Aaron Karmin's Anger Management Workbook for Men (N2)

Aaron Karmin is a counselor who has spent years running anger management groups, and the Anger Management Workbook for Men distills that work into practical exercises. His starting point is a reframe that takes the shame out of the emotion. On his Psychology Today profile he writes, "Anger is a healthy emotion in everybody's life." The problem, he adds, is not the feeling itself but how and when it gets expressed. How quickly and how hotly you move to anger in the first place is, in the Big Five, one facet.

How quickly you move to anger is the Anger facet

That facet is Anger (N2), under Neuroticism, how easily and intensely you flare into frustration and hostility. A high scorer ignites fast and burns hot at small provocations; a low scorer stays even and slow to boil. Karmin writes mainly for the high end, and his useful move is to separate the feeling of anger, which is normal and even informative, from the reaction it drives, which is where the damage happens. A high N2 is a sensitive setting on an ordinary alarm, and the work is learning to feel the heat without being run by it.

The book's core skill is the gap between the surge and the action, the pause in which a different response becomes possible. Karmin frames much of that as building the Cautiousness (C6) to notice the rising anger and choose rather than lash out, since the flare itself is faster than thought. He is candid that for many men the anger sits on top of softer feelings like hurt or fear that were never given room, so learning to name those drains some of the pressure. The aim is to keep the anger from making your decisions.

For a reader placing themselves, your N2 is a fair read on how short your fuse runs and how much of your energy goes to managing a temper. High on it and the Anger Management Workbook for Men offers concrete tools for feeling the heat without acting on it. Low on it and the book explains the people who seem to combust over nothing. Where you sit on Anger tells you how sensitive your alarm is set, and we take the facet apart in Anger (N2).

Read the book: Anger Management Workbook for Men: Take Control of Your Anger and Master Your Emotions by Aaron Karmin.

See Where You Fall

Where do you actually fall? The 30-facet OCEAN personality test takes about 15 minutes and scores all five domains and the facets underneath them. Take the test

Research Citations