Those of us who come to therapy with “anger problems” are often seeking help because we lose control of our tempers and then act violently or say hurtful things that we later regret. This could be damaging relationships with people we love, or could be holding us back in other contexts, such as our work life.

Understandably, we might try to get rid of our anger. Unfortunately this rarely works well, because usually the anger itself isn’t really the problem, and because usually the anger that we’re trying to get rid of just keeps coming up again and again.

Having discovered that trying to get rid of our anger doesn’t work, we might instead try anger management skills, to gain greater control over our behaviour. Whilst this can sometimes be sufficient, and might even save important relationships from ending, it’s not necessarily a lasting solution for everyone. Continually trying to manage our emotions can be exhausting, and we won’t always succeed at it — because none of us are perfect.

How Counselling or Psychotherapy Helps with Anger

There are better options. With the help of a psychotherapist or counsellor, we can learn a lot about the reactions and triggers we keep having. We can learn why they make perfect sense in the context of our whole selves — this includes past situations we’ve found ourselves in, and how we think about ourselves and other people. This is often difficult for us to see clearly without an outside perspective from a therapist, because we might have very different thoughts and feelings when we’re triggered, compared to when we’re calm and self-reflective, and because we all have blind spots. Some of us discover that we have excessive shame, guilt, or anxiety attached to emotions like anger, or to assertiveness, or to getting our needs met.

At the end of a successful therapy that addresses some of these areas, we will probably find that we can be more relaxed and comfortable with ourselves and others — knowing that we can be appropriately angry and self-assertive when we really need to be, and can also be tender and trusting when that’s called for too. Often the “problem” of anger will have become transformed, so that we can draw on the power of these emotions in a constructive way to overcome obstacles and to be clear and decisive.