Personal Development Blog

Beyond Anger: A Guide for Men: How to Free Yourself from the Grip of Anger and Get More Out of Life

It’s not a new idea that men tend to express their anger differently than women do. Years of research have shown that men-for many different and complex reasons-are often more violent and less willing to confront and deal with their emotions than women. Now Beyond Anger shows the angry-and miserable-man how to change his life and relationships for the better.

Dr. Thomas J. Harbin helps men understand their anger by explaining what the specific symptoms of chronic anger are and by showing angry men how their actions negatively affect family, friends and co-workers. He offers simple exercises-developed especially for men-that will help men to control their violent feelings, identify when and why they get angry, and to form new habits to prevent anger before it starts. Women, too, will learn essential strategies for understanding and helping the angry men in their lives.

Beyond Anger is: * Honest. Thomas J. Harbin has had to come to terms with his own anger problems, so he understands exactly what angry men are going through.
* Tough. The book doesn’t let anyone off the hook. It demands that angry men learn to take charge, stop making excuses, and get their anger under control.
* Real. The book includes the stories of angry men who have learned to recognize their problems and use the book’s techniques successfully.

Free of fancy doctor talk and complicated theories, Beyond Anger talks to men in everyday language and provides a wealth of important resources. It is an invaluable guide for the many men struggling to come to terms with their inner battles and to take positive action, and for everyone who has an angry man in their life.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Very Pleased
I was very pleased with the promp shipping I receied on this item. So far I am finding the book to be very helpful in day to day life. Thanks Amazon!

4 Stars The anger test
I’m comparing this to another book:Anger: How to Live with and Without It. This book with the “test” takes a more rational approach to anger and how you can deal with it.

Anger is usually not your fault:

blame is a game that is self-destructive

since most of the time anger hits people without warning

and just messes them up and their lives.

What are your “triggers”?

What has caused you to becomes less stable

in your dealings with people?

I think maybe the sincere desire not to act on your anger

may be the best defense?

Anyway this book helps and talks about the problem in terms that are useful.

5 Stars Great read - especially if you don’t feel you REALLY have an anger problem
To give you some background — the only reason I even began looking for an anger management book was to get my spouse to quit bugging me about occasionally losing my temper. I NEVER became physically aggressive with her or anyone else for that matter, but even I had to admit I got in my fair share of verbal arguments with people and lost my cool more times than I wanted to (even though a lot of times I felt I was provoked). In addition to the nagging from the spouse, I still felt that other people handled similar situations better than I did, so I felt it couldn’t hurt to read a book on anger management. The reason I picked this book in particular was because it was written by a man who had an anger issue, so I felt like I was picking up knowledge from someone who at least had a chance of understanding what life as a man was like and who wouldn’t write in a way that I felt judged me. Also, the reviews here on Amazon described some situations similar than mine so I felt it might be a worthwhile read. Let me tell you, it was more than a worthwhile read — this book provided life changing perspective. Again, let me go back to the fact that I never felt I had an anger issue — in a worst case scenario I felt I was a guy who was at times uptight, and many times misunderstood.

Reading through this book, for the first time in my life I felt I was understood, and I felt this book helped me understand myself. There were things the author talked about in the book which I would have never in my wildest dreams associated with having an anger issue (ie Feeling guilty when you’re not productive and busy 100% of your waking hours), and things I felt which just had to do with a natural tendency to be a little uptight (ie walking through life feeling you’re like always at “war” with your guard up) … but here I was, reading a book on anger management, and page by page I felt I was reading about me.

One of the most valuable chapters for me was on “mind reading” — that is, assuming what other people are thinking about you and / or things that you have done, and letting it piss you off to no end. Before I read this book I had no idea how often I was “mind reading” — now, I catch myself doing it, I stop myself from “mind reading” and its unbelievable how many FEWER arguments I get in and how much happier I am.

Just perspective alone on some of my daily life issues put me very much at ease with myself. I wasn’t an uptight / anti-social guy … I was a person who never learned a healthy way to vent or release normal levels of anger which one experiences just living life. Do I still occasionally blow my top or get pissed off? Sure, once in a rare while — but nowhere near what I used to, and with nowhere near the venom of my pre-Beyond Anger outbursts. More than anything else the understanding of myself that this book provided really has increased the amount of happiness in my life exponentially. I had happy moments before I read this book, but I’m not sure I would have ever described myself as a generally happy person … but after reading this book I have to say, I am happy and the people around me are happy.

Even if you don’t think you have an anger issue, but you feel you probably get in more arguments with people than you would like or you don’t describe yourself as a generally happy person — for you, I highly recommend this book and I hope you get as much out of it as I did. This book was truly life changing for me.

1 Stars Fatally Flawed
A book like this that never mentions suicide, a major cause of death among men (see the webpages on suicide of the CDC), is fatally flawed and casts doubt on the author’s qualifications.

5 Stars Men Need This (Written By A Man), Women Should Read, Too
This therapist (a phD) was counseling angry men, when his wife gave him an ultimatim because he was an “angry man”. He no longer is & has a great marriage, after lots of work. So, he wrote this book from his own experiences & his patient’s & it is a great tool for a man that is TRULY looking to change the way his outlook on life is. I bought it to understand my husband better & he ended up wanting his own copy to work with. It’s the only one out there, from this unique perspective. I highly recommend it.

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Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry

“Bernstein provides a field guide to the various types of Emotional Vampires and advises readers how to protect themselves from being victims of these predatory personalities.”Andshy;Andshy;Boston Globe

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From bestselling author Albert J. Bernstein

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The author of Dinosaur Brains offers protection from people who seek to destroy the emotional and psychological well-being of others. Like the fabled demons, these vampires:

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• Think their needs are more important than yours .
• Believe “the rules” apply only to other people .
• Use their tempers in the same way terrorists use bombs .

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Emotional Vampires tells readers how to spot a “vampire” in their lives, which defense strategies to employ to prevent one from striking, and what to do if and when they find themselves under attack.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Very helpful to me after a difficult time!
When I found myself needing to gently and tactfully extricate myself from the emotionally draining clutches of a close friend of a few years, I tried explaining to her that I no longer felt able to be everything she seemed to need (i.e., I could no longer continue to receive her weeping two-hour telephone calls out of the blue at 2 or 3 a.m., among other things). I was both surprised and relieved when this caused her to decide I was the spawn of Beelzebub and to cut me completely out of her life (as the author predicted would probably happen). (And as the author also assured, she quickly found herself a replacement “host” …)

This was a first for me in 50-some years of life, and afterward, I discovered and read “Emotional Vampires.” I was both amused and amazed as I read about Histrionic Vampires, feeling absolutely certain that the author had followed my former friend around for at least a month, so detailed and accurate was his description of her … from her charm and entertaining humor, to her need to be the center of attention in all situations, to her very exact words (”You’re the *only* one I can talk to”), to her frequent references to the physical ravages of (”malevolent”) yeast. This book was a godsend and made me feel vindicated in some way. If you deal with any very difficult person, especially one you’re unable to disconnect from easily (like family), and you can feel yourself being drained incessantly, I highly recommend that you read this book!

5 Stars Check immediately for missing pages!
This review is about an apparent manufacturing or publisher defect: pages 37 to 84 are missing! They are not ripped out of the book, they are simply not there. I did not start reading it and get to page 37 until after the Amazon 30-day return period was over, so I’ve had to go thru a rigmarole with Customer Service about how to replace the book, ship back the other one, get a refund, etc. Very frustrating. Also, the customer service dept at Amazon classified this as a “damaged in shipment” problem, although I did my best to explain it’s a publishing problem. So now how do I know when they send me the replacement book, the pages will not also be missing. I highly recommend the book, but get it at your local bookshop or if you buy from Amazon, check those pages right away.

5 Stars It explains a lot
Good read for the lay person in plain english. You need to read this so you can keep yourself from falling into the Vampire’s trap.

2 Stars wouldn’t it be better to do something productive
It seems that this book is simply negative. If you are so concerned about these “insane crazy people” then get away from them. Reading a book while imagining these people seems extremely obsessive and histrionic in itself.

5 Stars Living vampire free
I love this book and keep it in my bookshelf at work to assist me and my clients in dealing with emotional vampires. I am a mental health therapist so I deal with emotional vampires every day. This book is a life saver for me throughout my day. I will take it down and read a few pages when I am feeling drained and remember why I feel that way. I also encourage my clients to purchase it and keep it handy for their own healing and self preservation. A must read for both therapists and their clients. Each one of us has some of the vampire qualities of each vampire, it is how we manage these traits and understand ourselves so we don’t become emotional vampires to others in our lives.

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How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“Those who don’t know how to fight worry, die young.” This ominous advice begins Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, an eight-part treatise on the follies of worrying. Like other Carnegie books, this one is packed with good old-fashioned common sense, illustrated with examples drawn from research on historical figures and interviews with business leaders. Somehow, even the most simple advice–such as Carnegie’s four-step method of problem solving–is presented in a way that makes you want to write it down and post it on the employee bulletin board. Narrated by the resonant and engaging voice of Andrew McMillan and loaded with relevant real-life examples, this unabridged audiobook maintains interest throughout. (Running time: 10.5 hours, eight cassettes) –Sharon Griggins

Learn how to break the worry habit — Now and forever!

With Dale Carnegie’s timeless advice in hand, more than six million people have learned how to eliminate debilitating fear and worry from their lives and to embrace a worry-free future. In this classic work, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Carnegie offers a set of practical formulas that you can put to work today. It is a book packed with lessons that will last a lifetime and make that lifetime happier!

DISCOVER HOW TO:

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Eliminate Chaos: The 10-Step Process to Organize Your Home and Life

Eliminate Chaos is a user-friendly system for organizing each room of the house, including the kitchen and pantry, closet, garage, home office, and childrens’ rooms. The author’s ten-step system is presented in an easy-to-use, workbook-style layout. Full-color photos demonstrate the various stages of the organizing process, illustrating not just “before and after,” but the realistic, messy, all-important steps in between. Leist’s method is based on the underlying principle that “it’s not about the stuff.” She touches on the psychological reasons behind clutter and not letting go — such as procrastination, denial, thrift, and family history — but her underlying premise is that being organized is an on-going process, not a one-day event. By learning to sort, prioritize, and make fast, rational decisions about their household goods, readers become more efficient and functional not just at home, but in other areas of life as well.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Eliminate Chaos
This is a very helpful book to eliminate clutter. It includes lots of pictures to see what organizing a home is all about before and after de-cluttering. You can get ideas instantly just by looking at the pictures and comparing what you have at home.

5 Stars Organizes your brain so you can organize your stuff
I’ve read a number of books and websites about organizing, decluttering and simplifying, and I’m really glad I got hold of this one. So often when I see something about how to organize, I get overwhelmed by the big picture, or the details get out of hand. Leist strikes a good balance - she outlines ten steps to organizing at the beginning of the book, then devotes a chapter through several areas of the home (eg., kitchen, closet, garage, etc.) and applies the ten steps, using a real-life example project for each area. This allows one to approach organizing in a methodical and concentrated way. Not only does she give the steps to organize, but also site-specific ideas, both in word and detailed photos, for each area. I find the book inspiring and easy to use - you really can apply all ten steps to any organization project you have, big or small. I feel as I organize more and more, the steps will solidify in my brain and become part of my everyday life.

3 Stars Good not great
First I have been working diligently on de cluttering my personal and business life. I have read so many simplifying and de-cluttering and efficiency books I almost have a clutter problem with all the books on the subject. (Cured that recently too with the Kindle 2.) This book covers many problems with valued solutions but it could have been more. She dealt with other peoples problems instead of her own or ours if you know what I mean.

I run three business. One brick and morter and two online. I was getting over four hundred emails a day and was drowning in mail and spam. So I utilized ideas / suggestions from several sources to cure my problems. From the Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss we started using detailed faq’s lists on our websites and an auto-responder that answered many questions so we would no longer have to reply to as many emails. For the ones we do answer the questions are predictable and we saved the answers as email drafts that way we just cut and paste and all done.

For the Spam we ran our eight email accounts into one google mail as they have the best spam filters and you can reply from the email address to which the mail was sent so they dont know that anything is happening. And suggestions from the life hacker Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Tripani has some interesting ideas for sure.

Keeping your inbox empty we use suggestions from Stress Less and Zen to Done by Leo Babauta and you would not believe how much better you feel when things are under control. But it is you who must Work the system or you will be overwhelmed again.

A much more detailed program is used in Getting Things Done David Allen book, but the above is kind of the simplified version that I currently prefer.

And for just getting rid of all the clutter in your life any of the books from Peter Walsh, How to Organize (Just About) Everything, and Enough Already, are great even though they tend to recover some of the material from his other books somewhat but thats not a big deal since the info is worth repeating. Another good author but she covers pretty much the same thing is Julie Morgenstern. The books by Koch on the 80/20 principle are also worth looking into. For the paper clutter in my life I have a digital sender scanner and have scanned over four full file cabinets into Adobe PDF computer files. I have done this with pictures too as you can also save them info Jpeg and Jiff files. While there are tons more books out there and I seem to have most of them, these are the best to get things under control and to get you the time to do the things that matter to you.

5 Stars Eliminate Chaos
I am the sad owner of literally dozens of “orginizational” books! They are piled up in my office area, on the floor near my bed and positioned randomly throughout my home! As you can tell — NO ORGANIZATION HERE! When I opened this treasure I knew I had arrived; I was HOME. It gave me very practical actions that I had no trouble following. Thank you, bless you. Those other references can GO — LABELED “CLUTTER”! I am a happy camper once again and can move freely throughout my home for the first time in many years. Thanks again…

5 Stars Very informative
I bought this book as a learning tool for my new organizing business. I have learned so much! It is a step-by-step detailed guide on the entire process of organizing any room in your home. I have purchased several books on this subject and this is one of the best.

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If… (Questions For The Game of Life)

In an elegant, two-color format, punctuated with intriguing drawings, If . . . poses hundreds of questions ranging from practical to maddening, moral to hilarious–which, if read alone, inspire self-exploration; if shared, spark fascinating discussions at gatherings, dinner parties, or meetings.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Great book, great transaction!
The book was in the exact condition described, it came in a timely manner, packaged safely, etc. This is a great book for a group or friends to use over dinner or a couple to use on a date! It provides great laughs and you can learn something you’ve never known about your friends and/or family!!

5 Stars I Love this book
This book is a lot of fun, at times it might get a bit repetitive, but overall it’s amazing…. sharing the questions with friends or just on your own, I keep it at work, and when I have to travel in the car or other I take it with me and discuss with everyone and it makes great conversation and of course it always goes deeper than the question itself… when I first got it I kept it in my purse and just pulled it out at any moment.

5 Stars Excellent Book for Couples!
Even after 10 years of dating and marriage - my husband and I found so many new things to talk about using this book as a guide. Now I buy it as an engagement present for all my friends and family!

4 Stars Its a little better than okay, the questions are repetive, however good for discussions, good icebreakers, good story starters
This is a little hardcover book that asks questions all beginning with If. Such as If you could remove one hereditary characteristic from your family, what would it be? or If you could “unknow” one thing you know, what would it be? Theres about 129 pages with about 4 questions per page.

The paper is a little flimsy. Some of the questions seem a like there were written at 3:00 a.m. after 8 cups of coffee, but on the whole this book poses some good questions you could discuss, use as ice breakers at a party (in home sales, office), open a classroom discussion, get students ideas for writing assignments.

Now some of the questions are not G rated or PG rated, so don’t take this to a high school, throw it down and say pick a question to write about - you may get some very upset parents giving you a call.

5 Stars So much Fun!!!
These books are great. Have a group over and drink some cocktails and have a blast. You will be laughing for hours on the answers peple give you. A great way to get to know soemone too..

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