Creative Anger

We are a nation of plenty, of opportunity, and luxury, but we are also a nation flush with fury. Homicides, assaults, domestic abuse, youth violence, and even road rage are too common, let alone everyday outbursts of temper that harm family members, friends, peers, and co-workers. The market for anti-anger, mood-stabilizing drugs is booming, as is the market for anger management counseling and classes. What is happening? In this book, a team of experts who've been traveling the nation presenting workshops on Rethinking Anger start by telling us this: Anger is normal; nature hardwired into our brains for protection. But here is the paradox. Anger out of control destroys, yet anger understood and controlled is a constructive force, one that can be used for creativity, change, and growth. Authors Baruch, Grotberg, and Stutman show us how to take charge of this powerful emotion, so it can be used in constructive ways, rather than destructive. Using the anger energy constructively can release creative potential and be liberating. We are a nation of plenty, of opportunity, and luxury, but we are also a nation flush with fury. Homicides, assaults, domestic abuse, youth violence, and even road rage are all too common, let alone everyday outbursts of temper that harm family members, friends, peers, and co-workers. The market for anti-anger, mood-stablizing drugs is booming, as is the market for anger management counseling and classes. What is happening? In this book, a team of experts who've been traveling the nation presenting workshops on Rethinking Anger start by telling us this: Anger is normal; nature hardwired into our brains for protection. But here is the paradox. Anger out of control destroys, yet anger understood and controlled is a constructive force, one that can be used for creativity, change, and growth. Authors Baruch, Grotberg, and Stutman show us how to take charge of this powerful emotion, so it can be used in constructive ways, rather than destructive. Using anger energy constructively can release creative potential, and be liberating. Ten years of research and workshops have honed the knowledge and skills of this author team, and here they guide us to taming our anger into a positive force. This book will be useful to all trying to tame their own anger, or that of others close to them. It will also be of interest to teachers, counselors, managers and students of psychology.

Working with anger takes a delicate balance of containment and expression. Creativity helps us do just that. Based on art therapy theory and practice, the activities, materials, instructions, process, and reflection questions in this practical guide are all thoughtfully designed as avenues for therapeutic change. Helpful tips provide adaptations for meeting the unique needs of art-adverse clients, as well as varying ages and abilities, so everyone can benefit from creative approaches to working with anger. Anger is a vital part of the emotional landscape, and a thoughtful approach to its nuances can make all the difference in avoiding harmful outcomes. The exercises in this book help you to guide clients toward finding meaningful roles for anger so that it enriches, rather than diminishes, their quality of life.

Open any other book on creativity, and you will hear the clichéd rallying cries of current creative culture: Be True to Yourself! Find Your Voice! Express Your Authentic Self! This book is different. This book will not tell you to “Be true to yourself,” but will implore you to “Humble yourself.” This book will not repeat the slogan, “Find your Voice,” but will ask you to consider how your moral weaknesses are inhibiting your creativity. Examining the current creative culture, The Humble Creative argues that creativity can easily become disordered by vices that Christianity has long understood, but most have forgotten; vices such as vainglory, envy, sloth, anger, lust of the eyes, greed, and pride. The Humble Creative integrates the long-held Christian understanding of moral vice with creativity, providing an accessible exploration of individual vices and their role in disordering creativity—ultimately offering exercises for moral and creative formation. Written in an accessible way, this book explores the stories of several individuals whose creativity have become disordered by vice, introducing the reader to the often overlooked relationship between the moral character of the creative and the successful pursuit of flourishing creativity.

This edited collection traverses the genre of anger studies by documenting its transition from the Classical age up to our present-day cognizance of the philosophical, socio-historical, psycho-physiological and pathological theorizations of anger. The book illustrates how literature may systematically document and even institutionalize primal, emotive outbursts, providing meaningful analysis for scholars across various disciplines. The contributions here cover a wide spectrum of critical works, ranging from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Seneca’s De Ira and Plutarch’s On Restraining Anger to Bharat Muni’s Natyashastra, as well as notable nineteenth century texts by authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Bronte, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling and Henry Lawson.

This workbook contains over 130 exercises in the form of surveys, questionnaires, inventories, and journal entries, to help students make some or all of these stress-reducing skills part of their daily routine, and achieve balance. Available in print and electronically as an Express PDF.

Humanity is at an infantile stage in its relationship with anger. For millennia we have demonstrated two anger options - implosion and explosion - neither of which are sustainable. "The Power Of Anger" lays out - in a succinct, step-by-step format - how anger's purpose is always related to your well-being - and the restoration and/or increase of your personal power. A 'must read' for anyone who lives in dis-empowerment - either cowering in the face of anger or exploding without control. A magnificent read for fast-tracking yourself into clarity, confidence and discovering your true strength.

This is a comprehensive approach to honouring the integration, balance and harmony of mind, body, spirit and emotions. This holistic approach guides readers to greater levels of mental, emotional and physical well-being.

The Romantic age was one of anger and its consequences: revolution and reaction, terror and war. Andrew M. Stauffer explores the changing place of anger in the literature and culture of the period, as English men and women rethought their relationship to the aggressive passions in the wake of the French Revolution. Drawing on diverse fields and discourses such as aesthetics, politics, medicine and the law and tracing the classical legacy the Romantics inherited, Stauffer charts the period's struggle to define the relationship of anger to justice and the creative self. In their poetry and prose, Romantic authors including Blake, Coleridge, Godwin, Shelley and Byron negotiate the meanings of indignation and rage amidst a clamourous debate over the place of anger in art and in civil society. This innovative book has much to contribute to the understanding of Romantic literature and the cultural history of the emotions.