Nick Kemp - Treating Anger Issues, Anger Avoidance

I was once asked if I would run a course on anger management and I replied that I would rather run a training day on "anger avoidance" instead. I have had great success with clients who have had longstanding anger issues. One of the secrets to dealing with this condition is to develop better "state control" and in most cases a greater ability to relax is very useful.

Anger is usually a very fast totally automatic response and those with anger issues discover that because it is an emotional response, no amount of analysing the "whys" of the behaviour actually assist in creating different outcomes. The triggers for this kind of behaviour can be many and as varied as the wide range of clients who exhibit this behaviour. Often the anger is directed at one or a specific set of individuals and it's easy to identify a clear pattern in what is happening to create and maintain these not useful behaviours.

It's useful to remember that when people think about conditions like "anger management" that these are massive generalisations than can describe a wide range of different behaviours. Every client I see completes a full set of client notes prior to the session and is asked a series of questions including the following:

"What do you want from the session?" "How will you know when you have it" "What has stopped you from changing to date?"