"I talk" and "I thought" for Anger

How to hold up a mirror to yourself by changing your use of language

One of the very earliest modern strategies for managing anger consists in replacing “you talk” with “I talk”. Andrew Salter, the pioneer of assertiveness training and one of the earliest behavior therapists, wrote way back in 1949 that:

The inhibitory are well liked by those who are not close to them. […] They are often colorless, dull, and boring. They avoid the word “I” as being in bad taste. Instead, they say, “shouldn’t one”, and “oughtn’t one.” They mean, “should I”, and “ought I.” — Andrew Salter, Conditioned Reflex Therapy

Salter believed that we should become less inhibited and more assertive, by learning to use the word “I” more often, and by expressing our feelings more openly.

The next […] technique to keep in mind, is the deliberate use of the word I as much as possible. “I like this...” “I read that book and ...” “I want ...” “I heard ...” This will not make you appear priggish, and will sound natural. — Andrew Salter, Conditioned Reflex Therapy

Subsequent generations of psychotherapists embraced the notion of “I talk”, especially in assertiveness training and Gestalt therapy. Indeed, there’s good reason to believe that “I talk” can lead to healthier communication, and reduce anger and aggression, in a number of ways. However, we should probably distinguish between good and bad versions of “I talk”. For example, complaining stubbornly to other people by saying “I need this” or “I’m entitled to that”, can often be counterproductive. However, calmly and assertively stating “I understand this is how you feel”, “I feel differently”, “I think this”, and “I would prefer that”, etc, can be surprisingly helpful.

In this article, I’m going to describe two specific ways of using “I talk” and “I thought” to help yourself overcome anger. I call it “I talk’ when someone speaks aloud using the first-person pronoun, but I call it “I thought” when they use it in their internal speech. Anger, by its very nature, tends to force our attention outward, at least when we’re talking about other-directed or situation-directed rather than self-directed anger. Sometimes, when we internalize our anger, our thoughts become engrossed in angry rumination, or even revenge fantasies, which also divert attention from what we’re actually doing in the present moment. “I thought” and “I talk” force us to shift our attention back onto our own behavior, and thereby encourage us to take more ownership over our emotions. That alone, in many cases, can be enough to derail anger and replace it with another emotion. I like to describe “I talk” and “I thought” as verbal techniques that hold up a mirror to our anger.

Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash

“I thought”

My basic formula for “I thought” looks like this:

“I notice right now that I am angering myself by [specify thoughts or actions].”

Say this to yourself as soon as you notice the earliest warning signs of anger emerging. Make a mental note so that later you can write down your observations, and keep a daily record of the various ways in which you angered yourself in different situations.

First of all, this replaces “I am angry”, “he made me lose my temper”, “this situation makes me furious”, and similar thoughts, expressed grammatically in the passive voice, with “angering myself”, which is in the active voice. If you want to adopt a victim mentality, by disowning responsibility, use the passive voice. If you want to take responsibility for your own emotions, however, use the active voice. This simple piece of grammar weaves a magic spell that allows you to follow up with questions such as: How exactly am I angering myself? It also allows you to ask “Is it angering myself doing more harm than good?”, conclude “I am going to stop angering myself”, and so on. In other words, it can help restore the agency that anger has taken away from you.

The next step is to get specific. By stating exactly how you’re angering yourself, you refocus attention on the root cause of the problem, instead of blaming other people for your emotions. Look for changes in your facial expression such as frowning, angry alterations in your gaze or eye movements such as eye-rolling or staring, tension in your neck and shoulders, or clenching of your jaw, and other voluntary muscular responses. Look for any changes in your breathing, and the corresponding changes in the sound of your voice. Look for changes in your focus of attention — where does all of your attention go and how does it narrow in order to create and intensify your anger? Notice, in other words, what you had previously failed to notice.

The final ingredient is what we call “verbal defusion” or “cognitive distancing” in modern psychotherapy. “I thought” often involves telling yourself things like:

I notice right now that I am angering myself by telling myself “This guy is a jerk, how dare he speak to me that way!”

Referring to your own thoughts, and beliefs, as events taking place, which you can step back and observe with detachment, powerfully changes your perspective from experiencing your anger to observing your anger. That will tend to do two things:

1. Reduce the intensity of the emotion, which helps in the short-term

2. Increase your cognitive flexibility, your ability to view the problem from new perspectives, which potentially changes your behavior, and will therefore help you much more in the long-term

I believe that, for many people, it’s even more powerful to notice the underlying patterns in your thinking and label those appropriately using “I thought”. As Albert Ellis put it, we tend to get upset by imposing demands on ourselves, others, or life, which are far too absolute and rigid. For example:

• Demanding that other people should always treat me the way I want.

• Imposing rigid expectations on life, and specific situations, which are bound to lead to frustration.

• Applying perfectionistic standards to ourselves, which we cannot realistically expect to meet.

These type of rigid demands are a recipe for neurosis because when, inevitably, they’re not satisfied, we become upset. It’s as if we’ve programmed our brain with an algorithm that says: “Things should be as I want them to be otherwise I will become upset.” Therapists call this the “Tyranny of the Shoulds”, and it’s particularly obvious in most cases of anger, where people make themselves annoyed by focusing stubbornly on what they believe should or should not be the case, especially what they believe other people should say or do.

Another example would be if you spot typical errors and label them as cognitive distortions such as “I notice right now that I am angering myself by catastrophizing, and blowing things out of proportion again” or “I notice that I am angering myself by jumping to conclusions prematurely about what other people are thinking”, and so on.

Remember to write down your “I thought” statements afterwards in a daily record, if possible. This will make it much easier for you to notice patterns in your behavior, and to respond differently in future situations.

Andrew Salter, a hypnotist, pioneered behavior therapy and assertiveness training

“I talk”

“I talk” is what you say aloud to the other person. Its goal is to replace aggressive behavior, and aggressive speech, with assertive and compassionate speech. It can be difficult to change your behavior in the heat of the moment. It takes practice. However, by using the “I thought” strategy above first, it will become easier to subsequently use “I talk” as well.

Many people have found it helps them simply to use the word “I” rather than “you”, in order to replace anger with assertiveness. However, I think there are probably good and bad ways of using “I talk”. (Obviously, “I hate you!”, for instance, would come across as pretty aggressive rather than being assertive in a constructive way.) So I like to share a formula, which I have found helpful. It looks like this:

“I feel [emotion] about [trigger] so I would prefer it if we could [proposed solution].”

For example, “I feel really angry about you using my toothbrush so I would prefer it if we could please agree to stick to only using our own.”

Moreover, “I talk” can be broken down into easy steps. Begin just by saying “I feel angry”, and focus on shifting your attention from the perspective of experiencing your anger to observing your anger. Even better, notice the emotion that preceded your anger and express that as clearly as you can using “I talk”. In almost all cases, in fact, other-directed anger is preceded by feelings of frustration, shame, hurt, fear, and so on. Learn to notice these often fleeting emotions, accept them, and allow time for them to be processed naturally by your brain. Just accepting them for 5-10 seconds is enough to transform the experience for many people, so that anger no longer feels necessary.

We often become angry as a way of coping with these painful primary emotions, usually by avoiding them, and diverting our attention away from them by blaming other people for the problem. Merely saying the words “I feel hurt”, is actually one of the most powerful anger management strategies for many people. It can take courage, however, to express your feelings instead of masking them, and trying to protect your ego, by angering yourself instead. Of course, it prompts the question: “Why does that hurt your feelings so much?” And the answer will usually reveal that it hit a nerve and triggered a deeper anxiety, e.g., “I feel hurt by you using my toothbrush because to me it means that you don’t really respect me anymore.”

So you can start by using simpler versions of “I talk” and progress to more assertive ways of communicating, which propose a collaborative solution.

1. “I feel angry” (or “I feel hurt”) or whatever emotion precedes your anger.

2. “I feel hurt because you used my toothbrush” or “I feel hurt when you use my toothbrush because it means…”

3. “I feel upset when you use my toothbrush, so I would prefer it if we could agree to stick to only using our own.”

A number of research studies have actually been conducted on “I talk” (aka “I language”, “I statements”, or “I messages”), which show that it tends to promote less defensiveness, greater self-awareness, more ownership of emotions, and a healthier style of communication.

By careful use of the first-person pronoun, in other words, we can often change our emotional response, replacing anger with healthy concern, and also express ourselves in a more constructive and less threatening way. Simply by changing the words we use, we can train ourselves to look in the mirror, and become more self-aware of our emotions, and less angry, as a result.