Anger is a natural emotion that we all experience. Many people classify anger as a bad emotion, but it isn’t. Our bodies generate this natural response when a threat is perceived or anticipated. It is connected to our self-preservation fight or flight response without which we would be unable to identify potential dangers to our safety.
Completely disconnecting from anger creates a great deal of stress on the body and leads to difficulty in responding to threats and advocating for one’s needs. Managing and directing our anger in healthy ways is the key. Unmanaged, out of control anger, is a problem.
When managed and directed appropriately, anger can assist us in setting boundaries, standing up for ourselves, and creating motivation to make positive changes in our lives.
Our perception of the level of threat significantly influences the intensity of our anger, and the corresponding level of hormones our body releases to organize the body for responding. The incident that triggers the anger response can vary from person to person. A person’s individual history has a significant influence on how they think and feel about anger, as well as how they respond when anger is directed at them. Some people were taught that anger is a bad thing and an inappropriate emotion to have. Others were taught to act out their anger through yelling, hitting, or screaming. Left untreated, anger can lead to depression.
Through my psychotherapeutic approach, clients learn about their relationship to anger and how to manage it in healthy ways. Psychotherapy can help you identify what activates your anger, to what degree, and how appropriately it’s expressed. You’ll learn tools that will help manage and direct anger in a healthy, self-supportive way.