Understanding your anger, guilt and shame

AGENDA
Go over the agenda
Introduction- My name is Nupur pronouns she /her, and I am going to be your
facilitator for today and we are going to talk about how to understand and cope with
anger, guilt and shame.
Attendance- Ronda will have the sheet.
Group Norms and Expectations- (with the group)
1. We agreed to not talking over each other.
2. We agreed to be present and actively listen to one another.
3. We agreed that there would be no acts of hostility or aggression
in the group.
4. We agreed to be respectful validating and empathetic.
5. We agreed to make a commitment to engagement to participate
in fully and to attend regularly.
6. We agreed that we would notify faculty if we were not able to
attend group.
7. We agreed to be cooperative and supportive.
8. We agreed to be punctual.
9. We agreed to arrive at group substance free.
10. We agreed to confidentiality
Confidentiality and Limits- As we mentioned confidentiality, I would like to talk
about it and its limits. Confidentiality means whatever information we share here
today, stays in this room only. Although there are some limits to it.
1. If there is clear and imminent risk of serious harm (including physical or
psychological harm) to yourself or anyone else.
2. If there is reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect of a minor.
3. If disclosure is required by law or court order (e.g., subpoena);
4. Disclosures of professional misconduct by a regulated health or allied health
professional may need to be reported
Check In- a quick check in to see how everybody’s doing. Can all of you please rate
their moods from a scale of 1 to 10 and tell me why. I have included a list of some
feelings on the 2nd page of the handout for reference.
Icebreaker- today’s icebreaker is based on emotions. These little chits have an
emotion written inside them and I would like all of you to pick one emotion and
share an experience related to it.
Review of last week’s content – Understanding your depression and
Anxiety- The last week’s session was about understanding your anxiety. Anxiety is
temporary nervousness or fear which we experience before facing challenges in life.
Some symptoms include feeling panicky, having an increased heart rate, tightness
in your muscles, and dizziness. One coping strategy that we talked about is making
a fear ladder in which we start with writing the least feared situation at the bottom
the ladder and the most feared at the top.
We also talked about depression and its symptoms which include having negative
thoughts about oneself, life, future, feeling sad, irritable, feeling extremely tired etc.
Understanding anger
Anger, guilt and shame are three intense emotions which affect all of us in different
ways and sometimes these emotions lead us to make choices or decisions in our
lives that hurt either us or our loved ones and other people too.
Let’s talk about anger first.
I want to ask all of you, what is anger and what does it mean to you?
For me anger is disappointment, maybe because of me or someone else.
So, if we talk about the definition of anger, Anger is the secondary emotion to
primary emotions like fear, sadness, disappointment. It is also a state which makes
us vulnerable, and we get hurt easily. It is important to know that nobody gets angry
without a reason, there is always something that bothers you, something that you
don’t like, that makes you angry.
For example, if my friend lied to me about something, I would get angry with her
because I would feel hurt and I would feel like she doesn’t trust me anymore. In that
situation, I may get personal and say something like, you are a liar, and I cannot
believe that I was friends with someone like you. And in return, my friend would get
hurt by what I said and said to me, you are so rude, maybe that is why people don’t
like being with you and you are also too gullible.
In this situation, under the influence of anger, I crossed her personal boundaries,
and I felt so hurt that I did not even give her a chance to explain why she lied to me.
Anger can sometimes get the best of us and in the worst way possible.
Moving forward, I would like us to do an activity which talks about behaviors,
thoughts, moods and physical reactions related to anger. On the board.

Let’s talk about some anger management strategies.

1. Testing your angry thoughts. On the board.
2. Timeouts- this means removing yourself from the situation you are in when
you are feeling like you are about to get angry. It helps you to reclaim control
over yourself and over the situation. It is also helpful to see a different
perspective to look at the situation and approach it from a new start.
3. Assertion- Assertion is often described as the middle road between being
aggressive and passively allowing someone to take advantage of us. When we
get aggressive, we attack the other person.
For eg – if someone calls me stupid,
Aggressive- “if you think I’m stupid, then you are an idiot.”
Assertive- “you might think I am stupid, but let’s get back to what the actual
problem is here.”
Passive- saying nothing and looking down.
Being assertive also means expressing your wants and needs in a
straightforward way. For example- if you are coming home from work, and
your friends call you and force you to go for a friend’s birthday party, you
might express yourself like “I am tired and I am sorry, but I cannot come to
the birthday party right now.
If you act passively in this situation, and try to go to the party, you might get
exhausted and start feeling overwhelmed and maybe explode from anger.
4. Forgiving others- When someone has deeply hurt us, anger can last a long
time. If the person who hurt us is sorry and apologizes, forgiveness is a bit
easier. However, if the person is not sorry for what has been done or said, then
forgiveness is often more difficult. It is helpful to keep in mind that forgiveness
is about relieving ourselves of the burden of anger. It does not mean
 overlooking the actions of the other person; it means looking at those actions
in a different way.
We can forgive others by directly telling other people how they have hurt us,
in order for them to understand why we are angry. Ask for validation and a
thumbs up.
GUILT AND SHAME
Guilt and shame are closely connected emotions. We feel guilty when we think we
have not lived up to the standards which we have set for ourselves. When we are
feeling guilty, we judge our own actions and think how we should have behaved
differently or what could I have done better.
Shame is also related to feeling like you have done something wrong. However,
when we feel ashamed, we assume that what we have done wrong means that “I
am not good enough”, “I am not worthy”, “I’m bad”. Shame is connected to a
negative view of ourselves and because of this, we become secretive. Like “if my
friends knew that I don’t own a car, they will think less of me and call me poor.”
For example: Rachel and Monica are best friends and are looking for a job as they
are suffering from financial issues. They both apply for the same job posting.
However, Rachel gets it and decides not to tell Monica about it.
Rachel might feel responsible that Monica did not get the job and think if she knew,
she would feel terrible and would think that I am selfish and would never be friends
with me. On the board.
Situation Moods Automatic Thoughts
Who? (what did you feel?) (What was going through
What? Rate each mood ( your mind just before you
Where? 0 to 10) started to feel this way?
When? Any thoughts?)
(Circle the hot thought)

This is also a way of overcoming guilt and shame.

Other ways are:
1. Rating the seriousness of actions

2. Making a responsibility pie

 To do this, list all the people and aspects of a situation that contributed to an
event about which you feel guilty or ashamed. Include yourself on the list.
Then draw a circle to represent a pie and assign slices of responsibility for the
event in sizes that reflect relative responsibility. On the board.

Finances

The job
7%

finances
48%

The job
7%

Summary
We learnt about what anger is and the behaviors, thoughts, moods and physical
symptoms related to it. We also learnt about strategies by which we can help
manage our anger like timeouts, assertion, and testing our thoughts.
We also talked about guilt and shame and how they may impact us. For overcoming
guilt and shame, we practiced a few strategies like rating the seriousness of our
actions and making a responsibility pie.
Checkout