempers, an inability to say "no" or just general frustration, but the solution to fixing these problems was too long and detailed for me. I think the ideas in this book are more geared toward an 8-week class and not a simple reading.

[Zach Koenig]

Self-help books are always a little tough to evaluate because every reader is going to look for something a little bit different and personalized to their tastes. In the case of "In Control", it simply wasn't for me.

The issue for me is that I didn't find this Redford-and-Virginia Williams product to be a good straight-ahead read. Perhaps it would function better in a more literal individual or group therapy type environment where participants return each week like the text sort of prescribes. But simply reading it straight through? I was disappointed and ended up skipping around quite a bit.

Again, this could be because my preference in self-help is not lists or acronyms, of which "In Control" largely deals in. Instead, I like more of a narrative in which I can latch onto interesting ideas and then apply them to my own life. Reading "In Control" with that mindset did not produce the greatest result. I will say, however, that the material I did read wasn't all that interesting to me--a little akin to telling an anxiety sufferer "just don't worry about it". Here, I didn't find many interesting strategies for controlling feelings of frustration--just a lot of "calm down", which of course is never all that helpful because it is the problem in the first place.

So, as always, each book will have its specific audience and/or setting. It's possible that "In Control" will be better in one or the other for different readers--but not for this one.

[Vito Hamza]

It's a book that teaches CBT but wrapped with different abbreviation. The case studies are too much to the point of distracting from the main point. Even the case studies can be longer than the content itself.

[Loriann Oberlin]

Always appreciated the work Redford Williams, M.D. and Virginia Williams, Ph.D. have done on the health ramifications of anger. My co-author Congressman Tim Murphy, Ph.D. and I have cited his work in our two books on the topic -- especially in Overcoming Passive-Aggression: How to Stop Hidden Anger From Spoiling Your Relationships, Career and Happiness.

The self-assessment quiz, logs and dialogue sections of this book add to making it easier to read and especially the way they have broken the material into weekly consumable portions. Grab your highlighter and begin!

[Rachel]

Good insights, things we all know, but have a hard time when things get tense. Stop and think, is it worth it, will it change anything....and let it go