How does Therapy Help with Anger Issues?
But anger carries risk, perhaps more than any other emotion. It can alienate a person from other people and lead individuals to do things they later regret. People who have persistent and extreme anger may find it helpful to find the cause with a therapist.
Anger is one of the basic human emotions, just as basic as sadness, happiness, anxiety, and disgust. Anger is a natural, healthy emotion. However, it can show up out of proportion to the trigger. In these cases, emotions can hinder a person's decision-making, damage relationships, and lead to losses. Learning to control your anger can limit emotional breakdown.
Anger can give rise to hostility, resentment, or hatred, which can be directed against a specific person, group, object, entity, behavior, concept, or idea. These emotions are associated with basic survival and were honed over the long course of human history. Anger is associated with the "fight, flight" response of the sympathetic nervous system; it prepares you to fight.
But fighting doesn't necessarily mean hitting someone; may motivate people to fight injustice by changing laws or enforcing new norms of behavior. Of course, anger that is used too easily or frequently can damage your relationship and your body in the long run. The prolonged release of stress hormones that accompanies anger can destroy neurons in areas of the brain linked to judgment and short-term memory and can weaken the immune system.
Causes of Your Anger
Human emotions are not only caused by circulating levels of hormones such as adrenaline. Adrenaline levels will increase in anger because anger can cause physical and mental arousal (not sexual, although this can happen to some people on occasion). Adrenaline is the most dominant of all types of arousal. Known as the fight or flight hormone, this hormone is involved in joy and fear, happiness and desire, and anger and stress.What is Anger Management?
Anger management involves a range of skills that can help identify signs of anger, and positively deal with triggers.
This requires a person to identify anger in its early stages, and to express their needs while remaining calm and in control. Managing anger does not mean holding back or avoiding it.
Overcoming anger is a skill that is trained and acquired, almost anyone can learn to control their feelings, with time, patience, and dedication.
When anger is negatively impacting a relationship, especially if it leads to violent or harmful behavior, one can consult a mental health professional or attend an anger management class.
However, there is an initial technique that you can immediately try. Some people find that they can solve anger issues without seeking professional help.
What is Anger Therapy?
Anger therapy is a psychotherapeutic program to control and prevent anger. Many therapeutic strategies are available to help you deal with anger problems, but the most popular is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a short course of treatment that has proven to be the most effective anger management therapy. Through CBT sessions with the therapist, patients will often experience:
1. Healthy adversity tolerance training
2. Awareness Training
3. Restructuring the dysfunctional mind
4. Build skills for translating anger into assertiveness
5. Regulation of emotions and empathy training
Benefits of Anger Therapy
People learn to help themselves to remain calm and to handle stressful situations positively and constructively through anger therapy. This skill can help them avoid suppressing anger, which can cause depression, hypertension, and anxiety.
CommunicationOften anger is caused by miscommunication resulting in misunderstandings. Learning how to open communication makes dialogue easier and more manageable.
ConnectionMany people have problems with anger, staying away from their loved ones, or being asked to stay away, because they can hurt people with their strong emotions — your loved ones are the closest and easiest victims. Learning to control your anger will help calm the other person about angry outbursts and be able to focus more on your relationship.
People learn to help themselves to remain calm and to handle stressful situations positively and constructively through anger therapy. This skill can help them avoid suppressing anger, which can cause depression, hypertension, and anxiety.
Communication
Often anger is caused by miscommunication resulting in misunderstandings. Learning how to open communication makes dialogue easier and more manageable.
Connection
Many people have problems with anger, staying away from their loved ones, or being asked to stay away, because they can hurt people with their strong emotions — your loved ones are the closest and easiest victims. Learning to control your anger will help calm the other person about angry outbursts and be able to focus more on your relationship.
Consideration
Anger makes you incapable of understanding situations in an impartial way, and makes you more likely to make mistakes in your reasoning. Anger management helps the individual to channel anger better so that control and emotions are not lost, enabling the individual to analyze the situation more objectively.
Knowing Empathy
A big part of therapy is learning empathy for the other person, which helps one party understand the other better, reducing the possibility of further conflict or disagreement.
Anger Management Treatment & Counselling
People who seek treatment, help & therapy for anger management are often those who experience physical expressions of anger beyond the frustration, and irritability you are all used to at times. Responding to these angry feelings can sometimes lead to aggressive and violent behavior. Many people who seek anger management therapy have faced some form of life crisis, brought on by the effects of their anger outbursts, both at home and in society at large.
If you're having trouble with your anger, and you know it may hurt another person physically or emotionally, then Priory's national network of hospitals and wellness centers can offer specialist support & therapy with a coordinated personalized care program, to help you manage physically and emotionally. the symptoms of your anger problem.
Anger Therapy at Home
While working with an anger therapist has long-term benefits, you can learn certain behavioral and thinking skills that will make it easier for you to deal with anger.
If you need reassurance without the presence of a professional, there are a few things you can do. Follow these easy tips for fast cooling.
Use logic
While anger can quickly distort judgment and logic, do your best to stay focused. Remind yourself that the world isn't out to catch you – this is irrational anger. Remember to do this every time you start to feel irritated, and you'll begin to notice that you're getting a more balanced perspective.
Stop reacting
Listen before you react. Take time to think carefully about how you can get revenge. It's fine if you need to step away to calm down.
Relax
Practice taking slow, controlled breaths that you imagine coming from your belly, not your chest.
Why Won't My Anger Go Away?
If someone is deliberately treating you unfairly, it's natural to feel angry. Often this type of anger dissipates quickly, and you become calm. However, the trigger for your anger is not something that recently happened, but something more common in your life or circumstances, or past experiences that are still stressing you out. If this is the case, you may suddenly get angry over very small things, but the real cause of your anger is something deeper, and 'slowly burning'.
Long-lasting anger like this can be hard to deal with on your own. This means you have not been able to resolve or accept the cause of your anger. Maybe it's because you've been treated unfairly, and it doesn't seem like there's anything you can do to fix it. When this occurs, it makes sense to try to get help. Counseling and anger management therapy can help you understand your anger and what causes it.
Summary
The truth is, anger is a healthy emotion. Whether you need to pay attention or not, depends on the severity. If you're having trouble controlling your emotions, or your anger is escaping in an unhealthy way that can hurt other people, as well as yourself, it's time to get it under control. If left unchecked, it can harm your professional relationships and career. If you think you might benefit from anger therapy, talk to a therapist today, and start working toward a more calm lifestyle.
Anger can be good when it helps you correct mistakes, work through problems, and express negative feelings. However, it can also be bad, because it can be harmful to you and the other person, damaging relationships and affecting your ability to succeed the way you want.
Anger, stress, and happiness are inside you, not in the outside world. Once you understand and learn to control your mind, you can be free from anger and stress.
