Goose-fraba

Anybody who has ever ridden with me knows I hate getting stuck behind somebody with a slower idea of the speed limit than I have. This morning, on my way to work, I got stuck behind a car that couldn't seem to get within 5 MPH of the posted speed limit, and spent half the time driving slower.

I didn't holler obscenities or tailgate (teaching anger management has done me a lot of good), but I did begin to make a sarcastic remark to my non-existent passenger "I wonder why he's driving so fast? Shouldn't he slow down a bit?" I could feel anger coming on, the desire to tailgate, to honk, to make finger signals.

But then a line from the movie Anger Management, with Jack Nicholsen and Adam Sandler, hit me with the giggles. “Goose-fraba.” This is the chant that Buddy taught his class to dispel anger. I couldn't say it without giggling, smirking, chuckling, and finally laughing at myself and the situation. Even after the other car had turned off, I was still chortling about my “Goose-fraba.”

So what's the real anger management technique here? Anger can only occur when we take something seriously. Anger is a defensive, secondary emotion—a response to threat. By becoming playful instead of serious, the judgments and beliefs that power anger become defused. Instead the spirit of play and humor guides the psyche.

The car in front of me was not a real threat. Only in my mind, under the spell of some inner-judge, was it wrong, “endangering” my rapid trip to work. Rather than intellectually countering the beliefs and judgments (“Who says I have the right to drive as fast as I want to on a public road? How will this impact me in five years?” etc.) I let the power of humor shove them aside. Goose-fraba. It's hard to say with a straight face. It sounds funny. It helped me realize how absurd my move to anger was.

Goose-fraba!

The Chaos of Active Listening

Tonight I wanted to help my class learn the skill of active listening more deeply. Previously, we had covered the workbook section on active listening—but reading about active listening and actually learning how to do it are two separate experiences. As a psychology student, I learned active listening in dyads. As a therapist, I honed that skill in the office. I even began to apply it at home, learning to listen to my wife instead of immediately trying to solve her problems—that took our relationship to a deeper, closer level.

In the past I've taught active listening by having students pair off and do passive listening first, then do active listening, but somehow, it didn't seem to teach the skill as well as I had hoped.

Tonight, I did something different. First, we dove into chaos. In dyads, I had the students tell about what they did last night, both members of the dyad speaking at the same time. We were all frustrated at wanting to listen to our partner, but being so caught up in our own speaking that we couldn't even remember what it was that caught our attention.

We talked about how frequently that happens in real life, how much “listening” time is spent focusing on what we're about to say next, not on the other person. Then we moved to active listening directly. No passive listening (next time, I think I'll do dyadic passive listening first). Rather than working in dyads, though, we worked together as a class. I chose some of the deeper self-inventory questions from the workbook, and had each person around the circle answer it. After a person answered the question, the next person replied with an active listening response. We discovered how difficult it was to set ourselves, our desire to speak our own thoughts, aside and simply reflect what we had heard. Doing this in the larger group allowed the entire class to participate in each conversation, either witnessing or assisting in the active listening response.

It was difficult. It was chaotic. It was also deep. Almost everybody reported being surprised at how much work it was to listen actively. We'll do it again in a few weeks. And again, and again. One student asked if there was ever a time to speak his own truth. We reviewed assertive communication, briefly, as the opportunity to speak, but within the context of hearing the other deeply, from the heart, first.

Another student felt hurt by the one-way process. “So, after I get done actively listening, nobody is going to actively listen to me in real life. I'm going to have to come to class to get that.” This allowed us to discuss the frustrations that come from learning anger management skills and practicing them among people who have few, if any of those skills. Time was running out, so I reminded the class of Ghandi's wisdom: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Anger Management Fact Sheet

The University of Cincinnati has a nice anger managment fact sheet available in PDF format. Although it's not a complete solution to anger managment, it has a lot of good quick interventions and can serve as a “cheat sheet” for anybody working through an anger management class or program. Well worth downloading and printing for future reference. It's a very cognitive-behaviorally based, an approach to anger management that has consistently shown good results.

A Couple in Anger Management

I've often been told not to let both members of a couple into an anger management class. Well, last night, I did. It was particularly convenient that they were the only ones to show up. Both of them took responsibility for their actions and sincerely wanted to relate to each other without going ballistic.

After working through the incidents that brought them to anger management class, I assigned them homework--maintaining an anger journal and sharing the entries with each other during a cool period. Both agreed to listen non-judgmentally to the other and to not attempt to justify the behavior being written about. Both promised to use this as a window into understanding their mate.

I have high hopes for them.