IFS for Anger

Anger is not as well studied and understood as anxiety. While anxiety conditions have names like GAD, OCD, etc. the only references to anger are in extreme cases like antisocial behaviour or oppositional defiant disorder, which probably not many people know about.

Anger issues happen when we do not know how to deal with the anger we feel. Anger, itself, is neither “good” nor “bad”, but it is how we deal with the anger that we feel that makes a difference.

Anger is an emotion that we all experience in life and, unfortunately, is not easy to express. Anger can become chronic and unhealthy, which is when clients start considering the idea of coming to therapy to make sense of it. Typical scenarios are

• Getting very irritated at small things

• Raising voice in work situations

• Losing sleep

• Losing trust in people

• Hitting (or wanting to hit) parts of one's own body or other objects

• Getting easily into arguments that escalate quickly

How Psychotherapy helps with anger issues

The typical steps to treat anger are the following

Step 1 - Identifying the triggers. We spend some time understand what is that makes you angry

Step 2 - We take a close look at your angry reactions to understand why you get so angry. At this point we discover what needs of yours are not met when you get angry, and we also discover whether there has been something traumatic in the past that makes your anger go out of proportion

Step 3 - Depending on the discoveries of Step 2, we proceed either with healing the trauma, or with finding alternative ways to get your needs met that do not rely heavily on anger.

Please feel free to read my pages on anger issues and anger management help and tips.

These are the articles on anger I have written so far