Areas of
Focus

Anger

Experiencing and understanding your feelings of anger can help you better regulate your emotions and express yourself more constructively. This ability to experience anger more freely can increase creativity and assertiveness and allow you to be more in charge of your life.

In the process of growing up and becoming socialized in our families and society, we often learn to distrust, withhold, or ignore our anger. For example, if we are continually discouraged from or shamed from experiencing anger, we can develop a phobia about asserting ourselves. As a result, we may overly inhibit anger, thus negating the energy that could help us assert ourselves, set limits with others, and define who we are and how we want to live our lives. Or, if those around us express anger in an impulsive and explosive manner, we may either learn to avoid the feeling altogether or express it in unhelpful ways.

In either scenario, our inability to experience and express anger in healthy ways can have negative effects on our ability to manage relationships and carve our way in the world. Having an explosive temper that seems to come out of nowhere can negatively impact us at work and at home. Chronic over-inhibition of anger can lead to a variety of other issues, including underperformance in school and work, shyness or social phobias, self doubt, insecurity, and stress-related medical conditions such as headaches, irritable bowel syndrome and unexplained body pain.

Using a combination of ISTDP and mindfulness-based approaches, we will help you desensitize your “affect phobia” around anger and other emotions through systematic exposure to these conflicted feelings and developing greater awareness about the mechanisms that may be blocking feeling. Through this process you will learn techniques to experience and express your anger and other feelings in ways that will help you achieve your goals and improve your relationships.