Anger Styles
Are there different styles of anger?
There are many different styles of anger that people use. And what they do is they chop and change one style for another style.
What is the 'intimidator'?
The intimidator style is typical of your school yard bully. The kind of individual that eyeballs you, the kind of individual that finger points and gets into very heavy alpha male body posturing. Pointing fingers, coming into your face, screaming, shouting, hurling abuse at you. The goal of the intimidator is to evoke fear in you in order to control you. Because if I can evoke fear in you and I can control you that means you are going to submit and do what I say.
What is the 'interrogator'?
The interrogator style is a very effective style which is often used by parents with children. It's a whole series of questions that they ask. Where do you think you're going? What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are? Who do you think you're speaking to? What time do you think it is? It's like a machine gun of why's. The goal of the interrogator is to ask all these questions in order for you to feel bad about yourself. So it's designed to invoke your shame. If I can evoke shame in you, that means I can control you.
What is the 'poor me'?
The “poor me” style is a very common and typical style which you'll often see amongst passive-aggressives. The kind of things that the “poor me” would say is; “after all I've done for you, look how you treat me”, “no one understands me”, “I can never get anything right”. So the “poor me” style is very much like a victim, a martyr. They feel powerless. They don't have any control. They feel the effect of what the world does to them, and they have no awareness of the effect that they have on the world. The goal of the “poor me” is to invoke shame, embarrassment and humiliation. It's designed to control you with shame, humiliation and embarrassment.
What is the 'distancer'?
The distancer is a very interesting character. The distancer has absolutely no awareness that they have an anger management problem. They tend to live in their heads. They completely cut off their environment from their feelings. And they tend to think through problems, rather than think and feel through problems. And the problem with them is that often what will happen is that a distancer will throw their anger grenade in the centre of the room, get up and walk out never to be seen again. And you don't often find distancers on anger management programs. They don't believe they have a problem with anger; everybody else has a problem with their anger. And when they do come to anger management programs, they spend the whole weekend or the whole 10 weeks trying to understand whether they have an anger problem or not. And of course that's one of the things that really winds other people up. The goal of the distancer is to get people to run after them begging for forgiveness and ask them to please come back home, ask them please come back into the organization…we love you, we need you, we want you. And also they make apologies about what they said to a distancer. So it puts the distancer into a superior position.
What is the 'winder-upper'?
The winder-upper is a very interesting character. The winder-upper gets everybody else to express their unexpressed anger. So the winder-upper is not an individual that you would usually see as getting angry. You won't see them getting wound up, but you will see that what they will do is make humorous, undermining, patronizing comments to wind other people up. If they can get the other person wound up and the other person expresses their unexpressed anger, they don't need to express their own anger. The interesting thing is that the winder-upper doesn't even know that they are angry because the behavior is essentially passive aggressive. The idea is when somebody is winding you up you recognize that you are getting angry. It is very important to remind the winder-upper that they are winding me up as a way of getting me to express their unexpressed anger. Eventually, it gets through to the winder-upper.