A Lesson Plan from Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program

Purpose: To practice appropriate ways to handle anger

Materials:  Newsprint and markers or board and chalk

Time: 40-50 minutes

Planning Notes:

• Be prepared for angry feelings from participants. Once they have recalled them, they may need to discuss them.
• Prepare a poster of the anger role play for Step 7.

Procedure:

1. Have teens generate a list of angry feelings. If “hurt" is not on the list, add it in capital letters. Ask the group what "hurt" feelings have to do with angry feelings. Allow time for them to discuss the relationship, trying to elicit the concept that hurt feelings can cause anger and anger is often easier to express than hurt. Make the following points if they are not included:
• Anger is often the result of feeling hurt. Being ignored, rejected, disrespected or injured hurts a person's feelings.
• When a person's feelings are hurt, it is often easier to react with anger than to express the hurt, because that is how we have learned to behave. Little children are often told not to cry or complain about hurt feelings. Boys, especially, are told to act like a man, and not cry.
• Being hurt is often seen as a sign of weakness, especially in males. Often boys and men refuse to show hurt feelings, turning instead to anger.
2. Draw the following illustration on the newsprint or board to underscore the relationship between hurt and anger.
   Hurt (feelings) --------> Anger --------> Violence  (hurt someone else)
3. Ask participants to share examples of when someone's hurt feelings led to angry feelings and, possibly, to violence.
4. Go over the instructions for the activity:
• Think of a situation when someone hurt your feelings and you were angry. Let yourself feel that anger now.
• Identify an inappropriate way to express your anger.
• Identify a more appropriate way to express your anger.
• Pair up and exchange stories about the situations that hurt your feelings and made you angry. Then talk together about appropriate expressions of what you are feeling.
5. Ask teens to begin. Tell them they have five to ten minutes to work with their partners.
6. Then bring the group together and ask for several examples of appropriate responses to anger. List these on the board or newsprint. If no one mentions “Telling the person how you feel,” bring it up as an example of an appropriate response to anger.
7. Display the poster of the “anger role play” that you have prepared. Tell teens to prepare a similar role play with their partners:
• Imagine you are sitting across from the person you are angry with. Ask your partner to be that person and give him/her a name. Tell this person you feel hurt and angry, starting with “I…”
• Imagine how the person would respond, then assume her or his role. Voice a defense or argument as if you were that person.
• Now go back to being you. Respond to the other person's arguments and statements by telling her or him again how she or he hurt you and how angry you have become. Do not threaten or put down the other person, just keep talking about your hurt and angry feelings until the other person can say nothing but, I'm sorry I hurt you.
8. Go over the model briefly, then give the following instructions:
• Form small groups by joining with a second pair.
• In your groups of four, practice the anger role play.
• Choose one or two of the angry situations experienced by members in the group. Role play telling the other person about the hurt and anger.
9. After 10 minutes, call “time” and conclude the activity using the Discussion Points.

Discussion Points:

1. How do you respond when you feel angry and hurt? What kinds of reactions do you get?
2. Why is it so hard to tell someone that you are hurt and that is why you are angry?
3. What about when someone says you hurt them? What do you say or do?
4. What could happen if you tell someone why you are angry with them? (Answer they could just blow you off and hurt your feelings even more; they could argue that it is your fault, not theirs; they could take responsibility for their hurtful behavior and apologize.)
5. What is the value in expressing your feelings appropriately if you do not get an apology or retribution? (Answer: you can still get satisfaction from honestly saying how you feel and from handling your anger appropriately.)
6. What are other effective ways of handling anger that do not hurt anyone else?(Answer: writing a letter to the person who hurt you and telling them how you feel and why; going off by yourself and crying or yelling all the anger out; talking with a friend who is a good listener; expressing your anger through art (music, dance, poetry, drawing); exercising physically until you do not feel the anger any longer.)
7. Often when a friend, parent, romantic partner or trusted adult hurts us, we swallow the hurt and anger and do not express it. We say we do not want to hurt their feelings or do anything to damage the relationship. Why is it unhealthy to just keep the anger inside and not say or do anything about it? (Answer: the anger may build up and come blasting out if it is not vented, destroying the relationship all at once; that person may think they can continue to hurt your feelings if you do not do or say anything.)

Adapted with permission from Nurturing Skills: ACT 11 by Family Development Resources, Inc., 3160 Pinebrook Road, Park City, UT 84060, 1991.