Helping Clients Deal with Problem Anger: Specific Interventions

Along with anxiety and depression, clients coming to therapy for help dealing with problem anger may be one of the most common presentations. Yet, despite the fact that anger is a basic human emotion which everyone experiences on occasion, it is also a hugely complex construct. This course shows how clinicians can engage ambivalent or recalcitrant anger clients through appropriate assessment and use of motivational interviewing skills. Clients are shown how to change lifestyle factors in order to change the anger triggers to which they expose themselves. The therapies of REBT, CBT, and ACT show how clients with destructive anger can alter their thoughts and appraisals leading to anger. Being able to slow impulsive reactions to internal and external stimuli also helps reduce the urge to act maladaptively when angry, and a chapter deals with that. The course also explains why those who would be successful at altering their expression of anger must learn to employ assertive (rather than aggressive or passive) verbal and non-verbal communications.