Anger Mangement

Anger Management and the strategies involved with counseling for anger management provide some of the most important coping skills that a teenager can utilize. Anger management helps adolescents deal with the one emotion that gets them into trouble the most frequently ; uncontrolled anger. Learning to deal effectively with problems through anger management is a process that requires maturity and understanding, something the adolescent often lacks. With this in mind, counselors that practice anger management can pursue techniques that enable their young clients to better understand ways of dealing with anger that are not self-destructive or damaging to others. Chronic frustrations, resentments, or fears that cannot effectively be expressed through anger management can often invite the presence of substance abuse.

The first faculty of anger management that needs to be practiced is effective problem solving. The experience gained from effective problem solving helps to build confidence and reinforces more flexible insight when dealing with future life situations. In turn, this also reduces the stress and anxiety that often times is the main catalyst in creating the temptation to flee recovery or initially seek out substance abuse. The following are helpful strategies which can be applied when practicing anger management:

The Right To Be Angry
When a person is denied the right to express his or her feelings of anger it can present a potentially volatile situation. The participating members of a dysfunctional family are often times responsible for invalidating feelings of reaction that could be appropriate to a given situation. The unwillingness of refusal , or simple denial on behalf of the parents or the entire family to accept an emotion because it points to a problem area that they cannot or will not understand can create chronic frustration. This will lead to a number of avoidance behaviors including avoidance through substance abuse. In this situation the counselor needs to avoid contributing to the silence. They need to validate the adolescent’s anger by reinforcing that they are not crazy and the problem could be denial within the family. The next step is defining what the denial is concerning and present the alternatives to properly handle it.

Accepting The Anger
Upon validating the emotional state, the counselor needs to establish how well the adolescent has dealt with anger in the past and evaluate whether it has been healthy or unhealthy. Anger that has been submersed in mood altering chemicals or diverted by destructive, aggressive behavior is not a practical or healthy form of anger management. Problem solving skills through assertiveness training can be a very effective tool for adolescents who have been raised in a family setting that avoids conflict or deals with problems through aggression. The recovering teen should not be encouraged to try and reverse family denial or longstanding family problems by themselves. Rather they should be supported in their refusal to join denial and detach from the family attitude as much as is necessary to sustain the proper balance and personal growth needed for their own mental health.

Detaching
The concept of detaching pertains to the acceptance of people, places and things exactly how they exist without letting the personalities or the outcomes involved affect behavior in a negative way. This can aid in arresting the hatred and resentments that are brought upon the human spirit as a result of anger. It is the extreme practice of letting go. It means accepting differences between yourself and others without trying to change the other person. In other words, taking responsibility for your own life and letting other people be responsible for their own. Detaching requires respect. It can also be considered as the final stage of grief: when one comes to terms with a loss or disagreement and decides to move ahead instead of dwelling on it. Detaching can be achieved only after other aspects of grief and anger management have been worked through, including denial and bargaining.

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