Anger is a difficult thing for any of us to experience. On its own, anger can play an important function in people’s lives. It can lead to helpful social expression and repair. But what happens when it occurs frequently and people need to be working with anger in therapy?
Moderate to frequent degrees of general anger can have a negative impact on people’s lives. This is especially true when it is frequently unwarranted for given situations. These expressions of anger create barriers to people’s goals (e.g., maintaining friendships or relationships). It can even get in the way of progress in therapy when clients are hostile or critical towards their therapist.
There is no official diagnosis for anger problems. Sometimes it is subsumed under the irritability symptom of depression. Other times it is described in a very specific presentation of sudden outbursts in intermittent explosive disorder.
The lack of a diagnosis for anger problems may have contributed to the lack of a clear path for how to approach anger. This is true for the client in their own life and for clinicians hoping to approach clients displaying hostility in therapy.
Luckily there is a good training from the NICABM on working with anger in therapy. This training focuses on helping clients manage there own anger while also giving clinicians tools to work with client hostility in therapy.
Pros: This training covers multiple aspects of the anger response and how it affects clients. It is also led by multiple major names in mental health who have experience working with elevated emotions. Marsha Linehan (developer of DBT) and Steve Hayes (developer of ACT), to name a few. The emphasis on tools for clients and therapists is also nice.
Limits: Presenters are qualified to talk about regulation of emotion, but many presenters are not experts in the emotion of anger specifically. Additionally, the training discusses how the neural pathways for anger are the same as addiction. However, the neuroscience of anger and addiction are not exactly the same (this picture is more nuanced).
Anger can be such a difficult experience for clients and therapists to tackle. Lucky there are good strategies and training out there for both!
