Anger in the Age of Entitlement

Cleaning up emotional pollution

Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

Outgrow the Impulse to Blame

It's almost impossible to see other people's perspectives when we blame how we feel on them.

Realize Your Core Value

Valuing gives a heightened sense of well-being, making you feel more alive.

Intimate Betrayal and Post Traumatic Stress

The most damaging residual effects of intimate betrayal are secondary symptoms, triggered by the meaning one gives to primary symptoms.

Love After Betrayal

There could be no civilization, enduring health, or mental wellness without trust.

Emotional Pain

The notion that we need to justify emotional pain probably comes from cruel social messages that painful and vulnerable emotions are signs of weakness.

Emotions in the Real World

Emotions tend to feel very different on the inside than they look on the outside.

Validate Feelings, Act on Values

The danger to families lies not in differences of opinion about policies and politicians. Love is not about opinions, it’s about compassion, kindness, support, and commitment.

Disappointment

While expectations should be realistic, lowering them sacrifices enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Self-Regulation

The tragic mistake so many people make in love relationships is confusing value with power.

Disappointment vs. Betrayal

Disappointment is about the way the house looks at a given moment; betrayal is a deep crack in the foundation.

Negative Label Quiz

Negative labels are used so frequently in public discourse, they’re now a shorthand for stereotypes, little more than code words or slurs.

Behavior Requests, Complaints, and Contempt

While complaints have a minuscule chance of improving situations, expressions of contempt will always make things worse.

Beyond Anger Management

You have an anger problem if some subtle form of anger or resentment makes you do something against your long-term best interests.

Abuse and the Mirror of Love

If you judge how lovable you are based on reflections from someone who cannot love without hurt, you'll have a distorted view of yourself as a loving and lovable person.

The Most Common Addiction: Anger/Resentment

The last time you got really angry, you probably got depressed afterward. The angrier you get, the more depressed you get once it wears off.

Relapse Prevention

Relapse in emotional abuse is deliberately devaluing, demeaning, frightening, or trying to make partners or children feel bad about themselves. It's harmful to victims and perpetrators.

The True Standard for Love Relationships

Compassionate and kind behavior constitute the only viable standard for love relationships. When partners uphold that standard, abuse of any kind is impossible.

Walking on Eggshells

If you live with a resentful, angry, or abusive partner, you probably have a vague feeling, at least now and then, that you’ve lost yourself.

Keeping Sane in an Angry World

The vast contagion of anger turns us into the very thing we despise.

Misunderstandings in Love Relationships

The most frequent mistake in relationships is the illusion of sameness — assuming that events and behaviors mean the same, or should, to both partners.

The Anger Habit

Problem anger is so hard to control because, by the time we’re adults, it’s habituated — the product of entrenched conditioned responses.

Forms of Anger in Families

As the most dangerous and socially controlled emotion, anger has mutated into many forms.

Love and the Illusion of Certainty

You may have heard the saying, "Love is easy; relationships are hard." The truth is, relationships are hard because love is easy.

Jealousy and the Duet of Love

Relationship harmony is more about emotional tone and atmosphere than expressions of love or specific behaviors.

Changing Emotional Habits

Habits are processed thousands of times faster than intentional behavior; the only way to change an entrenched one is to develop an incompatible one.

How We Affect Each Other

The principle of emotion contagion holds that emotions of two or more people converge and are passed from person to person in larger groups.

Anger at Our Children

Most of our anger at our children is an impulse to punish them for reminding us that we're failing as parents.

Emotional Abuse: How Your Couples Counseling Made it Worse

Couples counseling presupposes that both parties have self-regulation skills, the ability to hold onto self-value when partners don't like each other's behavior.

Healing, Growth, and Empowerment

All behavior that is not habit has one of three usually unconscious motivations.

Heal, Grow, Empower

What we focus on becomes more important than what we don’t focus on.

  • Previous
  • Page 1 (current)
  • Next