Anger Management Courses

  After only two day in camp, he was forced to leave after an allergic reaction to something non-too-pleasant during a Bushtucker Trial.  For those that aren’t aware of what this is; the chosen contestants have to eat an assortment of weird and wonderful (often disgusting) things, ranging from grubs, worms and kangaroo ‘bits’.

Apart from poor Freddie, everyone has held-out well for the past two weeks, in spite of the unpleasant trials and stresses of camp life.  What with everything from eating unpleasant jungle grub, swimming through fish guts or having cockroaches up their noses (Fatima Whitbread comes to mind here), it is fair to say that all of the contestants have tried their hardest.

In what is now the last week, people are leaving the camp daily, with the group getting noticeably smaller and smaller.  Freddie Starr went early on day three, Stefanie Powers has gone, so has Sinitta, Pat Sharp, Lorraine Chase and Jessica-Jane Clement.  

Every year it it’s always interesting to see the stresses and anger within each group.  This year has been no exception, what with Pat Sharp moaning about Lorraine’s beloved teddy-bear ‘Tedwood’ and the disagreements between Anthony Cotton and Fatima over Anthony’s habit of swearing. 

As the group is getting much smaller, and owing to the team being tired, fed-up and hungry – stress and increased anger are becoming more and more severe.  Anthony has been the prime example of this. 

After a change in roles from cooking (which he enjoyed and by all accounts was very accomplished in) to wood gathering, the stresses became worse.  This came to a climax when after being annoyed by virtually all his team-mates, led to him walking off-set and needing to spend a time away from everyone, only to arrive back an hour later in a better state of mind.  This thankfully diffused much of the personal anger that had built up and stopped him from walking out of the jungle and out of competition. 

This proves to be a good technique for all of us when stress builds and simply become too much that we cannot control the resulting anger.  It can often be very helpful to walk away from what is making us angry, spend some time alone to think about the situation and calm down, to then return in a (hopefully) better state of mind.  This indeed seemed to work for Anthony. 

The only question now is who will go out tonight and who will be the King or Queen of the jungle.  We will find out on Saturday night.