Anger management - understanding anger

Anger itself is not always a destructive emotion, indeed righteous anger can be considered very productive when it motivates us to react positively to it, and therefore that can result in resolving or improving our situation. However when we react disproportionately to people or events happening around us compared to other people, or if we find ourselves too frequently experiencing and expressing anger, or even if we are just constantly feeling angry, then it is likely that we have a much more deep-rooted problem that appears to be driving us.

With the right kind of anger management counselling, you can quickly come to understand your anger. By learning how the mind works you can then get it working for you rather than against you. The fact is, that it is not always the events themselves necessarily that causes the anger but more likely to do with some deep rooted belief that is distorting the way we feel. So by challenging some of those deeply held beliefs that can so often be hidden from our conscious awareness, through counselling, we can gain mastery over our anger and can then start to use it beneficially. Once you appreciate that change is definitely possible and also come to realise that it is much easier than a lot of people believe is possible, then that destructive process can be quickly reversed and dealt with more productively.

In order to enhance the counselling sessions I believe that by incorporating hypnotherapy techniques as part of that process, it will not only speed up the therapy but also make it so much easier.

My suggestion to include hypnosis would be to provide an instant relaxation technique to utilise whenever the need arises. My logic for this is because whenever we become emotionally aroused we shut out the higher cortex (which is just a posh way of saying we close off our clear thinking brain). The emotional arousal that results from the anger-inducing event is usually caused by entering into a panic attack that has been triggered off by a misinterpretation of that event.

Panic attacks are a perfectly natural response to the feeling of being in danger or feeling threatened in some way, the danger or threat does not have to be real to kick-start a panic attack, we just have to perceive it that way. So even if those negative feelings are simply an emotional response that is linked to some past event that we are unable to make a conscious connection to, then that could account for the resulting panic attack. Therefore for those who are experiencing some kind of explosive rage, they may well be unaware of the origins of that anger but can only respond to what they feel in that moment. It is not unusual when the moment has past that people may then question themselves about the way they behaved and not really fully understand it. That is because when we are calm we have full access to our thinking brain and can make good decisions about how to react more appropriately to each situation, something that evades us in moments of rage.

Link to Ezine Articles where I first published this article on 3rd Jan, 2010.