4-School

The anger scale (25 mins)

Goals
Learners place their own reactions on the anger scale.
Learners understand rage and fury in others.

Guidelines


Get the learners to look at the scale and read the definitions below.

A scale has been drawn for them showing: calm, annoyance, irritation, anger, rage and fury.



Annoyance
Something that lightly displeases us and that we remove quite easily, like a fly buzzing in our ear.

Irritation
The annoyance has now become more persistent and requires greater physical action to get rid of. It might even bother us so much that we use a vigorous action like a slap on, for example, the fly or the mosquito.

Anger
This is real pain that we feel and it begins to get to us. Most probably there is by now at least one human being whom we identify as the cause of the pain. Even though we might feel like lashing out, verbally or physically, we are probably still in control of ourselves at this point and can resist lashing out at the other person. If we know how to, we can at this stage also still communicate with the person and seek to solve the problem with them. So anger is not destructive at this point and a constructive solution can still be achieved.

Rage
The pain is now agony for us. Communication has failed or has been refused and we begin to feel as if there is no way out. Nothing matters at this point except that the pain should stop or that the person hurting us should also be hurt. Our physical bodies are getting ready to fight and we are losing control. Even if speech is possible at this point, it probably does not make much sense. We are now becoming destructive.

Fury
This is the highest intensity of anger. There is so much pain that our thinking stops and we are totally out of control. The animal side of us just wants to destroy the other person.



Has there been any time when you have been in a rage or fury or near to this. Think about times when you have been irritated or angry.
What pushes your anger buttons?


Draw the diagram as per above, but this time for yourself. You can use any colours you think appropriate. Think about anger and how it escalates and also how it can resolve and slide way if you think calm friendly thoughts.


Now think of one thing you will do when you next find yourself in each of the five stages of anger, to help you deal with it or get out of it. Jot down.


Allow a few learners to come forward and present what they have jotted down.

Tip
It is important to let the learners know that it can be very dangerous to try and reason or argue with someone who is in a rage or a fury because at this point their brain is no longer working properly. The best thing to do during these stages is to try and distract them or take them away from the source of the conflict so that they can calm down. This also applies to yourself, i.e. to move away from the situation.