Is your anger causing distress to yourself or those around you? Do you need help with how to control anger? Located in Wembley, north of Perth, and Como, south of Perth, I provide anger management counselling and psychotherapy services for individuals struggling with anger management. While counselling won't eliminate the sources of your anger, it can help you reduce and control your emotional reactions. If you have concerns about managing your anger, please contact me to schedule an appointment.

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Understanding Anger

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Anger often emerges from frustration, triggered by the perceived disrespectful, demeaning, threatening, or neglectful actions of others. It may also arise when things don't happen the way we want. It can also occur due to perceived injustice, excessive worry about personal problems, or in response to feeling hurt.

 

Anger can range from mild irritation to intense fury and rage. It is a natural and typically healthy human emotion when expressed and managed in a manner that acknowledges the feeling without causing harm to others. However, uncontrolled and destructive expressions of anger can severely damage personal and professional relationships, physical health, and emotional wellbeing. Unmanaged anger may also lead to substance abuse, violent and aggressive behaviour, and potential legal consequences.

 

What does healthy anger look like?

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I offer anger management counselling aimed at teaching healthy and assertive ways of expressing anger as follows:

• being clear about what your needs are

• understanding that being assertive does not mean being pushy or demanding

• being respectful of yourself and others

• expressing yourself in a non-aggressive manner

• experiencing anger that is mild, infrequent and subsides quickly

• being able to calm yourself down

 

When is anger considered destructive?

 

Anger becomes a problem when it causes someone to do or say something that is detrimental to their long-term best interest. Signs of unmanaged or uncontrolled problematic anger:

• your anger intensifies rapidly within just a few seconds

• your anger involves verbal, emotional or physical abuse

• you feel angry most of the time

• other people comment about your anger

• your anger is causing difficulties with personal and work relationships

• you can only get your needs met by being angry

• your anger does not subside quickly

• you have the desire to dominate or control others

• you hold a grudge and are planning to get even

• you are becoming anxious or depressed about your anger

• you are using alcohol or other drugs in an attempt to manage your anger

• you are suppressing your anger

 

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Managing Anger

 

Despite often appearing to be a viable short-term solution to get others to comply with your requests, unmanaged anger will usually create other long-term problems for yourself and others around you. Dealing with problems by participating in angry behaviour may often result in the anger itself becoming the problem. The individual with whom you are angry may feel attacked or belittled and respond to your anger rather than addressing what has initially upset you. Throughout your life, you will, at times, experience frustration, pain, loss and the unpredictable actions of others. You cannot change that, but you can change the way you respond and how you allow such events to affect you.

 

Strategies to Manage Anger

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Anger management is about being aware of the triggers and early warning signs of anger and developing skills to manage your reactions before the situation escalates out of control.

 

Common early warning signs:

• muscular tension

• sensations of heat and flushing in the face

• increased heart rate, breathing or sweating

• a sudden burst of energy

 

Helpful techniques to manage your reactions:

• step away from the situation to give yourself time and space to think clearly and calm down

• practice controlled breathing by slowing and deepening your breath and focusing on allowing the muscles in your body to relax voluntarily

• talk yourself down by saying things to yourself like, "relax" or "I'm not going to let this get to me"

• recognise that the situation is merely an unpleasant event and not life-threatening or a major catastrophe

 

Relaxation Skills:

Relaxation techniques can assist with releasing any muscle tension in the body that may contribute to experiencing excessive anger. These techniques include progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, meditation, yoga and mindfulness exercises.

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Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for Anger Management

 

The above strategies to manage anger may help you calm down in a crisis. However, they don't address the causes of excessive anger. CBT is a highly effective psychological treatment that centres on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and behaviour. It involves working with a trained psychologist, psychotherapist or counsellor to help you identify unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviours and learn healthier and more effective coping skills for dealing with different problems.

 

The following list of typical unhelpful thinking patterns may cause excessive anger:

• using negative, overly dramatic, offensive or swear words when thinking about a situation

• exaggerated thinking

• using inaccurate words like "never" or "always"

• failing to apply logic to your thoughts

• failing to accept that some problems may not have a solution

• thoughts that are based on assumptions and not facts

• believing that you do not have the capacity to cope

• neglecting to acknowledge the other person's needs or perspective

• viewing your own needs as demands, instead of requests or desires

 

CBT is a proven effective treatment for various emotional, behavioural and psychiatric issues, including reducing and managing anger.

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Featured Videos About Anger

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Click here to go to a selection of short informative YouTube videos about anger. They also contain several useful tools and techniques to help manage anger.

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Anger Management Counselling Perth

 

If you have concerns about managing your anger or would like to discuss the issues raised in this article, please don't hesitate to contact me and schedule an appointment. Anger management counselling can assist you in understanding the underlying causes of your anger by exploring your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours that contribute to it. Through our sessions, we can work together to enhance your communication skills, develop effective coping strategies, and provide you with the tools needed to manage anger-provoking situations more effectively.

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