What's your anger score?

I'm pleased to report that, since completing senbazuru, I've been mostly successful at managing my anger. I'd say about 85% of the time. But that, of course, is an estimate -- heavily colored, I'm sure, by wishful thinking.

Is there a way to put an accurate number on one's anger? A rating of some sort?

A relative of mine, someone who also struggles with anger (or used to), told me last week about his anger quotient rating scale. You give yourself a score, from 1 to 5, in each of these categories:


1. Occurrence (how often you get angry)

2. Trigger (how easily you're set off)

3. Escalation (how mad you get)

4. Duration (how long your anger lasts)


He said the process of breaking anger down into its components, and assigning a numerical value to each component, helped him to understand and work with such a strong emotion. The idea, he says, is to try and reduce each category gradually. Over the course of a few years, he brought his total score down from 16.5 to 6. Wow!

My score ... if I'm totally honest: 3.5 + 4 + 2.5 + 2 = 12

What's yours?