What Is Anger Management Therapy?
Written by Trevor Johnson on November 8th, 2009 in Self Development.
If you are having difficulty controlling your angry outbursts beyond a normal, healthy manner you may have a problem with anger management issues. If your behaviour has become destructive towards yourself or others you could well benefit from anger management therapy.
Anger management therapy describes the psychological methods for helping to diminish expressions of uncontrollable anger and help people keep from losing control with their anger in destructive and unhelpful ways.
Anger can be controlled by self-help methods. Changing the way in which you express your anger to avoid hurting or offending others is extremely effective. This can be achieved by assertiveness training. Stop and think before you act and consider if your emotions can be communicated in a better way.
When you feel those angry feelings coming on you can start to control your breathing in order to remain calm. Inhale gently through your nose, count to 3, and exhale slowly through the mouth. Yoga and meditation are other methods to help you relax. Strenuous exercise will also control your anger through diversion. Some people swear by hitting a pillow or boxing ball as a means of anger management.
Other self-help methods are to laugh (yes it really does help), changing your environment to remove the source of anger and talking to somebody about your feelings. It is also helpful to realise that getting continuously angry is not going to solve or ease the problem.
Some people may prefer to seek professional anger management therapy if the methods of self-control are not effective enough. Cognitive Behavioral Therapies are often used for this purpose.
A great deal of the methods used in anger management therapy depend on CBT, which teaches people to evaluate the underlying thoughts and feelings creating excessive anger. This helps to retrain people to avoid pointless and wrong thoughts that have previously promoted angry behaviour and therefore control the urge to act in a destructive way. CBT is conducted in both individual and group therapy sessions.
Find this effective alternative to anger management therapy and find out about hypnosis for anger management.
