Anger Management Counseling: Benefits and Goals

We’ve all felt a little piqued at one point or another in our lives. Parents get irritated when their children ignore them. Commuters get angry when fellow road users cut them off in traffic. Lovers experience frustration when they feel unheard or certain expectations aren’t met. Citizens get upset when their leaders don’t fulfill their promises.

People can feel resentment toward their colleagues, employees, or employers if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. In many other relationships and situations, anger is a legitimate response to injustice or the violation of boundaries and expectations.

It’s one thing to feel angry at a situation, but what you do with that anger as it washes over you is quite another. It can be tempting to give in to your first impulses and cuss at the driver who just cut you off in traffic. You might contemplate and then make a snarky and hurtful remark to your spouse who just dismissed your feelings.

You could consider punching your boss because they brought a deadline forward due to poor planning on their part, then act on it. Whenever you get angry, you have a choice about what you’re going to do with that anger. That choice has huge ramifications for your health and the health of your relationships.

Anger management counseling is a tool you can use if you can’t seem to control your anger or act constructively when you’re feeling angry. If you have anger issues, anger management counseling can help you cultivate a more positive relationship with anger.

When Anger Is a Problem – Signs of Anger Issues

Anger is a natural and healthy emotion we all experience. Given what we see of anger in daily life, however, it’s hard to think of anger as a healthy emotion. Many people view anger as a negative emotion to be avoided, and that’s probably because of all the horrible things that people do because of anger.

However, it’s important to make a distinction between our feelings of anger, and the actions we take that flow from those feelings of anger. Anger is a healthy but powerful emotion that can be used well or lead to disaster.

One analogy that can be used to illustrate how anger works is fire. Fire is a powerful elemental force that generates light and heat. You can light a fire in various ways, and the fuel that keeps a fire burning also varies in its composition and abundance.

The thing about fire is that it can be used in many ways: to light a candle for a romantic dinner, to start a campfire, to warm a home on a cold night, to make amazing barbecued pork, to set a firebreak that controls possible future wildfires, to start a wildfire that burns uncontrollably, to burn down a building, etc. Fire is this powerful, versatile thing that can be used constructively, or for destruction.

People can have anger issues; that’s when their anger is out of control, and they can’t seem to make good choices when they’re feeling angry. Some signs of anger issues include the following:

• Important relationships have broken down because of things you’ve said or done out of anger.
• You have injured others or yourself while you were angry; you’ve damaged property (yours or that of others) in your anger. You may have also threatened harm to yourself and others when feeling angry.
• You’ve gotten in trouble with the law because of things said or done in your anger.
• Your loved ones have concerns about your anger, and they’ve told you that you have anger issues.
• Substance misuse and/or addiction
• Your dominant emotion is anger, you feel angry all the time or remain angry for a long time after an incident.
• You get angry at the slightest provocation, and your reaction is often disproportionate to the situation.

If you see these signs in your life, you probably have anger issues. Go to a doctor or a mental health professional to eliminate any other possible causes for your anger such as stress or a mood disorder. This will help you address the core issue. One of the tools that you can use to address anger issues is anger management counseling.

What is anger management counseling?

Anger management counseling is a form of psychotherapy, or talk therapy, that helps you to process and unpack your anger. Unpacking your anger means things such as understanding what triggers your anger and growing awareness of how you feel at each level of anger arousal.

Knowing how you and your body respond when you’re feeling angry helps you understand the emotion better and prepares you to make necessary interventions to keep that anger under control.

Anger management counseling makes use of various techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), relaxation strategies, realistic problem solving, cognitive restructuring, impulse control, and breathing techniques to help a client understand their anger and successfully control and calm their anger.

CBT helps an individual to pinpoint any unhealthy or unhelpful patterns of thought and behavior that may be rooted in inaccurate beliefs. In some cases, family therapy is necessary to help the family unit deal with conflict and anger in constructive ways.

Counseling sessions can take place either individually or in a group with others who have anger issues. You’ll explore situations in which you got angry and talk through your thoughts and feelings that preceded the anger.

Your counselor will help walk you through those experiences, exploring what beliefs underlie your thoughts and actions, and whether these are accurate or helpful assessments of reality. Your counselor will help you by teaching you different ways to respond in similar situations, equipping you for any future conflict.

Anger management counseling is available on an ongoing basis, though you and your counselor can decide how many sessions are appropriate to help you overcome your anger issues.

The Goals of Anger Management Counseling

When you go for counseling, what are some of the expectations for the process, and what does anger management counseling hope to accomplish? It’s important that your understanding of the process as well as your goals are in alignment. That way, you avoid undue expectations, and you can go in for your counseling knowing what you’re working toward.

When you meet with your counselor, they will talk with you to understand your unique story and challenges. There are general goals that all anger management counseling seeks to accomplish, but there may be even more specific goals that you want to accomplish for yourself. You can set specific goals for yourself, but some of the goals that anger management counseling seeks to accomplish include the following:

• Understanding and appreciating the positive role of anger in your life. Anger is not synonymous with violence, and it’s helpful to understand the difference. Anger plays a positive role in our lives, such as alerting us to injustice and propelling us toward corrective action.
• Helping you become more aware of your anger. It’s helpful to know what triggers your anger as well as how you act and feel when angry. This helps you to be better prepared to handle your anger.
• Anger management counseling can help one adjust how they look at situations so that they can be approached with a constructive mindset.
• Helping you deal effectively and in healthy ways with anger when it crops up. Successful anger management counseling provides you with tools to express anger and frustration in healthy ways.
• To be able to reduce the physical and emotional arousal that anger causes, helping you respond in an appropriate and godly way. Through deep breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, and visualization, among other techniques, you can calm yourself when anger begins stirring.
• Teaching you how to be assertive without resorting to aggression.
• To learn how to problem-solve and focus on solutions and positive outcomes.

The Benefits of Anger Management Counseling

Anger management counseling sets important goals and accomplishing any or all these goals will have significant benefits for your life. Some of the benefits of anger management counseling include:

Better health When you can’t keep your anger under control, that can have many negative effects on your health. Uncontrolled anger affects your physical and mental health, leading to issues like high blood pressure, a higher risk of stroke, and a higher risk of anxiety and depression. When you manage your anger well, it helps you achieve better mental and emotional health.

Growing in your empathic abilities If anger dominates your emotional landscape, that leaves little room for cultivating patience and understanding for other people. This can make it difficult to nurture meaningful relationships with others, leading to interpersonal problems and possibly low self-esteem issues from damaged relationships.

Reduced levels of stress When it’s not handled well, stress begets anger, which in turn if not handled well begets yet more stress, and so on. Dealing effectively and in a healthy manner with your anger helps to reduce the stress you experience daily.

Better judgments and decisions Anger, when it’s burning hot and out of control, reduces your ability to make reasoned judgments and see your full range of options in a situation. Having anger under control will help you think more clearly and creatively, leading to better decisions.

Living more responsibly Anger often has us focusing on others and on the way, they may be the problem or responsible for our angry feelings. With anger under control, we can avoid blame-shifting, instead taking responsibility for how we feel. This sense of ownership will help you feel more empowered in your life decisions.

Next Steps

A life carried along by anger is an impoverished one and one that is likely imploding or falling apart. That isn’t God’s plan for anyone, as our anger doesn’t lead to the righteous life God desires for us (see James 1:19-20). We need to be reshaped in our thinking to better align with God’s purposes for us in our relationships and lives. That includes understanding our anger and its appropriate role in our lives.

If you desire to align your life and emotions with God’s best for you, consider seeing a Christian anger management counselor who will apply the best of the evidence-based therapeutic techniques while also making use of the unique resources from the Christian faith such as the Bible and prayer. If anger is in the driver’s seat in your life, reach out to an anger management counselor for an appointment to get your anger under control and bring flourishing to your life.