Anger Counseling

Anger counseling is a many-splendored beast. Ever heard that old AA phrase or acronym HALT, for example? The acronym means that we are at greater risk for relapse when we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. This is one of the principles emphasized in anger management classes.

Hunger, loneliness, fatigue, closed head injury, ADD, ADHD, family of origin, addiction and recovery, grief, forgiveness and reconciliation, automatic negative thoughts, stress, our response to facial expressions, all can play a part in the emotional experience of anger. With so many potential triggers, using the resource of anger management classes is a valuable option.

We are supposed to have anger by the way; it is the energy we use to solve problems. And it is also a secondary emotion, usually following another emotion like hurt or shame. However, if we use anger to justify violence I think we subvert the purpose of our emotions and must seek anger management classes.

The one thing that no other anger management program that I am aware of talks about is the speed of the Central Nervous System (CNS). Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi,Ph.D., author of the book FLOW written in 1993, estimates that the CNS processes packets of non-verbal communication consisting of seven bits of data per package every 1/18th second. That is twice as fast as I can blink my eyes, which takes 1/10th second. So you have to have your anger counseling tools from anger management classes in a place where they can be recalled very quickly.

Paul Ekman,Ph.D. who has worked for decades to develop a systematic catalog of human facial expressions says that all humans, no matter what culture they are from, respond to a look of contempt in 1/25th second, and what that means is usually first hurt, then anger. Any of you who are parents can remember how you felt when your children looked at you with a look of contempt. Even the memory of that look can bring back the hurt/anger emotions. Dealing with these kinds of reactions is a substantial mission of anger management classes.

We need to be prepared to name our feelings, their intensity, and to make some decisions about changing them much more frequently and much faster than perhaps we thought we did. This preparation may well require anger management classes.

Sounds like mindfulness, doesn't it? Mindfulness, or awareness of what I am feeling coupled with deep breathing gives me a powerful tool to calm down if I am getting too hot. This technique is typical of those taught in anger management classes.

When I do my anger management classes, I teach about the grieving process using the Kubler-Ross model of grieving which includes a frequent movement between sadness and anger during the non-linear grieving process. It is amazing to me that our culture teaches the grief process so poorly.

So many of my clients have a lifetime of un-grieved losses and perceived abandonments which impact their ability to trust, and if their central nervous system overwhelmed by the physiology associated with a memory, the need for anger management classes is even greater.

Anger counseling always involves accountability, and to teach that I routinely point out that their entire experience of life is inside their head, and their thought about that sensory experience is what brings the feelings, and we know that thought happens really fast. No one can make me mad. My thought about things is what makes me mad. Also, my thought about anger management classes can help me control my anger, which gives me a better understanding of this powerful and useful emotion.

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