Counseling for Anger Management
Feelings of anger or violent acting out can be related to many different underlying difficulties including depression, anxiety, addictions and other mental health problems. Many individuals can have underlying difficulties with severe low self-esteem, as well as problems with mistrust. Some people may also have a history of past physical, sexual or emotional abuse. There may be many interlocking features that have led someone to develop anger management difficulties.
While it’s important that anger, amongst other emotions, doesn’t get bottled up, maintaining control over your anger is crucial to maintaining calm, and ensures that outward expressions of anger don’t negatively impact your relationships. The emotion of anger is entirely natural, and it is usual to feel angry when you’ve been mistreated or wronged. Whether these responses result in angry outbursts, comes down to how you deal with it; first and foremost, anger becomes dangerous when it causes harm to you or others. Anger management difficulties can lead to loss of a job, broken relationships and criminal convictions.
What is Anger Management Therapy
Anger management is the process of learning to recognize signs that you’re becoming angry, and taking action to calm down and deal with the situation in a productive way. Anger management doesn’t try to keep you from feeling anger or encourage you to hold it in. Anger is a normal, healthy emotion when you know how to express it appropriately, anger management is about learning how to do this.
Look out for the following patterns of behavior
If you are concerned that you or someone that you know may have anger management difficulties, you should look for the following patterns of behavior:
- Becoming especially angry or violent when consuming alcohol
- Struggling to compromise or arrive easily at mutual agreements without getting angry
- Problems with expressing emotions in a calm and healthy way
- Ignoring people or refusing to speak to them
- Inward aggression that can lead to isolation or self-harm
- Outward aggression including shouting, swearing, or being physically violent and threatening
- Substance abuse or addiction
- Cycles of bad behavior which may be affecting relationships
If you struggle to control your anger then you may often misunderstand constructive criticism as a challenge to your authority or capability, and this can then trigger confrontational behavior. Over generalizing, for example stating: “You’re never there for me” is quite a common behavior if you or someone that you know is struggling with controlling anger. Obsessing about how things ‘should’ be and predicting or jumping to conclusions about others’ behavior is also something that should be taken into consideration, as well as blaming others for negative situations when problems arise that may not be their fault.
Why Anger Management Therapy
Generally, counseling for anger management focuses on learning specific behavioral skills and ways of thinking so you can cope with anger. If you have any other mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression or addiction, you may need to also work on these issues for anger management methods to be effective.
The aim of counseling and anger management classes is to teach you to:
- Manage factors that may make you more likely to get angry, such as improving sleep so you’re not tired and keeping stress low by using stress management skills
- Understand the triggers of your specific anger
- Identify situations that are likely to set you off and respond in non-aggressive ways before you get angry
- Learn specific skills to use in situations likely to trigger your anger
- Recognize when you aren’t thinking logically about a situation, and correct your thinking
- Calm yourself down when you begin to feel upset, for example, by using relaxation skills or taking a break
- Express your feelings and needs assertively (but not aggressively) in situations that make you feel angry
- Focus on problem-solving in frustrating situations — instead of using energy to be angry, you’ll learn how to redirect your energy to resolve the situation
- Communicate effectively to defuse anger and resolve conflicts
Inappropriate displays of anger may indicate the existence of a more serious mental health or emotional issue. People who receive anger management therapy are given the tools needed to slow their reaction to anger in order to identify the reason for their feelings from the source.
We know that everyone’s situation is different, which is why we ensure that everyone has a unique therapy plan tailored to their needs.
We invite you to reach out today to schedule a free consultation or appointment to see how we can help.