How to Coach Yourself and Others Popular Models for Coaching | Page 140

This is a very common way of expressing something and we
hear it often, but in fact, it distorts the situation it attempts to
describe. A more accurate description of "someone making
me angry" is to say that I feel angry about his or her
behaviour. They are not making me anything- they are simply
behaving in a way that I am getting angry about. I notice their
behaviour and then I become angry. The responsibility for the
anger is mine, not theirs.
This can sound strange at first, but dealing with problematic
anger and frustration this way works. RET theory says that it
is generally irrational and self-defeating to become all
worked up about someone else's behaviour.
Think about anger for a moment. Someone does something you
do not like. You have a “right” not to like it. You have a “right”
to share your dislike with them. However, where does it follow
that since you do not like it, they therefore SHOULD not do it?
Do you own them, control them, are they your possession?
You have a very rational preference that they change their
behaviour and then you take this preference and escalate it
to a DEMAND, as if you were granted supreme power by
someone to rule how people should and should not behave.
In addition, their behaviour is governed by how they think and
feel at that time and is consistent with their thoughts. In fact,
their behaviour at that moment cannot be anything different
that it is (this is reality based thinking.) You do not like it, and
you wish it were different, but it is consistent with their
thinking. You may still be left with a practical problem,
“how do I get them to change their behaviour?” But then
you become problem solving instead of problem focused.
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