Anger Management

Do you need anger management?

If you find yourself acting in ways that seem out of control or frightening to you or others, you might benefit from finding better ways to deal with this emotion. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you feel overwhelmingly angry more than a few times a week?
• Have you ever been told that you have a temper, or that you’re a “hot-head”?
• Do you have angry reactions to events that seem out of proportion to what caused them?
• Do you feel guilty after an angry episode?
• Are your relationships with your partner, children, friends, family, or co-workers adversely affected by your anger?
• Would you like to feel more relaxed and less angry?

What is Anger?

As humans, we feel an array of emotions on a daily basis, and anger is as normal as joy and sadness. Anger gives us a message that something is wrong, and the energy to do something about it. However, if not managed properly, anger can be extremely harmful.

The Adverse Affects of Anger

Pick up a newspaper and it’s easy to find stories about people whose anger has led to emotional and physical pain. When not handled appropriately, anger can adversely affect our relationships with those closest to us, cause problems at work, and lead to violence, domestic abuse, property damage, road rage, and problems with the law. Over time, unmanaged anger can cause chronic illness and studies show that chronically angry people have shortened life spans.

How can you manage anger?

The first step in anger management is identifying when you’re angry. Sounds simple right? It is obvious that you’re angry when you’re yelling at your partner or kids, cursing at the driver next to you, or slamming the door. However, the key is to identify when you’re beginning to feel angry before you react in a negative, destructive way. This involves determining your body cues and triggers to anger.

Once you learn to identify when you’re angry, the next step is uncovering what’s beneath the anger. Anger is seldom an isolated emotion and generally is accompanied by other emotions not as easily identified, such as fear, hurt, pain, or sadness. These emotions are often so buried under the anger that we hardly notice them. Anger gives us a false sense of power and tends to override emotions that make us feel vulnerable.

Once you have identified your underlying feelings, you can now determine what it is you need. If you’re sad, do you need an apology from your partner? If you’re scared, do you need comfort and reassurance? Once you identify your need, you can then ask for what you need in a respectful, assertive way when you’re not feeling angry. If you ask for what you need out of anger, you are apt to make requests in an aggressive, threatening manner, and you are much less likely to get your needs met that way.

Anger Management Tools

There are tools and strategies that need to be learned in order to help this process work. These include relaxation techniques, the use of time-outs to cool down, identifying and challenging negative self-talk and assumptive thinking that lead to angry feelings, learning assertiveness skills, and practicing forgiveness.

Life is filled with situations that are frustrating, painful, and out of your control. Although you can’t change this fact, you can change the way you respond to such events.

If you feel like your anger is having a negative impact on your life or your relationships, counseling can help. Contact us at Park Presidio Counseling Center for more information.