Four Filters Evaluating Anger Management
By Michael Ballard, MA, LPC on Sunday, July 17th, 2016 in Anger Management. No Comments
There are Four Key Filters:
- Moods. If you are in a bad mood, your negative emotional state can be a filter. And if you are in a bad mood, you are more likely to perceive whatever someone says or does more negatively, no matter how positive he or she is trying to be. Moods are powerful filters. Have you ever had one of those days when you were in such a bad mood that someone said something neutral to you, and you took it the wrong way and got upset about it? That’s the perfect example of a mood filter at work.
- Mindreading. You hear the words someone says, but you think they are really trying to say something else. You make conclusions on the intentions behind what they said–the meaning behind the words. Sure, they said one thing, but you know they really meant something else. So you end up getting upset over what you think they meant–not what they actually said. This happens all the time with couples. We thing we know our partners very well, so if they say one thing, we put it through a mindreading filter and conclude what they really meant. Then, we get upset about that.
- Jumping to Conclusions. You are discussing one thing, but it makes you think about what will happen next and you jump to conclusions. Then you get upset about a future event that you are sure is going to happen. Your husband might tell you that he is working late, and you jump to the conclusion that he is having an affair. You may even start thinking about how now you will have to get a divorce and start thinking through all those details–just because he had to work late. What actually happened and the conclusion you came to were very different things based on your filter.
- Evaluation. You have an evaluation or an opinion about someone, and whatever they say or do you see through this filter. If you think someone is a jerk, no matte what they do your filter will make them look like a jerk. Even if they do something nice for you, your evaluation filter makes you discount the nice thing or wonder what their motives are. If you think about your husband is selfish, almost any act that he does will look selfish when you put it through a filter. Even if he buys you a present you are going to think he did it for selfish reasons.
Facts are what our eyes, ears and touch tell us and our filter is the way we think about and interpret these facts. Facts are things that happen, and our filter is the lens that we use to see those things. Our filters are like glasses that we were to see the facts. When things happen, we use a filter that makes conclusions and evaluations about what happened. We don’t see events. We see what we think of the events.
It’s like a camera filter. You can look through a camera filter and see the world in sepia, even though that is not really what the world looks like. But through your filter, that is what you see. And it seems real. You don’t think you are looking through a filter, you just think that is the way it is. But the reality is that the filter has totally changed the picture.
In the end the assumptions in your filter often have almost nothing to do with reality. You take some facts and create a completely distorted picture out of it. We do this all the time. We make assumptions about the motives and feelings of others–often incorrectly–and then get angry because of this.
Your filter is your opinion. It is the conclusions that you make based on some information. if your filter is distorted, it will lead you to trigger thoughts, which will lead you to anger.
Michael Ballard, MA, LPC
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