“Anger issues” is how Ben explained why he was in my office looking for help. Ben’s wife had passed away four years earlier, leaving him to raise their two sons on his own. Lately, he said, he had become “very short” and “lacked patience” with his teenage sons. He connected his current difficulties to a much longer term “problem with anger” and was eager to get a better understanding of his anger and develop some strategies for dealing with it. In our first session he named his preference for how he’d like to handle difficult, frustrating situations with his sons: with “patience,” taking “time out” before responding, and seeking to “understand the situation better before judging.” Ben connected these preferences to skills he was already using at work – being calm, listening, asking for an explanation, and explaining his own perspective – and by identifying them, the skills seemed to become more accessible to him as a father.
