Anger is experienced by everyone in one or another part of their daily life. It is the most common and prevalent emotion with destructive consequences. Normally, people become angry when others treat them unfairly, break their cultural norms or attack their personality. Different individuals behave differently according to a specific condition that leads to anger. Anger is a natural emotion, but when it becomes destructive and affects your personal and professional relations, leaving you embarrassed and regretful, Anger Therapy is a must. The widely approached and scientifically grounded therapy that addresses the complex relationships between thoughts and behaviour is CBT for Stress Management.
The CBT for Stress Management helps you recognize the situations that trigger you and replace them with healthy coping strategies. This article focuses on the exploring the different techniques used in the CBT anger control therapy.
What is CBT Anger Control Therapy?
Cognitive Anger Control Therapy, commonly known as CBT, is a form of psychotherapy that helps you identify anger and stress-related issues and replaces these negative thoughts with rational ones. It focuses on changing the unhelpful thoughts so that you can get relief from anger, anxiety and depression. This therapy rewires your brain and changes your mood in short and the long haul. In short, it is an emotion-focused therapy that can be effective in managing anger by changing the way you think and react to the anger provoking situations.
How does CBT Anger Control Therapy work?
Once the therapist understands the different stress inoculation situations, they help you in coping with it by suggesting the different anger therapy. However, to understand the different stress inoculation situations in the CBT anger management therapy.
The CBT for anger therapy normally involves the following steps:
Identifying the Triggers
The first step is to identify the different anxiety and depression situations. The therapist ask you the different series of questions based on multiple situations. Once they identify what triggers you, they will figure out the different therapies that works best for you. The different coping strategies in CBT includes mindfulness meditation, breathing exercise, guided imaginary and progressive muscle relaxation. This process can be difficult process as identifying the thoughts can lead to the self discovery.
Challenging the Thoughts
The CBT in anger therapy also includes challenging negative thoughts. These negative thoughts will result in anger. The therapist identifies these thoughts and helps you in overcoming them with right techniques.
Learning the Relaxation Techniques
Individuals practising emotion-focused therapy must learn the different relaxation techniques to control their anxiety and depression. These techniques will help you calm down when you start feeling angry.
Practising the New Skills
CBT believes in the active learning of new skills. Once you learn the new skills, you need to practice them in real-world scenarios to control your anger. Your stress inoculation therapy specialist will role-play the different real-world scenarios that provoke anger. For successful anger management, you need to practice the newly learned skills.
Signs When You Need Stress Relief Therapy
Most of us got angry or mad at some point in time. But, if your anger interfere with your professional and personal relationship or your ability to live happily, then, it is the time to start looking for the stress relief therapy. You can pick the online counselling for anger or look for the anger and stress management therapy near me.
Signs that indicate when you need the stress relief therapy
- Feeling of self-harm or isolation
- Your anger lasts for longer hours of time
- You raise your voice, pacing, or being snarky or sarcastic when you are angry.
- You become passive-aggressive in situations.
- Blame other person for your situations, regardless of if they’re at fault or not
- You become angry too frequently
- Need substances to pacify with your anger
- Unable to express your emotions in a positive way
- You become more aggressive on respond to situations
Role of CBT in Understanding Anger and Stress Related Issues
CBT for Anger Management is an effective technique for controlling and preventing many types of anger. It helps you in identifying the root cause of the anger that might start the cycle of unhealthy anger response. When you learn to take care of your anger effectively, you will better take care of your emotions, relations and situations.
Through Anger therapy, you can:
- Learn to manage your frustrations before they turn to anger
- Focuses on impulse control
- Become self aware
- Use different techniques like breathing, muscle relaxation strategies to keep you calm
Effective CBT Techniques Used in Anger Therapy
As per the experts, there are different CBT techniques that act as quick stress busters. These techniques include cognitive restructuring, behavioural rehearsal, deep breathing and muscle relaxation, problem-solving, and assertive communication. Let us delve deep inside them:
Cognitive Restructuring
The way you interpret a situation will directly impact the way you react. In the cognitive restructuring technique, the therapist will identify the different unhealthy thoughts that fuel the anger and replace them with constructive ones. The CBT therapist will assign you the homework to note down all negative thoughts. Also, the specialist will record the statements that you make when the anger triggers.
Behavioral Rehearsal
This therapy technique involves practising and imaging behaviour, social skills, responses in order to use them in real life time. In this approach the specialist helps the patients to identify, evaluate and modify their behaviour.
Relaxation Techniques
It is an important anger control therapy used in CBT. It aims to induce a state of relaxation. The most commonly used relaxation technique includes the guided imaginary, mindful meditation, deep breathing techniques and progressive muscle relaxation. These techniques helps the individuals to release their tension by shifting their focus away from anger provoking thoughts.
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving in CBT helps you identify how you solve the problem in a real-world scenario. These problems are based on real-life stressors, both big and small. The problem-solving technique includes five main steps:
- Problem Identification
- Developing different potential solutions
- Evaluating each solution including its strength and weakness
- Picking the right Solution
- Properly Applying the Solution
Assertive Communication
In this therapy, the needs and feelings are expressed in a way that is clear and direct without hurting the feelings of others. The main goal of assertive stress inoculation therapy is communication and mutuality. It includes both verbal and non-verbal communication that includes eye contact, reflective listening, volume of speech, and using the basic message like “This is what I think” or “This is how I see the situation”
Ultimate Benefits of Using CBT for Stress Management
Managing the anger is not always easy, but it can be managed. Studies show that CBT for anger management is an effective technique that helps in reducing anger. CBT anger management therapy is beneficial for a variety of reasons:
Identify the Root Trigger
It helps in identifying the root cause of your anger and irritability that unnecessarily fuels your anger in the real life situation.
Change the Thinking
Once you identify the unhealthy thought patterns that fuel your anger, different coping strategies are implemented. Since the way you think is directly linked to the way you react, by changing the unhealthy thinking pattern, you can overcome anxiety and depression.
Improves Communication
The CBT helps you in expressing your thoughts and needs in a way that respects the other person’s feelings. Individual will learn the way to express their feeling in a healthy, respectful and assertive manner without being aggressive.
Learn Relaxation Techniques
The stress inoculation therapy will teach the different stress relaxation techniques that helps you in calming down and relax your body and mind. These techniques will help you in expressing yourself in a positive manner without losing the temper.
Solves Problems
The CBT for anger management will help you in learning the different problem solving techniques for the situation that provokes anger.
Seeking the Professional Help for the Anger Therapy
When dealing with extreme anger and stress related issues, seeking help from a professional expert is beneficial. The professional therapist will not only understand the problem by root but also provides you the best coping strategies that helps you in reducing the anxiety and depression. The regular sessions with the professional therapist will provide you the safe space to process your emotions that ultimately helps in improving the overall emotional regulation.
Seeking the professional help from the certified expert is the first step which is most difficult. Acknowledging the fact of seeking professional advice is a sign of strength and commitment towards personal growth. Finding the qualified therapist for managing anger and stress related issues is the most important task. You can seek the online counselling for anger. The individual can pick the online counselling for anger or near them that best suits them.
Let’s Recap
Excessive anger can impact your mental health, physical health, professional career, social life, and relations and will leave you in a regretful condition. So, if you are feeling overwhelmed by anger and are looking for anger and stress management therapy near me, then book your session with a counsellor. They are the professional therapist who helps you in overcoming various mental issues.