Anger Management Therapy

TREAT YOUR ANGER, FIND PEACE

Anger is a natural human reaction. There are plenty of injustices in the world and in our personal lives that may cause anger. While anger is a healthy emotion that should not be suppressed, recurring uncontrollable anger can substantially hinder your quality of life, physical health, personal relationships and professional life.

Our anger management therapists stand ready to help you feel and express anger in healthy ways. With anger management therapy, you will learn to assert yourself skillfully, in ways that honor your feelings and your loved ones.

TAMING UNCONTROLLABLE ANGER

Anger is a reaction. It arises from the emotional part of the brain (the amygdala). When we feel angry, we experience fight-or-flight. The angry response kicks in before our rational brain (the pre-frontal cortex) got a chance to assess the situation. When experiencing anger, we are highly reactive. Hence, many people with anger issues report feeling hijacked by irresistible forces.

There might be an initial feeling of relief upon letting out anger impulsively. However, that feeling of relief is often eclipsed by feelings of regret for having overreacted to the situation and hurt loved ones. Anger therapy can help you express anger healthily and get better at overriding the anger impulse.

Anger Often Hides Other Emotions

Anger is one of the most complex emotion. It often acts as a veil that hides other emotions that make us feel uncomfortable, anxious or worried. Vulnerable emotions, such as feeling rejected, unappreciated, taken for granted, judged or inadequate can be so unacceptable or uncomfortable to us that the anger overrides these feelings. Anger can also supplant feelings of sadness, shame, hurt or guilt in the same way. This process often takes places without us being fully aware of it.

It’s no wonder that many men suffer from anger considering that society taught us to repress our emotions to avoid appearing “weak.” Our culture is emotionally illiterate for the most part. Evidently, acknowledging one’s feeling and feeling them fully are signs of strength, well-being and courage.

Our anger management therapists can help you uncover the emotions that lie at the root of anger. You can learn to distinguish between emotions and express precisely how you feel without letting the fire of anger blaze it all to flame indiscriminately.

Learning to Express Healthy Anger

Anger management therapy is not about denying our feelings. Suppressing your feelings of anger will not bring you peace. The feelings will return in an unending cycle, often leading to inward-focused anger causing both mental and physical ailments. Anger management is about learning to skillfully assert your emotions. There is room for voicing your feelings of anger, albeit in ways that are respectful to others and yourself.

Voicing anger involves speaking from a place of calm, not a reactive place. A cool down period between the birth of the anger emotion and the expression of that feeling is often necessary to talk calmly from a centered place. Expressing anger when the feeling takes command is not effective. The aggressive outburst is often so hurtful to others that the message cannot get across. Expressing healthy anger involves acknowledging what is causing you to feel this way and expressing it in ways that will help others understand and support you.

As part of anger management therapy, you will learn coping skills to reduce the raw emotional reactions and to express complaints and dissatisfaction in a clear, assertive and respectful manner.

GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSE OF ANGER

For most people, uncontrollable anger issues often have to do with some past intense emotional pain or trauma. Anger makes us feel powerful, albeit momentarily. Oftentimes, anger has to do with the underlying feeling of powerlessness, with anger outburst occurring to counter-balance such unpleasant feelings. Other times, anger stem from a past trauma that was never processed. In that case, reprocessing the past trauma in therapy is key to reducing the intensity of the anger. Anger outburst have also been shown to be a learned behavior. If you have anger issues, there is a good chance that someone used to be angry at you.

Our anger management therapists are skilled at going deep beneath the surface to help you confront the root causes of anger. A skilled anger management therapist can help you understand why certain fears, places, or situations trigger anger in you and how to manage it.

EARLY ANGER SIGNS

Anger starts with a physical reaction within your body. Learning what your physical reactions are is essential to stopping the cycle of anger early in its track and avoiding an aggressive outburst. The physical signs of anger may include:

Faster breathing or lack of breathing Faster heartbeat Clenching the jaw or hand Feeling flushed Knots in your stomach Headaches Trembling Sweating Extreme alertness Feelings of nausea or dizziness

MINDFULNESS APPROACH TO ANGER MANAGEMENT

Because anger first manifest itself as a physical reaction, you can observe it. You can literally watch as your jaw and hand clench and your heartbeats quicken. In the same way, you can watch your thoughts and emotions as an observer.

Mindfulness is the capacity of being aware of what is going on in the present moment. With mindfulness, we are accepting and recognizing the situation as it is. With deep breathing and mindfulness, we learn to pay attention to our feelings and sensations and take care of ourselves. Much relief and insight can be obtained by practicing mindfulness when we notice and pay attention to the feeling of anger and its associated thoughts and sensations. Our anger management therapists can help you incorporate mindfulness into your life.

TOP-RATED ANGER MANAGEMENT THERAPY TREATMENT IN NEW YORK

Choosing the right psychotherapist can be an overwhelming challenge, which is why we strive to make it as easy as possible to find top-rated anger management therapists in New York. No matter how intense your feelings of anger, Manhattan Mental Health Counseling has many anger management therapists available to help. Our New York anger management counselors are featured below. Note that our anger management therapists also provide online therapy.

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