SOME “idiot” cuts you up on the road or your computer crashes and you lose the last hour’s work. How do you react?

Do you ferociously hit your steering wheel then rush headlong out of the car at the next set of lights to beat the hapless soul to a pulp? Or throw your monitor out of the window so it smashes to smithereens on the concrete below? If so, it’s fairly safe to say you have a very big anger management problem.

Watching the Incredible Hulk pick someone up and throw them through the air like a rag doll may be entertaining when you see it on TV but watching someone lose control in the real world is never an edifying experience for anyone.

Anger is a healthy emotion most of us experience but when it gives way to incendiary fury, it can be intensely destructive and dangerous.

Road rage is one the most common ways people in the modern world tend to go berserk.

There’s more traffic on the road than ever before. People lead increasingly hectic, fraught, stressful and demanding lives. Is it any wonder the red mist seems eternally poised to descend?

Tina Weston, a counsellor based in Warndon Villages, Worcester, helps people manage their anger, but she’s not talking about lining everyone up for a lobotomy or dissecting their behaviour like some kind of Crackertype criminal psychologist.

She said: “Most of it is about anger management, not anger eradication. It is more or less about reasoning yourself out of it.

“Anyone who wants to deal with their angry impulses can learn to do so without feeling as though they’ve had a complete personality bypass in the process.”

Much of the process involves shortcircuiting the stages which leads to us losing our temper in the first place, before we reach the point of no return and actually lose control.

Some anger leads to violence but other forms can be passive or displaced. We may be furious at someone at work but hold those feelings inside to avoid be disciplined or even sacked – then take it out on our family.

Tina said: “People can’t be fired from their family and some people come to me who have been told, ‘Get you’re anger sorted out or I’m divorcing you’.”

How Joe went from hot-head to cool guy

THERE is help for those brave enough to seek it, as one man discovered, and, before you ask, no, it does not involve counting to 10.

The man I interviewed did not wish to be named but he’s a businessman with a family who lives in Worcester.

To protect his identity, we have used a pseudonym.

Joe found his anger arose mainly behind the wheel of his car when he encountered what he perceived to be inconsiderate behaviour.

He said: “If you can imagine a situation where two drivers stop to see who is the fitter and faster of the two – I have had those situations.

“At that point I found there was only one option such as flashing lights or the international signal for ‘I don’t think you want to do that, friend’.

“I’m not talking about being angry such as when you shout at someone.

I’m talking about when you want to run them off the road. It goes beyond angry. It’s rage, fury.”

It was not until six months ago that Joe realised he had a problem and the crunch came when he lost his rag with another driver when his family was in the car. He was forced into a ditch by the driver but chased after him, overtook him, slammed on the brakes and had a physical confrontation.

He said: “The difference was that I had my family in the car. When I was out of the car and reflecting on what had happened, the scale of what had happened, I thought, ‘That’s it’.

“Being a husband and a father, I couldn’t let this go on anymore. Was I prepared to throw everything away and have my wife leave me, my children taken off me?”

So he fired up the computer. One of the first websites he came across was that of Tina Weston.

He said: “I sat for many, many minutes. I started to compose an e-mail. My mouse pointer hovered over send. I didn’t press it. But I wasn’t going to leave until I did something, so I pressed the button and sent it. I realised nobody was going to help me other than myself.”

One thing Joe noticed when he lost his temper was the predictability of the situations which caused him to lose control.

Everything seemed to centre on the perceived source of the problem – to the exclusion of other, more rational, tools at his disposal.

One of the techniques Joe has learned from Tina is to slow things down as he sees them so he is better able to deal with them.

He began to realise that incidents of road rage were often not personal, especially when he was an observer rather than a participant.

He said: “When you see the incident happen and you’re the bystander, you realise what an idiot you look – dangerous, threatening, aggressive – like an animal.”

BRAIN STORM

THERE are many theories about how the brain functions. One such theory is that the brain is divided into sections – the neocortex, which controls cognitive functions such as thinking and reasoning; the limbic brain, which is responsible for social behaviours (including anger) and the reptilian brain, which governs base behaviours such as protection of personal space.

Loosely, they can be divided into thinking with the head, heart and gut respectively.

Although it’s nothing like as simplistic as this, it’s a useful model to help people understand that these things are in some ways separate, sometimes competing and sometimes cooperating with each other.

􀁥 A free event is taking place at the Lyppard Grange Community Centre on Friday from 6.30pm to 7.30pm. The talk is a short introduction to anger management by Tina. She wants to hear from people who want to manage their angry impulses or those who have been affected by someone in their family who struggles to control their anger.

For more information, e-mail tina@worcester-counsellor.co.uk.