The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger: Using Compassion-Focused Therapy to Calm Your Rage and Heal Your Relationships (The New Harbinger Compassion-Focused Therapy Series)

Anger is often rooted in deep fears and pain that set off defensive threat reactions, and those with anger management problems may go back and forth between justifying their anger and feeling ashamed because of it. The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger takes a unique approach to helping readers overcome anger called compassion-focused therapy (CFT). Written by a clinical psychologist who has pioneered the application of CFT to working with anger in prison and other settings, this book addresses the evolutionary origins of anger and offers readers CFT skills for understanding their own anger, feeling compassion for themselves, and developing compassion for others, including the targets of their anger. Readers will identify the triggers that most often activate their anger and learn to reroute the habitual thought processes that maintain anger. By developing mindfulness and compassion skills, readers can learn to notice automatic anger processes as they arise, step back from them, and replace them with compassionate strategies that will assist them in working with difficult emotions and improving their relationships. 

Russell Kolts, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and director of the Inland Northwest Compassionate Mind Center in Spokane, WA, USA. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and scholarly articles, including CFT Made Simple and An Open-Hearted Life (with Thubten Chodron).  He regularly conducts trainings on compassion and compassion-focused therapy.

Foreword writer Paul Gilbert, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom, director of the mental health research unit at Derbyshire Mental Health Trust, and author of The Compassionate Mind.