Anger management - top 10 tips

Here are 10 top tips for anger management.  Hope you find these useful! - 

1. Anger is often a communication of unmet needs.  Often we can only work on anger management if we identify, and try and meet, those unmet needs
2. Anger as an emotion is okay.  It is the behaviour that accompanies the emotion that is problematic
3. Assertiveness training can often help with anger management.  This enables someone to communicate their needs without expressing anger in a disproportionate manner
4. Anger tends to be viewed as problematic if it is a disproportionate reaction to a situation
5. Anger is unhelpful when it is caused by distorted thinking.  For example, someone might get angry in a situation because of painful memories, rather than anything that is particularly threatening in the present
6. Contrast anger and anxiety:  Anger is often someone focusing on a perceived violation of their rights, whereas someone is often anxious because they believe that they are unable to cope in a situation
7. Contrast anger and sadness:  If someone is insulted and she tends to accept the insult, devaluing herself as a result, the emotion would tend to be sadness.  However, in the same situation, if the person tends to reject the insult as unfounded and unacceptable, the resulting emotion would tend to be anger
8. Therapists will often offer Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to help with anger management.  This helps someone examine unhelpful thinking patterns that might fuel the anger.  Examples of unhelpful thinking include jumping to conclusions, generalising about situations, assuming things about other people (or ‘mind-reading’) and living by the ‘tyranny of the shoulds’ (the client believes that she should live a certain way, and the world should be a certain way)
9. Many therapists agree that it is useful to find a safe way to express emotions, but it is not necessarily useful to vent emotions.  Venting anger implies that it is eradicated, whereas expression of anger implies that something important about that person is communicated
10. Some people find this useful:  Name it (as anger, not pretending to be something else), claim it (as your anger, not someone else’s), Aim it (at the correct cause of our anger), Tame it (so that it does not become destructive)

If you would like to read more about anger management, check out my Anger Management Toolkit by clicking here.  

Feel free to get in touch if you would like to speak to a trained professional about anger management, anxiety or depression.

Chris Warren-Dickins BACP Registered Counsellor
E:  chris@exploretransform.com
T:  07816681154
W:  www.exploretransform.com