As an owner and therapist in mental health care, how would you describe your work and the perspective you bring to helping people navigate anger?
As the owner and primary therapist at Serenity Solutions, I provide comprehensive anger-management treatment to adults who struggle to remain calm when triggered. My training as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) enables me to view each person as someone shaped by many different experiences throughout their life.
I look beyond the anger and rage to understand the underlying causes that inform treatment. This perspective allows me to bring compassion and empathy to the work, helping individuals shed any shame they feel about their angry behaviors so they can fully benefit from treatment.
What experiences in your path to becoming a therapist led you to focus on anger management alongside concerns such as anxiety, stress, and addiction recovery?
As an intern in graduate school, I began running anger management groups at my placement when I learned that there was a high need for this type of treatment.
What I've learned along the way is how much anger is impacted by other feelings, including anxiety and stress, depression, shame, humiliation, and so much more.
The people I work with have also experienced situations that make them more susceptible to anger, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and other traumatic events.
Our society and how we are socialized impact how we process and express our anger, too.
In your clinical experience, what is an early sign that anger is beginning to take over, and what can someone do at that moment to create a pause?
Early signs of anger can be physical and emotional. When someone begins to feel triggered, their body goes into the fight-or-flight response, and various physical symptoms can appear as a racing heartbeat, high blood pressure, sweating, shaking, muscle tension and queasiness.
If a person mindfully notices these symptoms, they can pause and calm their body. Exercises that help regulate the nervous system in these situations include:
Slow, deep breathing
Placing hands on the heart and stomach to send a message to the body that you are safe
Bringing attention to things you can notice with the five senses
When you can pause and calm down, you have the opportunity to decide how you want to respond instead of reacting automatically because your body thinks you're in danger.
Emotional signs of anger include the feeling of anger itself and angry thoughts. Angry thoughts may include cursing, blaming and name-calling.
They may also include all-or-nothing words, such as always, never, everybody, nobody and all.
When someone notices these thoughts, they can pause and try to let them go. Strategies include:
Choose not to focus on the thought and instead focus on what is important in the moment.
Identify evidence that the thought is not true—this is easy with all-or-nothing thoughts because you only have to think of one exception.
Recognize that angry thoughts tend to be exaggerated, and challenge them by reducing the exaggeration and identifying what the actual truth is.
How do you use acceptance and commitment therapy to help clients make room for anger without allowing it to dictate their actions?
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has fabulous tools to help clients manage anger in ways that align with their values. When people seek anger management voluntarily, rather than being forced by the courts or a family member, their values are what led them to treatment. They don’t want to behave in the ways they have been behaving because those behaviors don’t align with their values. They want to be kind, compassionate, caring partners, parents, and friends.
Identifying their values and how they want to show up in the world can help them determine how to respond when they feel angry. Another ACT tool is letting go of angry thoughts. Angry thoughts feed into our anger and are not helpful. Even if an angry thought is true, ACT teaches that you don’t have to focus on it; you can instead focus on being in the moment, being mindful, and bringing your attention to what is most important in that moment, which for many people is behaving according to their values.
Mindfulness is the core process in ACT that helps with the techniques above. You need to be mindful to catch yourself when you are feeling angry in order to pause, let go of unhelpful thoughts, and engage in value-informed behaviors.
What is one cognitive behavioral therapy technique you have found useful for helping people examine the thoughts that intensify their anger?
Challenging automatic thoughts is a useful tool from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that helps people manage thoughts that feed their anger.
The way to challenge automatic thoughts is to identify the evidence for and against the thought. Typically, when we are feeling very emotional, there will be more evidence against the thought, which allows you to change it to a more realistic one. Ask yourself:
- "What is the evidence for this thought?"
- "What is the evidence against this thought?"
- "What is a more realistic way to look at this situation?"
- "What are the chances that this will actually happen?"
For example, imagine that you are angry because your partner got stuck at work and will be late for dinner. Your automatic thought might be, "They always do this. They don't care about me." Identify the times that they have been late, but also identify all of the times that they have not been late and the times they showed care. Even if someone has a pattern of being late, this technique gives you the chance to pause, consider other ways to view the situation, and calm your nervous system so you can think more clearly about what you want to do next.
Mindfulness can feel difficult when someone is highly activated; what brief mindfulness practice do you recommend for use during or immediately after an angry moment?
The easiest mindfulness exercise to use in the moment is slowing down your breathing. You can do this by purposely slowing it down or by using breathing exercises like box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing.
Box breathing:
Breathe in for a count of four.
Hold your breath for a count of four.
Breathe out for a count of four.
Hold your breath again for a count of four.
4-7-8 breathing:
Breathe in for a count of four.
Hold your breath for a count of seven.
Breathe out for a count of eight.
These breathing techniques send the message to your nervous system that you are safe. Additionally, mindfulness tools are helpful before a situation that you think might trigger you. Calming your nervous system in advance can act like preventative medicine.
Drawing on your work with adolescents and adults, how can a person communicate anger in a way that is firm, respectful, and less likely to escalate conflict?
Communicating assertively is the antidote to aggressive, angry communication that escalates conflict. Assertive communication relies on respecting the rights of the other person and yourself. It involves expressing your feelings using "I" statements, which avoid blame or criticism.
An "I" statement follows this structure:
- "I feel _______ (feeling word) when __________ (situation)."
- Make sure you put a feeling word (for example, mad, sad, or angry)—not the word "that"—in the first blank. Otherwise it is no longer an "I" statement and you risk blaming the other person.
You can also add a request at the end of an "I" statement, asking for what you want or need. Be as specific as possible by stating what you want someone to do, not what you don't want them to do. If you tell someone to stop doing something without telling them what you want instead, they are left to figure it out on their own or to mind-read, and they might not get it right, which could put you at greater risk of reacting in anger the next time.
Another thing to keep in mind when you communicate assertively is that it doesn't mean the other person will stay calm, agree, or do what you want. If that happens, you may need to use tools to stay calm and might need to use more "I" statements.
The primary goal of communicating assertively is to express your feelings so you don't bottle them up and to encourage a productive conversation.
For people whose anger is connected to grief, trauma, anxiety, or substance use, what support or coping step has been especially important in your practice?
For people whose anger is connected to grief, working through feelings of grief is important. This may include discussing their feelings about the loss or their relationship with the person when they were alive. They may also benefit from the techniques used for trauma, as some losses can feel traumatic.
For those struggling with trauma, exercises that help regulate the nervous system can reduce fight-or-flight responses. Examples include relaxation exercises, mindfulness, physical exercise, and somatic therapies to support nervous system regulation
I commonly see anxiety symptoms trigger anger in my practice. When someone is worried that something bad will happen, they can enter fight-or-flight to protect themselves. If there is no physical danger, the released adrenaline and cortisol have nowhere to go and may be released as yelling, throwing objects, or invading someone's personal space. Tools that can help when anxiety triggers anger include challenging unhelpful thoughts, letting go of unhelpful thoughts, mindfulness, and living according to your values
For people whose anger is connected to substance use, the simplest (but not easiest) solution is to stop using the substances. Many of the same tools used for anxiety, anger, grief, and trauma can be extremely helpful for someone attempting to abstain from drugs and/or alcohol.
As both a therapist and practice owner, what is one sustainable habit you would encourage readers to build now so they are better prepared to cope with anger over time?
Mindfulness is a great habit for managing anger and the many other feelings and emotions that can feed into it.
When we practice mindfulness daily, we strengthen our mindfulness muscle, which helps us notice when we are getting worked up sooner. The quicker we can catch ourselves, the more opportunity we have to pause and make an intentional choice about how we want to respond instead of reacting in a way we may later regret.
Additionally, a regular mindfulness practice can act as preventative medication, helping us stay calmer over time.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Anger management is not about never feeling angry.
It is about learning healthy, calm, and respectful ways to respond when we feel angry.
We don't want to get rid of the feeling of anger. It is a helpful emotion that lets us know that something is wrong. The goal of anger management is to change how we behave when we feel triggered.
This article is for general educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading it does not create a therapist–client relationship. If you are struggling, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.), contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.
This article was first published on Featured News.