Michael Walters

According to most denotations, anger is defined as follows: Anger is a feeling of great annoyance, antagonism, or rage as the result of some real or supposed grievance. At a personal level, if you experience injustice, insults, frustration, loss of control, mistreatment, or sense of being ignored, anger is the name of emotion that you are likely to feel. However, notice that anger is usually preceded by disappointment, rejection, or devaluation of your personal worth, needs, or convictions. On the other hand, the opposite conditions exist before someone is angered. For example, if you feel accepted, understood, recognized, valued, treated fairly, and have a sense of control, you most likely have the positive emotions of happiness and peace. In daily life, the ability to balance positive and negative emotions takes skill.

I hope everyone had an excellent Fourth of July celebration. For me, one part of the annual tradition for the Fourth of July is to read the Declaration of Independence with my children. Reading the Declaration of Independence gives me the opportunity to reflect on the core values of our country: Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, Common Good, Justice, Equality, Diversity, Popular Sovereignty, Truth, and Patriotism—to name just a few.

In a recent online video, President Barack Obama said, “We’ve got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.” I agree. As adults, parents, counselors, and teachers, we can truly make a difference. How? Before answering the question, let’s look at a widely agreed upon definition of bullying and let’s look at a short history of bullying prevention.

As counselors, we know that stress is a process—an interaction between the person and the environment. Often times as counselors, we formulate intervention strategies which will be implemented to help a person develop or strengthen coping skills in order to manage and cope with stressors. With summer stressors (such as summer schedules with kids, changes in employment, new activities, new roles, new expenses, and dangerous weather) coming upon us, the aim of this blog entry is to provide a useful definition of stress and to reinforce the notion of using all aspects of a person’s resources as way of counterbalancing stress.

In addition to working as a high school counselor for more than a decade, I have also been teaching driver’s education for more than a decade. Over the years, I have noticed that counseling and teaching driver’s education actually share some unique similarities that I think my fellow counselors may find interesting.