Over the past three years, I've had one major goal in my personal life: To stop being so angry. I grew up in an angry home. Yelling and phone throwing were my parents’ basic means of communication. I brought these to my marriage.“Why are you always yelling?”my husband would say. Then three years ago, an earthquake hit our home: We had a baby girl. I wanted her to grow up in a peaceful environment.
Then, six months ago, I was talking with Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. She gave me this suggestion: “You could increase your emotional granularity(情绪粒度）.”Over the past 30 years, she has found evidence that anger isn't one emotion but rather a whole family of emotions. And learning to identify different members of the family is a powerful tool for regulating your anger. So in many ways, anger is like wine. There are these major varieties but each drink has its own unique combination of aromas(香气）and flavors.
“If you learn to detect all the various flavors of anger and label(给……加标签) them, you can start to handle your anger better,”says psychologist Maria Gendron at Yale University. “Analyze what's causing your different types of anger, give them specific names and start using the terms with family and coworkers.”
I started paying attention to what typically triggers my anger. And I found three major types, which I named. Illogical(不合逻辑的）anger: This emotion happens when somebody at work makes a decision that seems completely illogical. Once I labeled this anger, I quickly realized that trying to convince an illogical person of logic is a waste of time. Hurry-up anger: This is the anger I feel when someone else is not doing something fast enough. Yes, I'm talking about the driver of the gray Prius at the stoplight this morning. Once I labeled it, I realized my anger doesn't help things become any better. Disonophous anger: The dog was barking and the child was screaming. I made up disonophous anger from the Latin for “two sounds.”
Now when my husband says “I have disonophous anger, Emma ...”, we know exactly what to do: Feed the dog and pick up the baby. And I know he's not angry at me. He just wants some peace and quiet.
1. What inspired the author’s goal? (no more than10 words)2. Why does the author compare anger to wine?(no more than 10 words)
3. What does the underlined word probably mean in Paragraph 4?(1 word)
4. When might the author feel disonophous anger?(no more than 15 words)
5. How do you control your anger? Please explain.(no more than 20 words)
