Styles of Dealing with Hostility

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Abstract
The ineffectual management of hostility and other comparable emotions has been identified as an unfavorable factor affecting the prognosis of an individual's over-all adjustment as well as the eventual outcome of psychotherapy. The present discussion enunciates 5 commonly practiced styles or methods by which hostility is handled, namely, those of (a) evasion, (b) containment, (c) displacement, (d) indirect expression, and (e) direct expression. These methods of dealing with anger, excluding the direct expression, have been associated with a wide range of psychological and physical symptoms, e.g., depression, psychosomatic problems, and a variety of self-destructive behaviors to name a few. The use of direct expression—also referred to as assertiveness—through the technique of non-belligerent confrontation deals directly and immediately with the source of the anger and might help obviate the potentially counter-productive effects of unexpressed emotion.

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