Anger Management
Anger Management is great to have, but it’s much easier to practice anger prevention. Imagine not gritting your teeth and holding back the urge to do the thing you will regret later. Instead, bringing yourself to a state of relative calm where you don’t make the situation worse.
Why not just focus on managing anger? Well, because when we are angry, we literally lose access to our intelligence and kindness. I’d rather keep my wits about me than turn into the Incredible Hulk and hope I don’t “Hulk smash!”
Anger management is science! Simply put, we have a prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) and a combination of brainstem and amygdala (reactive or “lizard” brain). These are very, very different parts of the brain.
If your thinking brain is the most activated, then you have access to your real personality, logic, understanding, compassion, etc.
If your lizard brain is more activated, then you don’t have access to those things - you have access to fight/flight/freeze.
If you are reading this, then you probably access fight mode instinctively. I’d much rather talk with your intelligent and kind self than the part that wants to smash me. And I’m guessing you’d like to stop saying and doing things out of anger that cause problems in your life. I hear you on that one. My dad, brother and myself all have a boxer’s fracture in our hands from punching things out of anger. When I learned to access my thinking brain quickly, aggression stopped and my ability to manage disappointment increased.
The vast majority of our work will be to reduce your baseline agitation levels and preventing disappointment or annoyance from turning to rage. You’ll also learn how to release that anger in a healthy and effective way that doesn’t end in a broken _______ (fill in the blank).
Anger can be the most destructive thing in your life, but it is one of the most treatable issues a qualified therapist can help with. We’ll know pretty quickly if it is a matter of learning how to regulate your nervous system and mindset, or if there are unresolved issues that need deeper work (see the Trauma page if you’re curious about this).