Anger Management and Its Silver Lining

Anger Management Counseling and Anger’s Silver Lining.

A GoodTherapy.org News Summary

Because of a few high-profile individuals, anger management and aggressive outbursts have been in the public spotlight recently. They’ve spurred conversations about what anger is, what it means to lose control, and how to deal with anger. In some cases, people are also beginning to talk about the fact that anger, in and of itself, is not always a bad thing. What is anger? Mayo Clinic describes it as “a feeling of displeasure or hostility.” It functions as an alert that something is not right. People may become angry when they feel threatened. The problem with anger is not that it arises, but rather how it is handled.

The fact that anger arises at all is not the issue: but often, when a person is in a place of anger or hurt, they react with generalized accusations (“You never do what I ask!”) or aggression (slamming doors, yelling, antagonizing). Losing control to anger can change the way you think and how you feel, both physically and emotionally. This can be difficult because it takes an already volatile reaction and moves it farther away from a place of calm and control. When a person becomes angry, they can then become upset at this lack of control, which only makes them angrier.

How a person handles anger is exactly what anger management therapy is about. Reactions to anger can generally be broken into two categories: expression and suppression. Suppression is generally unhealthy, as it just bottles up the energy; it’s likely to come out later in a worse form for not having been dealt with. Expression can be done in a healthy way (calmly addressing the problem) or an unhealthy way (yelling and losing control). In anger management counseling, clients work not to avoid anger, but to understand where it comes from, why certain situations are so personally upsetting, and how to better respond without losing control.