Treating anger issues

On March 16, a grassroots committee hosted the Worland Mental Fitness Fair at the Worland Community Center.

Members of the panel were Dr. Ralph Louis, psychologist from Oxbow Center in Basin; Janae Harman, owner of Family Circle Counseling in Worland; Mary Johnson, CEO of Oxbow Center in Worland; and Carol Bell, provisionally licensed therapist at Foundations Counseling in Cody.

The panel answered prepared questions that came from the committee and from similar events in Shell, Greybull and Cowley.

The Northern Wyoming News will be covering the questions on a weekly basis throughout the next several weeks.

How do you treat anger issues?

Bell: I love this question. I get so many clients come to see me because they’re struggling with anger. And anger is one of those emotions that maybe our culture doesn’t give us permission to feel.

Usually when my clients come to see me with anger issues, I give them permission to be angry. I think it’s really important if you’re struggling with anger, to really get curious about what might be causing your anger.

A lot of times anger issues come up when we need to set a boundary with somebody. When we need to say no to work that we’re doing or no to the way that somebody is interfering in our lives. But anger, like all the emotions that we experience, is there for a reason. It shows up to tell us something.

I think I always start by suggesting even to myself, OK, what’s going on here? Where’s this anger coming from? Is there something going on that I’m not paying enough attention to?

Johnson: We talk about anger as being a secondary emotion. So, it’s always overlapping with something else. When I’m working with someone on anger, we work on building good rapport so we can get below the anger and what’s actually causing that trigger and that defense mechanism because anger keeps you safe in a lot of ways. So if we can get through that, we can find really what the root of the problem is.

Bell: I want to say, after what Mary said, which is such a great point, a lot of times grief looks like anger. I know after my husband died, I didn’t quite have the courage to be sad yet. I was afraid if I allowed myself to be sad, I might go to bed and never get out. And for me, was that part of the iceberg that was under the water, was sadness.

But anger allowed me to clean my house out, move to town, anger allowed me to get a lot of work done. And I think for me at that time, maybe anger was a super helpful, useful emotion.

So I think Mary’s really true that a lot of times, there’s something hiding underneath the anger that’s a lot bigger and harder to acknowledge. And that was definitely true for me.

Louis: Anger also is one of those things that’s related to fight or flight. And it’s really a protective thing that we do. It’s a protective emotion. I like to think of anger and anxiety as our two main protectors. It’s like, they’re telling us there’s something wrong, and we need to like, do something now.

And if we take the time to examine where we are right now, and what’s happening right now, we can often come up with a healthy response to the anger or the anxiety.

The problem with anger is not the emotion part of it. The problem with anger is what we do with it. It’s the behavior that often follows it. And there are very good therapies, very well researched, very well researched plans, cognitive behavioral therapies, for anger that are very effective. So if you have an anger issue, or if you know of someone who has an anger issue, therapy is highly effective for anger issues.

And I would imagine that almost every therapist probably has an anger work management workbook in their office, because they’re so common. In fact, if you yourself want to find one, you can go on to the samsa.gov website and download one for yourself. Because they’re readily available, and they are so readily available because they are so highly effective.

Next week’s question: How do you help teenagers through digital addiction?