My Time with DIY Anger Kit

In honor of National Book Day, I thought I would reflect back on my painstaking journey into putting together my book, DIY Anger Kit: Create your own anger management toolkit. Those who are closest to me know that this book came with literally a lot of sweat and tears, and there isn’t a place where I didn’t sit down to write this book. I wrote it in the backseat of my car, on top of my bed, on tables of a million Starbucks (among other fellow book writers), in nooks of libraries, various food courts, you name it.

The idea for the book came after completing my Capstone Project for my Master’s Degree. Originally, the book was a manual designed for someone who was to facilitate a group anger management program. I conceptualized the way I wanted to teach anger management that would address everyone in the room. I am a genuine believer of there’s no “one size fits all” approach to therapy and so I was tasked with the challenge of being able to speak to unique anger styles present in one group, in a short period of time. My approach had to be general enough to speak to everyone, but specific enough to speak to you. In working in the field of anger management for some time before my Capstone Project, I was able to learn how to look at anger from different angles, primarily physically, cognitively and emotionally, and these became the focus of the project. My manual was designed to help group members learn about each angle and then see how it appears in their lives. When you develop awareness of these triggers, you learn to pick up on patterns that make up your anger style. Once you have figured out your style, you are able to then pick and choose tools from an inventory of tools that best fit you.

Before even putting the project together, I created some worksheets to test out on clients who were struggling with their anger and I was able to fine tune as I went. I enjoyed this part of the project because I was able to experiment with different styles of communication and find blind spots in the material.

Like every good student, instead of starting my project 6 months in advance, I started putting together my project two weeks before the deadline. Big mistake. But anyway, the group manual turned out to be what I had envisioned and I was happy with the end product. With grad school behind me and my licensing journey ahead of me, I had a lot of free time. I recall talking to my supervisor about the finished project and I threw in the idea of piloting these groups into a research study to see how effective this approach to anger management is. Though she was intrigued with the idea, she thought putting it together as a book would be beneficial - there are a lot of hurdles that come with research and knowing that I was an impatient person, she knew that that route was not for me (SIDE NOTE- this is why it’s so important to have a supervisor who provides guidance and actually knows you).

I dismissed the idea at first - who would be interested in reading what I had to write or say about the topic? My imposter syndrome kicked in and I set the idea aside.

Then life happened.

I found myself spiraling with having too much free time and focusing on things that really didn’t need focus. I was unraveling into a person that I didn’t like and I lost myself. Free time literally feels like my crytonite and I’ll be the first to admit that I measure my success with how productive I am. I was coming off the rush of balancing a full time job, interning, finishing school, and moving that life just felt so weird and meaningless. I had to put on my big girl pants on and fill up my schedule again. Book writing became top of list.

I decided to turn the manual into a personalized book. My vision was to bring therapy home. Whatever you would accomplish in group therapy, I wanted the same feeling and effect to happen at home. I quickly de-academicized (is that a word?) my writing and tried to make it sound more “real”. Worksheets were tweaked so that they made sense from an individual perspective and I was getting acquainted with Adobe Illustrator. If you’re in therapy with me now, you’ll know that I never suggest anything unless I have tried it out myself. My book was no different. I wanted to demonstrate the ease of using these tools and how applicable it can be in our daily lives. Rather than using fake subjects to demonstrate, I decided to test run it myself. I went back to the manuscript and inserted my own examples of how to practice the exercises in the book.

Since 2017, it was an on and off roller coaster of deciding if I should go through with the project or not. I had a rough draft put together and I had my closest friends edit and give me feedback. I tweaked it as I went along. By Spring of 2018, I had a mostly finished product and all that needed polishing were the illustrations. I was delaying this portion because 1) your girl has ZERO artistic ability and 2) this was the last step and once that was ready, it was just a matter of publishing and I wasn’t ready. Again, my imposter syndrome kicked in. It wasn’t until I had shared my reservations with a friend that I got the confidence to publish the book anyway. Her motivational speech to me was that I was my only obstacle at this point - I had great knowledge to share and I needed to give myself credit for the work that I have put into it.

Summer 2018 was spent just playing around with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop while binging Gilmore Girls in the background. As I drew and re-drew the man in four-squared breathing (who somehow looks like James Charles), Lorelei was getting engaged to Max. While I learned to apply filters on Photoshop, Rory and Jess became a thing. I spent hour after hour trying to figure out how to upload my book cover on Kindle Direct Publishing and spent the worser part of my day speaking to an Amazon rep for an hour. The devil’s in the details, and I don’t miss this part of publishing.

Finally, in October of 2018, I published DIY Anger Kit and it was the most bittersweet experience. I was relieved to have finally put this together after talking about it for so long. I was proud of what I had done and that I was able to cross it off my TO DO list. But, I was also nervous of its reception. Who was going to read it? What would people say? Do I now have to market this ? I hate marketing! My journey with DIY Anger Kit wasn’t over. Another leg of the journey was just about to begin. No pressure.