Anger Management
Learn How To Control The Anger Before It Controls You:
Anger, like other difficult emotions can make you feel like emotions are out of your control and you’re at the mercy of them. With the right support in counseling, you can learn how to gain back control of difficult emotions and make healthier decisions. Anger is a normal, natural human emotion. We do not have to judge anger and put the label on it that we “cannot” have this emotion. Healthy expression of anger is possible, where it does not have to be used against you. Unhealthy expression of anger can lead to disruptions at work, in my relationships and negatively impact the quality of my life. Anger can be triggered by external factors such as people, places, things or by internal factors such as certain thoughts or memories.
When thinking of unhealthy expression of anger, images in our mind might come up with thoughts of people screaming, fighting, steam shooting out of their ears. When faced with anger, we look to address it in a few different ways to lead us to a healthier expression. Expressing anger in an aggressive manner is adding fuel to the fire and pulls us out of control with our emotion. We look to avoid shouting, screaming, physical violence. Our tone of voice, body language, holding tension in my body are all indicators of anger building up to an aggressive stance. We look to challenge with being assertive. In counseling, goals of developing assertive language and expression will assist you in reeling in the anger without it getting control of you. Assertiveness is not aggressiveness, you are still respectful to yourself and others. You are able to express your needs in a way that does not cross boundaries or judgements but asserts your needs.
You might looked to re direct your anger to something else. Would I rather hit the heavy bag at the gym when I am angry or punch another hole in my wall? I could redirect that anger into something more positive. I want to be mindful not to let that anger face inward, where depression, high blood pressure and bad stress can begin to develop. Through our therapy sessions, we can look to problem solve and identify healthy ways to deal with our anger in an assertive manner and build in positive ways to re direct out of it. Your ability to manage triggers that cause anger and to be mindful of your escalation of feelings of anger are skills to learn. I want to be able to catch anger when I am a little bit frustrated rather than start to address it when I am in a full blown rage.
Further Goals of Managing Anger in Therapy:
Relaxation/Mindfulness Exercises: Skills we can practice such as deep breathing, cognitive diffusion, thought stopping.
Cognitive Restructuring: Learning how to change the way we think. Changing the relationship we have with our thoughts. Identifying negative, irrational thoughts and how to replace them with ones that are more positive, realistic.
Better Communication: Assertive language versus passive or aggressive language.
Effective Problem Solving: How to manage triggers, learning how to accept and to forgive. How to move on and let go after a triggering situation.
If you feel that anger has had a negative impact on your life, you might consider counseling to learn how to handle it better. As a licensed mental health therapist, I am able to help you learn and develop a range of techniques for changing your thoughts and behaviors in a positive way. Please feel free to reach out for a free consultation, where we can discuss impacts of anger and benefits of counseling.
Related Readings:
Anger and Health Risk Behaviors
Cardiovascular consequences of expressing, experiencing, and repressing anger
