Anger & Emotional Reactivity
What Might be Happening
Anger is a powerful emotion, and it can be scary when we don't have control over it. You may find yourself lashing out at the people you love over little things. Maybe you feel like there's always something simmering in the background, like the anger is waiting for that final straw to push you over the edge. Your anger might come out with words you would never otherwise say, or behaviors that you never thought you would do. Maybe you don't recognize yourself. You probably feel guilty every time it happens, and that guilt sticks around, haunting you. You promise yourself it'll never happen again, but the anger is automatic - like a switch gets flipped. You feel out of control. The people around you walk on egg-shells, fearful of saying something that might anger you. So you withdraw, disengage from your relationships. And you don't know how to stop it.
The goal isn't to never feel angry - the goal is to understand your anger, and to choose healthy ways to respond to it
How Therapy Can Help
Therapy is a great way to work on decreasing your anger and reactivity. Anger is often a secondary emotion, accompanied by other feelings that push it to the surface. Therapy can help you understand what you're angry about, and if there are other emotions happening lower down that are contributing to the reactivity. Therapy gives you the chance to identify your anger cues - are there certain situations, people, or even thoughts that bring on the anger? Does it actually build slowly, but so subtly that it's hard to notice? Therapy will help you gain more awareness of these cues, so that you can catch them sooner. You'll develop strategies to help you refocus and calm that angry part of yourself, so that outbursts happen less often. And therapy can help you start to express how you're actually feeling, so that you can choose the right coping strategy. You'll build the skills to express yourself more accurately and articulately.
Therapy can help you get back to being the person you know you are, without the shadow of anger always looming over you.
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch for a free consultation, so we can start working together on taming your anger and decreasing reactivity.
