Anger Management Therapy Program
Our anger management therapy program is designed to help you examine yourself so that you have better insight into your thought process and decision-making habits. It will help you understand that the secret to real success is in wanting something so intensely that you are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve it.
Aggression is a learned behavior, an emotion that turns into an action, often without thinking or planning ahead. Therefore, we teach control, not a cure. You will need to be aware of and maintain healthy ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving for the rest of their life.
Anger Management Isn’t Easy But Possible
We realize that anger management counseling is difficult. It is difficult because it often brings out an aspect of each person that is not particularly attractive. However, in order for the renewal process to begin, it is very important for you to get past their level of denial and to look at your own thoughts and behaviors openly and honestly. You must remember that you are not bad, evil or rotten.
Definitions of anger include words like: rage, revenge, hatred, submission, and the like. No matter what words or definitions are used to define anger the central theme is the same, anger is an emotional reaction or feeling that can strongly impact one’s present emotional state in a negative form.
Anger Is Natural Emotion
The instinctive, most natural way, to express and experience anger is to lash out or respond aggressively. However, it is imperative that we remember anger is natural – this point cannot be reiterated enough. When individuals are attacked or threatened it is normal to become aggressive in both feelings and behaviors. Anger is an emotion that grants us the ability to defend ourselves or to ward off danger. Therefore, a certain amount of anger is necessary in order for us to survive in today’s world.
The goal of our anger management therapy program is to help you reduce and control both your emotional feelings and the physiological arousal that leads to your anger. Since you can’t get rid of anger or avoid it, the only option you have is to learn to control your anger. At the same time, you do not have the option of getting rid of people that enrage or perturb you, therefore you must learn to live with people who “press your buttons” and “trigger” your anger.
Uncontrolled Anger Can Be Controlled
Remember, anger is an emotion that every human being will experience regularly. There are psychological tests that measure the intensity of angry feelings, how prone to anger you are, and how well you handle it. But chances are good that if you do have a problem with anger, you already know it. If you find yourself acting in ways that seem out of control and frightening, you might need help finding better ways to deal with this emotion.
When an individual begins to understand why he or she is expressing anger in a certain manor, he or she is beginning to recognize the “trigger,” or the event that is leading him or her to express anger violently or passively. As individuals begin to understand their “triggers,” they can begin to develop healthy ways of processing the anger before it escalates into an all-out rage or suppressed emotion.
Unexpressed Anger Can Be Devastating
Unexpressed anger is a very common way people experience anger. Most often when people think of anger, they think of rage, this is a common misunderstanding. Unexpressed anger can be just as or more devastating than expressed anger. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticizing everything and making cynical comments haven’t learned how to constructively express their anger.
Although, helping individuals to process anger is necessary, we believe that anger management with married couples has been neglected by both research and group counseling. Mismanaged anger and rage is the major cause of conflict in our personal and professional relationships. Domestic abuse, road rage, workplace violence, divorce, and addiction are just a few examples of what happens when anger is mismanaged. Many couples get married without ever talking about the various ways they have witnessed anger being expressed or how they have learned how to express their anger.
Anger Management Treatment
Our anger management counselors use the ASCEND method in training clients to control their anger. The ASCEND method is a step-by-step process that will help you take control of your anger and includes:
Anger Awareness
Stop Your Immediate Response
Calm Yourself down
Evaluation Your Options
Do Something About It
The individual sessions are scheduled for 50-minutes (either weekly or every other week) and cost $120 per session. As mentioned earlier, you have taken your first step in dealing with your anger problem by admitting that it is a problem. Many men and women never reach this point of admitting and/or seeking help. So, don’t stop here. Keep going and start on your road to recovery and learning to control your anger.
If you are wanting help with out of control anger, our counseling center provides individual, and relationship counseling for anger management. There are two ways to setup an appointment with one of our counselors: 1) Fill out the Contact Form and a counselor will call you with 24-hours; 2) Call our offices at 303-933-5800.