Sometimes clients seek counseling for anger management, often at the recommendation of a significant other. Anger management is only one of the outcomes of working with clients with anger. We learn how to cope with the stressors of life in various ways, some healthy and some not so healthy. It is invariably from copying the person most influential to them when they were a small child. If the adult caregiver coped with stress be getting angry it is going to be learned that it is an appropriate response. However, it is going to feel uncontrollable if they have to repress their own anger or receive further wrath from the adult. Anger is by far the easiest emotion for an individual to access and usually the one most evident in unhealthy relationships. The first step in working with clients with anger issues is to give them tools to manage it; however, this is only the first step. I typically use ego state therapy (EST) and EMDR to process anger. In doing so the current presentation of anger and memories of anger are identified and allowed to be processed so that the way the mind and body respond to anger and conflict is adaptable. Repressed anger is then no longer repressed in the mind and body and the way the client responds to conflict is no longer with exaggerated anger. We then are able to deal with stress and conflict with appropriate communication and support. Partners are able to then learn to trust each other in being able to manage their emotional response when in conflict.
A path to wholeness