Anger Management Problems

Anger is a common emotion that can be aided by anger management. Essentially, two different types of anger exist – healthy and unhealthy.

Healthy anger is often experienced as intense but not overwhelming and does not lead to antisocial, violent, or intimidating behaviour. It is experienced rather as helpful annoyance and irritation – the kind of anger that spurs you on to assert your rights when it is important that you do so.

Unhealthy anger on the other hand is unhelpful rage, and hate, usually triggered when the person believes their personal rules have been violated in some way or when someone gets in the way of their goal attainment. This type of anger leads to aggressive or violent behaviour, even in response to mild or unimportant provocation.

Unhealthy anger is increasingly recognised as an important emotional problem which can devastate the individual’s relationships, normal functioning, health, and self-esteem.

For many years the treatment for anger, involved encouraging people to simply ‘get it out’, often by beating pillows to vent their fury. The results were that, just like anything that is practiced for long enough, these people just got better at being angry. The notion that expressing your rage can ‘get it out of your system’ is something of a myth. More often you wind yourself up further, generating even more anger. A better solution is to get to grips with managing your angry feelings responsibly, and to master skills that can help you to feel less angry, less often.

CBT offers clear and effective strategies for the management of anger involving tackling
the thinking that underpins anger and helping the individual to express that anger in a
healthy manner. The focus is on CBT techniques that can help the client to deal directly
with their feelings of anger.