What Is Anger Management? Signs, Steps and When to Get Help

Anger is one of those emotions that we need, but also need to manage.

It empowers us to fight things that we SHOULD fight, like injustice and cruelty. It gives us the fuel and capacity to say NO to certain things and to set limits on certain people and behaviours. Anger helps us by giving us the courage and boldness to set boundaries. Make no mistake, we NEED anger.

Sometimes people don’t let themselves get angry at things that they SHOULD get angry at. Often, this is because they are afraid of the potential consequences of their expressed anger, or they believe that being angry is unethical. This is completely unhelpful.

Suppressed anger will inevitably pop up in a person’s life in a different form, such as depression or bitterness. Physical illness can even result from unresolved, uncommunicative anger.

If anger is already causing damage at home or at work, you don’t have to work it out on your own. Anger management counselling in Perth gives you a private space to understand what is driving the anger and to learn to handle it differently.

What is anger management?

Anger management is about learning when to be angry and when not to, and how to express that anger in mature and healthy ways. It is also about resolving any present or past hurts that would provoke an angry response or feeling. When we can do this, our mental health and relationships always improve.

Many of us simply haven’t learnt how to process our emotions. Emotional intelligence is sadly lacking in many of our lives. We may be able to fix a car, design intricate software or lecture on quantum physics without knowing how to handle our emotions.

It is worth being clear about what anger management is not. It is not about becoming someone who never gets angry, and it is not about swallowing what you feel to keep the peace. Both of those tend to make things worse over time. The goal is not less feeling, it is more choice: noticing the anger earlier, understanding what sits underneath it, and deciding what to do with it rather than being carried along by it.

Why anger builds up

Anger is often a secondary emotion. It arrives on top of something else, and that something else is usually more vulnerable. Hurt, fear, shame, grief, embarrassment and plain exhaustion all commonly show up as anger, because anger feels stronger and safer than the feeling it is covering.

A few things reliably build the pressure:

• Unresolved hurt. Old wounds that were never talked through stay live, and small things in the present reopen them.
• Boundaries that were never spoken. Resentment grows quietly when we keep saying yes to things we mean to say no to.
• A lowered threshold. Poor sleep, chronic stress, pain, alcohol and overwork all shorten the fuse without changing the underlying issue.
• Learned patterns. Most of us handle conflict the way it was handled around us growing up, until we consciously learn something different.

This is why simply trying harder to stay calm rarely works for long. If the pressure underneath is never addressed, it keeps finding a way out.

Signs you might need anger management support

Most people who seek help are not violent. They are usually people who are tired of the way they react and of how it is affecting the people they love. Some common signs:

• Your reaction regularly feels out of proportion to what actually happened.
• You say things in anger that you later regret, and it is becoming a pattern.
• People around you, especially children or a partner, seem to walk on eggshells.
• Anger is showing up at work, on the road, or in situations where it costs you.
• You feel flat, resentful or cynical rather than openly angry, and it will not shift.
• You go from calm to furious with very little warning in between.
• You use alcohol, food or withdrawal to take the edge off the feeling.

None of these mean anything is wrong with you as a person. They mean a pattern has been running for a while, and patterns can be changed.

Some helpful steps towards managing anger

1. Talk to someone you trust or a counsellor. Be honest about how you feel (this is harder for some than others). Work out what you may be angry about and honestly open up about it. Be real.
2. Start writing a journal. Be honest about how you feel. This helps you to be honest with yourself.
3. Make a note of any people in your present or past who have wronged you. Make an intentional effort to forgive them.
4. Set some boundaries where they are needed with people who may be manipulating or disrespecting you. It is right to forgive, but trust is earned.

Practical techniques that help in the moment

Longer term work deals with the causes. In the meantime, these help you keep control while the anger is actually rising:

• Catch the early warning signs. Anger has a physical build-up: jaw, shoulders, chest, heat, a faster heartbeat. Noticing it at a three out of ten gives you options you do not have at an eight.
• Buy yourself time. Leaving the room for ten minutes is not avoidance, it is a deliberate choice to come back able to talk.
• Slow your breathing down. A longer out-breath than in-breath settles the physical arousal that keeps the anger going.
• Name what is underneath. Ask yourself what you would feel if the anger were not there. Hurt and fear are the usual answers, and naming them takes the heat out.
• Come back to it. Raise the issue once you are calm rather than letting it go entirely. Unspoken issues return with interest.

When to see an anger management counsellor

It is worth speaking to someone when the pattern is not shifting on your own, when it is affecting your relationships, your work or your health, or when the anger is connected to something from your past that you have never properly dealt with. You do not need to wait for a crisis, and you do not need to have done something you regret before you are entitled to ask for help.

Counselling gives you somewhere to unpack what is actually driving the anger, without judgement and without an audience. For most people it is a relief to say it out loud to someone who is not involved.

Ready to talk to someone? Breathe Counselling offers anger management counselling in Perth, in person across our Perth locations and online. Book a session to get started.