How To Begin Healing Anger & Improve Your Relationships

The problem with anger is it has the capacity to impact our relationships and the people we love. It is often the people closest to us that feel the burden and pain of uncontrolled anger. The good news is that Anger Management Therapy has been proven to help people manage and control their anger, improve their relationships and develop emotional stability. 

Is Anger To Blame? 

It’s easy to internalize blame when we are struggling to control our emotions. We ask ourselves what the problem is and wonder why we can’t learn to handle things differently. 

Anger is an emotion, it is a response to something we experience in our physical environment. It is a strategy that has been learned when it comes to handling conflict or even daily occurrences of life. Somewhere down the line, someone close to us showed us how to react and feel. The mind took this information and started applying it to our own personal situations without conscious awareness. That’s why we find ourselves in fits of anger that we don’t always feel we have control over. Or we say things like “I wasn’t myself, I lost control.” 

On the road to healing anger, we need to understand the role of the mind and most importantly the role of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is our programmed memory storage. It is the database that says “this is how we handle X” because this is how we’ve handled it in the past. It’s the autopilot that makes decisions and guides the choices we make in our lives. 

This decision however is changeable, but in order to develop a new response to the input you need to be aware of how you are being triggered. This is the first step in developing healthy coping mechanisms and a better relationship with yourself & anger. 

Anger & Couples 

As I said, anger can have a detrimental effect on our partnerships, especially if it results in the degradation of our partner’s self-esteem. As the resentment for past actions starts to build up the charge between partners becomes more heated. 

The first step in healing any relationship is working on the communication lines. Healthy communication means the ability to voice an opinion, feeling or thought which is received. The receiver does not have to agree on the context, but they have to be open to receiving the information. 

Most conflict arises when the information received is the person’s beliefs or reality. The same is true for anger. When the communication received is misinterpreted or triggers an individual’s self-esteem, control, and pride then anger is more likely to result. 

The first step is understanding the why behind the anger. This can largely influence the use of anger as the partners start to identify the needs of their intimate partner. Satisfying needs in terms of communication can help each partner understand why the person feels the way they do. Most of the time, miscommunication or misunderstanding is the root of an angry outburst. 

What you can do moving forward

At McDowall Integrative Psychology & Healthcare we have an anger management program designed to help you reflect and understand the pattern behind your experience. Our highly qualified and trained psychotherapists will help you dig deeper into the root of our experience and help you develop new ways of communicating. This development of new coping skills not only will help you with your anger but will also improve your relationships and other areas of your life. 

Individual counseling is also a great way to begin the process of retraining your brain. The 1:1 approach allows you to develop a trusting relationship with your psychotherapist in order to navigate and break the intricate working & patterns of the mind. We suggest the combination of individual counseling and the anger management program for the best results. 

If you are struggling with your partner to get back on track we suggest doing sessions of couples therapy in Toronto. Having a person in between can help improve communication blocks and misread signals the partners may be missing. When we are highly attached or charged towards a situation it becomes more difficult to look at it objectively. Therefore decisions and conclusions drawn aren’t always accurate. Our therapists can help both parties heal and learn how to communicate properly with their own individual communication styles.  

If you’d like to learn more about our services and how we can help you with anger head over to our website www.mcdowallhealth.com 

Did you know that 30% of people have close friends or family members who have trouble controlling their anger. 10% of people struggle with anger themselves. 25% worry about how angry they sometimes feel. 

20% have ended a relationship or friendship with someone because of their anger. 

Anger is a natural emotion the issue is often in how we control it. Learn more in our free guide available below 

You can also download our FREE Anger management guide here 

https://mcdowallhealth.com/anger-management/