Anger Management

Anger Management Training Course

Learn to control your own anger or help others to manage their anger. 

• Learn to understand anger and its physical and emotional effects.
• Explore techniques to help people to manage their anger.
• Understand cognitive behavioural techniques when working with anger issues.
• Consider mental health issues in relation to anger.
• Learn techniques to use when anger involves violence Learn to help children and adolescents with their anger issues.
• Complete a project (PBL - problem based learning) on supporting people with anger management issues.

An ideal course

This is an ideal course to take if -

• Would you like to set up your own anger management consultancy?
• Would you like to improve your knowledge of anger?
• Would you like to learn more about supporting people with anger management issues?

Who is this course suitable for?

The course is suitable for –

• Law enforcement officers.
• Social workers.
• Carers.
• Teachers.
• Psychologists.
• Counsellors.
• Lecturers.
• Trainers.
• Foster carers.
• Life coaches.
• Support workers.
• Anyone interested in helping those with anger issues.
• It is also suitable for those wishing to work as anger management consultants with private clients or training those within organisations.

Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Nature and Scope of Anger
   • Introduction
   • The autonomic nervous system
   • Anger and arousal
   • Galvanic skin resistance
   • Voice stress analyser
   • Polygraph
   • Degrees of arousal
   • Difficulties of arousal theories
   • Theories of emotion
   • James Lange theory
   • Cannon Bard theory
   • Schachter's theory
   • Lazarus's appraisal theory
   • Weiner's attribution
   • Averill's social construction theory
   • Facial feedback theory
2. Managing Anger with Counselling
   • Causes of anger
   • Frustration
   • Breaking personal rules
   • Self defence
   • Expression of anger
   • Counselling strategies
   • Empty chair technique
   • Recognising psychological arousal
   • Thought stopping
   • Relaxation exercises
   • Progressive muscle relaxation
   • Time out
   • Assertiveness training
   • Three steps in assertiveness training
   • Five stage assertiveness training interview
   • Mental blocks to assertiveness
3. Managing Anger with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
   • Cognitive behavioural therapy
   • Identifying antecedents
   • Assessment of anger
   • Beginning therapy
   • Teaching CBT
   • Inferences
   • Evaluations
   • Chaining
   • Disputing inferences and evaluations
   • Independance and blocks to change
   • Use of imagery
   • Emotional insight Exposure
   • Termination
   • Working with anger problems in CBT
   • Problems with CBT for anger management
4. Anger Management Techniques for Violence
   • Introduction
   • Anger and violence
   • Appearance
   • Posture
   • Affect
   • Speech
   • Causes of violence
   • Cold violence
   • Hot violence
   • Reactive violence
   • Tips for dealing with a violent client
   • Strategies for violence prevention
   • Action after violence
   • Managing violence against others
   • Mental disorders and violence
5. Anger Management for People with Mental Health Issues
   • DSM dimensions to diagnose mental illness
   • Dementia
   • Dementia and anger
   • Supporting clients with dementia
   • Grief
   • Anxiety
   • Depression
   • Stages of grief
   • Tasks of mourning
6. Managing Anger in Children and Adolescents
   • Introduction
   • Toddlers
   • Temper tantrums
   • Older children and anger
   • Adolescence
   • Psychological changes in girls
   • Psychological changes in boys
   • Depression
   • Eating problems
   • Adults sharing anger
7. Anger Management for People with Special Difficulties
   • People with personality disorders
   • Psychopathology
   • Borderline personality disorders and treatment
   • Psychopath and treatment
   • Roid rage, symptoms and abuse
8. Anger Management Services
   • Counselling
   • Anger management clinics
   • Courses and workshops
   • Group and individual work
   • Conflict management
   • Conflict handling techniques
   • Life coaching
   • Setting up an anger management consultancy
9. Deciding on a Course of Action
   • PBL Project to create and present a plan of anger management to support an individual experiencing serious anger difficulties.

Aims

• Discuss the nature and scope of anger including psychological and physiological manifestations.
• Explain the biological, social and psychological causes of anger and the strategies used by counsellors to deal with the underlying causes in an effort to diffuse the build up of anger in people
• Explain how anger problems can be addressed through the application of cognitive behavioural counselling
• Discuss anger management techniques to diffuse violent outbursts and manage violence
• Consider anger management issues for people with specific mental health issues.
• Explain the causes of anger in children and adolescents, and review a wide range of techniques for addressing those issues.
• Determine the nature and scope of anger management services in society.
• Identify ways to support clients seeking anger management services
• Evaluate a situation where anger is becoming a problem and determine an appropriate course to follow in response to the problem.

How Can Anger be Assessed?

An assessment of an angry outburst would include:

• Triggering events - both immediate (e.g. that man has made eye contact with me in the pub), and contextual (e.g. I always expect trouble in pubs from past experiences).
• Inferences (e.g. he is staring at me - he hates me, he wants to fight me, I would be weak to let this pass) and evaluations (I better attack him first in case he makes a fool of me in front of my friends).
• Emotional consequences (i.e. I feel angry); physiological (e.g. my heart's pounding, my fists are clenching). The duration of the angry feeling (e.g. half an hour), and intensity (e.g. 30 on a scale of 0-100).
• Behavioural consequences - both verbal (e.g. I swore at him), and non-verbal (e.g. I punched him in the face).
• Other consequences - both positive and negative short-term and long-term. For example, negative short-term could be I got a black eye. Negative long-term could be I was barred from the pub.

Once a counsellor has helped a client to identify maladaptive thoughts, they need to show the client how maladaptive thoughts can lead to anger problems. They then need to find ways to demonstrate to the client how to modify those thoughts and beliefs.

This is usually done by asking the client to find evidence to disprove those beliefs or to challenge the logic of those beliefs, and thereby help them to change them. The counsellor may help the client to do this.

For example, logic may be challenged by asking 'How does it follow that you would be a fool if you did not attack the man in the bar?'. Evidence may be challenged by asking 'What evidence is there that you would be weak if you did not fight?'.

Another method, and often a very powerful tool, is to ask the client to undertake a task which contradicts their beliefs. The client might be asked to go to a bar and the next time someone makes eye contact with them to try making a friendly approach to them. If they receive a positive response then this would disprove their belief that any man who makes eye contact with them is seeking a fight. If they receive a negative response then they could test their evaluation that that this is somehow disastrous for them by assessing whether this would destroy their life.

It should be stressed that the angry client must continuously challenge their maladaptive thoughts and beliefs and persistently behave in ways contrary to their negative thinking in order to make a significant change to their feelings and behaviours. CBT is not about trying to get the client to think positively but to think realistically.

There are circumstances when it is perfectly acceptable to be angry. It is only when the client generalises their anger to a whole range of situations that it becomes problematic and when their angry thoughts are extreme.

Stages of CBT

Stage 1 - Beginning Therapy

The main task for the counsellor here is to help the client to get going again. Usually they have become stuck in some way. In the case of the angry client it may be that their anger has begun to affect their life and the lives of those around them. The counsellor will work with the client to see whether CBT is the appropriate course of action and indeed if the client is happy to work with them. It could take several sessions to get started.

This stage involves an explanation of what can be expected from CBT and exploration of the problem using basic counselling skills. When the counsellor believes they have enough information about the problem and the client is ready to do so, they will then move on towards an initial assessment using the ABC model where - consequences (C) are seen as the consequences of negative evaluations and inferences (B) and not the triggering event itself (A).

Beliefs include inferences about what has happened or what may happen. Beliefs also include evaluations which are based on how good or bad something is. Beliefs can be right or wrong, valid or invalid depending on the evidence to support them. An inference can be confirmed or disconfirmed. A belief is judged as good or bad. Nevertheless, clients regard their beliefs as facts or events (A). Therefore, they believe they are not open to question and they tend to explain problems in terms of A-C in which the event causes the consequence. The CBT counsellor therefore has to point out the angry beliefs (B's) to the client and show how they are the cause of the problem.

A typical ABC assessment form which can be completed with the client is as follows:

Typically, several of these would be completed for different angry outbursts to look for common patterns in underlying beliefs i.e. a generalised way of thinking rather than specific ways. There may be one or more of these generalised core beliefs. The strategy is to assess in the following order:

1. Assess C
2. Assess A
3. Connect A and C
4. Assess B
5. Connect B and C

A and C may be assessed the other way round but B should always be last.

The generalised core beliefs can be used to make one or more tentative formulations to be used to start work on modifying the client's unrealistic beliefs. These working hypotheses are shared with the client to see if they agree about the problem and whether CBT will be of value to the client i.e. the counsellor's formulation is an explanation of the client's A's, B's, and C's. The ABC assessment forms can be used to demonstrate that it is the B's which cause the C's and not the A's (or at least not the A's in isolation). Therefore changing the beliefs (B's) can change the consequences (C's).

Once the assessment and formulation have been completed the counsellor moves on to interventions helping he client to select specific goals. Ways of achieving those goals are then discussed e.g. keeping a diary of triggering events, beliefs, and consequences. Finally, agreement over the duration and frequency of therapy and the agenda for sessions should be struck between the counsellor and client.

Why Study This Course

• A lot of people seem angry today and do not always have the skills or knowledge or experience to deal with that anger. YOU could help them.
• This course will provide you with the knowledge to work with people with anger issues.
• Perhaps you want to set up your own management consultancy?
• Or you come into contact with angry people as part of your daily work?
• This course will help.  It will show you techniques for dealing with people with anger issues.
• Learn to work better and cope better when dealing with people who are angry.
• Learn to help the people themselves with their anger.
• Become more effective in how you deal with angry people.

So if you are thinking of working more in the area of anger management, START NOW with this excellent course in anger management.

If you have any questions, please ask our tutors. Click here to contact an Anger Management Tutor.