About Anger
By Richard Cruz
In this second column for Home & Lifestyle Magazine, Richard Cruz, counsellor and psychosexual therapist, talks about anger management and its links with trauma, both of which present widely in the counselling room today.
Anger management is a speciality that in my experience draws predominantly from the male population although it is certainly not limited to men, as both genders suffer from its debilitating consequences.
Anger in the broadest sense is a natural human emotion; it’s healthy channelling gives us assertion and we would have to be saintly not to demonstrate angry outbursts at some point in our lives. In other words anger is here to stay and we need it for expression, getting things off our chest and survival.
Some off us express too little anger and others too much. You know what category you fall into: either repressing your anger or letting it all hang out! Most people live convivially with the ebb and flow of normal levels of anger that adds to relationships as opposed to undermining them.
However, there seems to be another “strain” of anger, for want of a better word, that goes well over the top. Call it rage or “red mist”… those afflicted are seriously impoverished by it when it takes hold.
It’s also a destroyer of the quality of relationships, undermining and threatening the growth of trust. Men and women in its grip are powerless and impotent to do anything about it once it has unleashed itself. Clearly to have sought counselling for it usually means it is threatening co-existence at home; one partner’s suitcase is packed and at the door unless the angry person admits there is a problem and seeks help.
This is often when the angry person presents for therapy; there has been an ultimatum at home after an incident, often not the first time the incident has occurred. It may have got physical, but not necessarily; yet one more unacceptable abusive outburst that has laid a path of destruction in its wake.
So what is this kind of anger about and how is it treated? Clearly there is a quality to this anger that supersedes our benign version stated above. Clients are firstly usually ashamed and worried about it due to its nature of creeping up on them unawares. I use the analogy in treatment of the traffic light system. Those with anger management issues skip the amber light: they are going along at green and suddenly flick into red. They have not learnt to emotionally regulate themselves sufficiently to realise there is an amber light and an opportunity to take action in that pre-danger domain.
This is often a very useful tool and I work with it alongside raising awareness of the triggers that provoke the angry responses. Triggers are those tell-tale signs that inform us that things do not bode well; we might feel a trigger physically in the base of our stomach during an altercation with a partner, child, road-user, boss, etc. Shortness of breath, shallow breathing or feeling “hot under the collar” might be another. Triggers are the signs that tell us we are getting highly aroused and moving towards the red light danger zone.
Now there are some simple techniques such as taking a walk around the block, doing some deep breathing or removing oneself from the danger zone, or counting to 10, which some people find useful and on a superficial level they are.
However, these techniques in themselves I don’t push, as angry people in my experience are often angrily “wired” and treatment is beyond simple cognitive and behavioural strategies. I do a good assessment of family past and present and predisposing conditions. Has this person always been angry? What has been the history of anger and in particular the expression or lack of expression of anger in family of origin by parents? Were they angry little boys or girls?
As this is psychotherapy I find treating anger very much a two-pronged approach: what we can do about its manifestation in the present, and confront the crisis now alongside the origins of emotional self-regulation. In other words, the impact of life history on the mind and body, as anger is often a felt experience akin to venom in the organism.
So anger and rage is not solely in the cognitive world – it’s in the emotional world – and I find that those most struggling with harnessing anger for the good and well-being of self and others are often dealing with a degree of personal trauma. Trauma is a strong word and covers a wide range of issues, often early in life, including: divorce and separation of parents; sexual or emotional abuse or deprivation; non-attunement of parents/principal care-givers to emotional well-being of the child, etc.
Trauma does not necessarily have meant a catastrophic event like war or death. But likewise it is not something to be underestimated, for any untoward event or series of events in a young person’s life, whereby the impact of that event on the child was felt as overpowering and beyond the child’s emotional ability to process the event, would leave he or she internalising the trauma, repressing it, and subsequently being shamed by it. And we know that we carry shame in the body.
Trauma is probably a subject for another day. I thought it pertinent to introduce it to this article on anger management as sometimes it can have a bearing on the underlying symptoms of anger management.
If trauma is denied or has not had an opportunity to be worked through it gets repressed. By the very nature of repression a volcano effect is created, anger or rage (and it’s powerful neighbour called depression) awaits for unleashing, and the vicious cycle of shame continues until it is halted and given the long-awaited opportunity to come up into the light of day for healing.
Sex Therapy Marbella
Avenida Ricardo Soriano
Tel. (+34) 608 594 608
www.sextherapymarbella.es
