I prefer to help people work with their anger either as families, couples or as individuals in a group. The reason for this is not only that anger is relational - we get angry in relation to others - but also that it is a remarkable experience to join with others and realise you are not, as you have feared, alone in this. When you do the work as part of a couple, family or member of a therapeutic group, you'll soon see that a), you're not a monster and b), you can learn a lot from hearing about the struggle that others have been through.
That said, I will of course work with you as an individual if that’s what you prefer. Individual sessions links to my main counselling site and opens in a new window.
A group can sound like quite a scary thing, conjuring images of people standing in a room full of strangers saying things like; “hello, my name is x, and I have a problem with anger”. It isn’t like that, at least not here.
The first aim of the group is to provide you with information, to explain how and why we react with anger, why I see it as a necessary and healthy response and what happens to us physically as well as emotionally when it happens. Within this section, I hope to show what the typical 'true' sources of anger are - and you might see already that I seldom find that what you thought was making you angry is the true source of your pain or your anger. Within the 'information' aspects of the group, we look at the many different ways that people can express anger and we cover how to do a proper Time Out and how to talk about a problem or issue.
The second aim of the group is therapy - to help you recognise and, if possible, explore the painful personal experiences that have led to this outcome in your case. Mostly, the things that makes us angry – even ragingly angry -, seem to be in the here and now and often appear to be other people, or maybe a job. If your anger is bigger than the thing that triggered it, it’s a fair guess that the real source is something far more threatening and fearsome in your personal history. Uncovering that is the main aim of the therapy sections of the group work. Anger work can be hard and long and the group can be a significant step on your road to recovery, even if it doesn't completely resolve it immediately.
Many people suffering from this horrible and frightening outcome
feel that they are either too ashamed, or too frightened to work in
a group setting. What that fear is depends on the individual; maybe
you imagine a room full of angry people, or fear what you might do
if someone says the wrong thing, or that your business is your
business (and nobody else’s!). In the end, it all comes down to you
not wanting to, or preferring not to, work in a group. That’s okay,
nobody will or can make you join a group if you can’t face it but,
if you are an individual trying to work on your anger, it is the
best way to do this work.
[Group Dates]
If you want to think about doing this work as an individual, see:
[Individuals]
If you are a person struggling with your own anger, a couple where either one or both of you fires off, a family where one individual seems to be 'the problem' or you are the subject/victim of someone else’s anger, here are a few pointers that might help you understand what’s going on.
Anger is your healthy response to feeling threatened - or another way to say the same thing, you only become angry when you feel threatened. For you and for others, what appear to be random acts of rage have their root in the perception of threat. At the moment you are probably focused on who or what made you angry and I am asking you to focus instead on the threat that is triggering you.
When you're in the middle of an episode, your anger might be threatening to others and you might feel invincible (or that you don’t care), but the cases where someone gets angry without first feeling or believing themselves to be under threat are very rare indeed and most often will involve some form of brain injury.
BUT; whatever you are finding threatening today is probably not what is causing your anger to be so overpowering – more likely is that it is reminding you of something you really fear. That is why so many people, in answer to the question: "what made you angry?", will say, "oh it was some trivial thing, I can’t even remember what it was now". What triggered the episode might have been trivial, but the actual cause was much more serious.
Many people that become enraged seem afterwards to say that whatever it was that got them angry was trivial - so small that they cannot now remember what it was.
If you got angry – that angry – it wasn’t trivial, it was a big deal and whatever it was needs to be understood and resolved. Otherwise, it'll happen again, and again, and again, and again.
Make a pact with yourself and your loved ones that, after the waters have calmed, the red mist has cleared and you feel safe again, you will work your way back to what happened and try to understand what triggered you - it is a signpost that points to what is troubling you and therefore, to your recovery.
Anger is a family business.
It really is. Most people that struggle with anger as an adult do
so because they themselves were raised in an unsafe, usually angry,
household.
Trauma in our lives can have the outcome that we become angry. How we express that anger tends to reflect how we saw anger being expressed or dealt with in our own childhood.
That does not mean that a child in a violent household will go on to be violent. But it does mean they might. I have worked with some very violent people and without exception, they came from violent homes.
But it goes far beyond violence. If anger was expressed in your family by cutting you off or ‘sending you to Coventry’, you might find you do something like that yourself now when you are angry, or will find that if someone does that to you, you go into an inexplicable rage.
Anger is a family business.
There is little point in blaming yourself.
And there is little point in getting into the blame game in general
but, there is a lot to be gained from understanding where this
really came from. That's one difference between blame and
responsibility.
The most important thing to do is take responsibility for your recovery. If you have finished up with a destructive, angry outcome, your life is probably pretty grim and you, I am, guessing, are very alone. Whatever happened, it cannot be your fault that your received a trauma serious enough to leave you feeling always on the alert, constantly vigilant and ready to fight or flee.
But you are the one and only person that can change how you are today and tomorrow. That is what true responsibility is. You do not need to take responsibility for what was done to you - in fact, the sooner you let go of blaming yourself for that, the sooner you will be free to take responsibility for what you do about it.
You are responsible only for what happens to you now.
It won't be easy. And it will take time.
In essence, I don’t work from the perspective that extreme or explosive anger can be 'managed'. When triggered, the level of anger that damages lives and futures (and has no concern for consequences), is coming from Fight, Flight, Freeze - a survival response from the most ancient part of our being - and, as you might imagine from that description, a part that is not amenable to being managed. Of the many people I have worked with who have struggled in these ways, most are doing themselves and others harm because they deny their anger until it burst through with all the fury of an animal under attack. While such a powerful and ancient response is underway, it is your anger that is in charge, not you - it even takes blood away from your brain to supply your muscles, so thinking your way through it will be a challenge to say the least and you might find that your memory of the episode is patchy for the same reason.
When the struggle is with the more chronic, simmering hostility that some people suffer with, the denial or preference for anger being ignored or hidden has different, but in most ways similarly destructive outcomes.
An early focus is recognising and allowing your anger to exist and even more, honouring its presence and recognising the reason that it is so strong in you. That’s not at all the same thing as saying it is okay to become destructive. It isn’t. But it is okay, healthy, necessary even, to be angry sometimes.
If you are very angry, there is a message in what you are experiencing - one that will lead you to your personal place of healing. If you are angry, it is for a reason. Seeing that and seeing what is really making you feel this way will help you move toward resolving it and separating your anger in the here and now from the past traumas and hurts you have almost certainly suffered.
30 September 2011; see here: [Next Group]
See also Anger Groups
The group runs through the weekend, starting on Friday evening. Anyone attending should plan to attend all sessions.
Charges for Autumn 2011 weekend groups are £375.00 to cover all sessions and includes basic refreshments.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer accommodation but there are several decent hotels in the area.
There are some disadvantages to working on anger on your own. The main one is that things might make you angry, but most often, people are involved one way or another. Another reason I prefer you to join a group is that you will see the most important thing of all - you are not alone in this struggle. There are many, many people that have this struggle and what they will feel for you is compassion and care, not disgust or fear.
There may be reasons you prefer to do the work as an indvidual or I may not be able to offer a group, because I need a minimum of 8 people to run one effectively. For that reason, and because you might prefer it anyway, I am happy to work with you as an individual. To book individual sessions links to my main counselling site and opens in a new window.
Much of the work is the same as it would be with couples and families, except the other people in your life are not actually in the room with us. We will still be interested in what hurt you in the first place, what triggers you now and how you express your anger compared with, for example, other members of your family or extended family.
It’ll be hard work, there will be much to understand and you might not like what you find. But you can recover from this hurtful legacy and you can know the peace and joy that others seem to be able to take for granted.
A family is a complex thing. Parents, children, infants, brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts... whoever is involved in the particular dynamic and the rows, arguments and fights, they all bring their story and their responses based in their history and their personal tragedies and traumas, loyalties and alliances.
Have you ever noticed anyone in your family say that "such and such is just like my granddad" and assume that there is some genetic reason that they behave the way they do? Yes, genes play a role. What might surprise you is how much behaviour gets passed through us to the next generation.
Typical scenarios include:
The way I work has, as a starting point, the acceptance that no one person in a family is doing anything, and everyone is doing something. Together, we will work out what is happening and try to resolve the problem or difficulty that is at the bottom, the thing that is really driving this.
My general counselling work with couples is different from this. This is a single issue focus. If two people find that one of them is apparently "going off on one", having outbreaks of rage and anger, is shouting and bullying, then I can probably help. Just like working with families, couples work has to accommodate that you both bring your own history, your own family and your own tragedies and traumas into the relationship. And just like working with families, my starting point isn’t that one person is doing this, or that, but that both are doing something.
If you fear coming to couples working because "she", or "he", is the "problem" and "I don’t have anything to deal with", then please take heart. Because even when you are doing nothing at all, you are doing something. And if you join with your partner in an open search for solutions, I genuinely believe you will find them.
Domestic violence covers far more than one-on-one violence inside a relationship. It extends to include domestic abuse, often seen in controlling behaviour, put downs, derogatory attitudes and failures of love and respect. If your arguments become fights and your fights become physical, I will still see you. But I will be clear about the boundaries and rules and am bound by my personal as well as professional code to raise anything that makes me concerned for anyone's safety.
I do not make a distinction between abuse by men toward family members and abuse by women. Difficulty with anger can frequently lead to or overlap with domestic abuse. If you are the person that is lashing out, coming to see me is a realistic way to initiate change. I don't judge, I support and I know you are like this for a reason.
If, however, you are a victim of serious and sustained domestic abuse, I recommend that you deal with your safety first, and resolve the anger later. This is even more important if children are at risk.
Most aggression in a family is really focused on control, power and safety. The person being violent or abusive feels unsafe and makes themselves feel safe by being abusive. While definitely including battering and physical attacks, the world of family and relationship violence and abuse extends far wider. For that reason, when considering if you have a problem and what to do about it, it is helpful to look beyond the obvious and take in the full extent of the problem.
Typical issues that arise in my work and that should be given closer attention include:
If your anger is violent, then you need help.
Violence is an expression of anger and of power. But then, from where I sit, most forms of anger are an expression of power. We seldom feel as powerful as we do when we are angry. Unleash the full fury of a human animal in a rage, and we will see the primitive, unthinking ancestor that will win or die and care little for the space in-between.
If you are violent, then in almost every case I have seen, you have known violence or violation yourself. If you have been brutalised by another, it doesn’t have to make you a monster, or make you cruel. But it might, so the sooner you make the decision to get clean (yes, it’s a lot like being an addict), the sooner you can begin the journey back to the fulfilled and loving life you should always have had.
I will work with you if you have been or are violent. The thing that matters is that you want to change and are prepared to do the difficult work on yourself that can make that possible.