Anger Management:
Behavior Change :: Self Regulation
Dr. Patrick J. Hart
Psychotherapist: Seattle Anger Management Counseling
Anger Management & Behavior Regulation:
An Acceptance Commitment Therapy Perspective
“Raise your words, not voice.
It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
~~Rumi
Anger can be a healthy, constructive and sometimes necessary emotional response. Emotions like anger or panic can be viewed as psychological “signal-cues” that function to support survival by prompting self-protective behavior. However, angry behavior can also be extremely maladaptive, counter productive — excessive — destructive and abusive. Pathological anger is characterized by an inability to maintain behavioral control or to moderate the impulse to act-out.
Cognitive Behavioral Counseling: Learn Functional Coping Skills for the Management of Your Angry Reactions
Unbridled anger is frequently associated with hostile actions that prove ineffective in resolving conflict, inducing more frustration and ultimately resulting in harm. Such actions are frequently maladaptive because they serve to compromise personal and interpersonal functioning. Acting-out in anger can do irreparable damage to relationships, place lives and property in danger, and result in a host of unwanted outcomes. Too frequently, inordinate anger leads to unwanted outcomes, or even arrest and incarceration if domestic violence ensues. If this sounds all too familiar, you might consider some form of help with anger management. First and foremost this involves the management of anger through effectively modifying your angry behavior!
Anger Management and Acceptance of Distress
The human experience we call “anger,” involves a complex psycho-physiological response that is accompanied by increases in heart rate and blood pressure that can become medically dangerous. Stress, frustration and aggravation are natural responses to the complexities of living. Emotional responses like this are largely involuntary (rather reflexive in nature) and can be as unwanted and alarming to the person feeling the anger, as they are disturbing to those around them. Anger management counseling can help to moderate angry actions by modifying distress through the teaching of alternative coping skills. By learning to manage anger, or to accept and tolerate our distress, we can come to master the links of the psychological chain that leads to angry acting out.
Learning to Manage Angry Behavior
The first step to learning to anger management is often to come to recognize (philosophically) emotions as “signal-cues” that should function to guide adaptive choices and support functional goal directed behaviors. Because the internal experience of anger is largely an involuntary response, one rooted in the body’s biochemical response to stress, the person feeling the anger may not clearly recognize (with clarity and awareness) what is happening. Stress produces a whole of host of physiological responses (eg. the hormonal release of adrenaline and noradrenaline) that are directly linked to primitive fight or flight responses. Learning to manage angry behavior requires that we become willing to accept and tolerate the sensations associated with our emotions. Allowing the experience of psychological distress — without impulsively acting this out. Cognitive therapy, behavioral rehearsal, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), role-playing, guided visualization, therapeutic metaphor and insight meditation can all help to resolve problems associated with anger. Different techniques work for different people.
Dr. Hart will help you discover what works best for you. You can learn the skills necessary for vital living and adaptation in this frequently chaotic world. A provocative question: Just how aware are you of the associations between what you call you anger – and what you call your fear?
Expressing and Managing Anger Effectively
Often the best way to manage angry emotion is to learn to regulate its behavioral expression. This DOES NOT mean totally withholding or containing our internal experience of anger or the blanket refusal to express this at all. The suppression of anger and frustration seems to ultimately lead people to proverbially “blow their stack.” Too frequently angry impulses are directed toward someone or something other than the real object of the anger.
Anger management counseling is an effective means to beginning the process of learning to communicate effectively and negotiate our best interests without resorting to maladaptive rage.
A significant portion of this process is learning to effectively distinguish maladaptive aggressive behavior from functional self-assertiveness. We all know the saying, “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” but sometimes being “over nice” can be just as non-productive as failing to let our anger inform us. Sometimes the situation requires measured forcefulness and often people with anger issues are simply going too far with the expression of their emotions. Counseling can provide tools for enhanced awareness, recognition of the need for assertiveness, and for preventing aggressive impulses from mobilizing outright anger-driven destructive behavior.
Anger Management and Cognitive Behavioral Counseling
Counseling for anger has everything to do with identifying and modifying problematic angry behavior. We learn to step out of the battle with our emotions, rather than get caught-up in a futile struggle with emotional control. The goal of good counseling is not to eliminate anger. Remember, anger can be both necessary and productive if expressed in an appropriate way. The goal of Anger Management Counseling is to teach the client awareness and self-regulation techniques so that anger does not drive inappropriate or abusive behavioral responses that defeat their lives and relationships.
Not everybody who experiences anger has an unbridled tendency to act out in destructive ways. Frequently life finds us in distressing psycho-social contexts and the reality of unwanted circumstances can make even the most level-headed person feel trapped, powerless, frustrated — and inordinately angry. Anger management requires rehearsal to master angry acting out behaviors.
If it seems that you are overwhelmed by anger and this is making life more difficult for you, or someone you love, anger management therapy can help by providing change strategies and functional coping solutions. The experience of life-frustrations and disturbing emotions does not have to define your behavior or derail the wellbeing of those around you. Effective cognitive behavioral solutions can be readily learned to resolve you anger management problems.
Dr. Hart helps people come to grips with distressing emotions like anger, anxiety and panic panic. Call to schedule a time to explore what options are available. Learn to recognize, channel or diffuse anger before it estranges you from others — and hides the best in you!
Patrick J. Hart Psy.D.
Seattle Anger Management
Consultation by Telephone: 206-547-HELP (4357)
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A belligerent samurai once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, “You’re nothing but a lout – I can’t waste my time with the likes of you!”
His very honor attacked, the samuari flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled, “I could kill you for your impertinence.”
“That,” the monk calmly replied, “is hell.”
Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.
“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”