Anger Management and Counselling in Lions Bay, BC.

Contrary to popular belief, anger is a normal and healthy emotion. The challenge is how anger is expressed. Often we feel angry for no apparent reason or our anger is more than the situation warrants - or we do things in anger that are hurtful to ourselves or others. These are things that need to be looked at in counselling. What are the triggers? What other emotions are beneath the anger? How can we control our anger? What are healthy ways of expressing anger? in counselling you will be given the tools to understand and manage these feelings.

Are you a gay man that struggles with anger at yourself or other people? Perhaps you’re even searching for help after a blow up that’s left you feeling bad about your reactions. Anger often shows up in some unique ways for gay men, so the traditional approaches to anger management don’t always work. I help gay men transform their relationship with anger so that they can understand their anger better, use anger effectively, and feel more in control of their responses.

Anger is a normal emotion that is necessary to our survival. However, if anger is controlling you, rather than you controlling it, your anger is likely impacting your relationships and functioning in important parts of your life. Anger management counselling can help you develop techniques for changing the way you think and behave in response to events that trigger you to respond inappropriately. Self-soothing strategies, cognitive-behavioural therapy, and family systems therapy are some interventions that I use to help people manage anger more effectively.

What Clients are saying: "You were able to put my mind at ease even though I was very nervous about the first session. I didnt feel judged and was able to learn how to express my feelings better so that I wouldnt get mad as easy. I didnt realize that I had so many expectations on myself and was setting myself to get mad at everyone else. Thanks for teaching me about boundaries and how to love myself and other people with limits. Im not as stressed out and dont get mad like I used to."

Do you find yourself yelling at your partner, losing your temper at your children, storming out of the office in a fury of frustration and anger? Anger is a normal, healthy emotion that sometimes gets away on a person. Feeling disappointed in yourself when you 'lose your cool' is information that there may be better ways to handle a situation. Together we will work to help you develop the skills to communicate effectively, maintain your authenticity and foster strong, positive relationships.

I use cognitive therapy to help people overcome their anger issues. Thoughts create feelings which create behavior. If a person feels angry while driving in the car and cannot control his temper vis a vis the driver he is angry at, identifying the irrational thought at the root of it is often helpful. Usually I find the clients having such thoughts as, "He cut me off on purpose" or "Who does he think he is driving like that?" These types of thoughts can and do create anger. But if the client changes his thoughts for more rational ones such as, "Wow he must really be in a rush to be driving that way, perhaps there is an emergency", the client finds that he is less angry and less reactive!

Real Solutions to Real Challenges. Common Sense Techniques. Anger can be helpful or it can be destructive. Anger unchecked and not understood can consume a persons attention and energy and keep them stuck. Anger can be hepful in that it is telling us that something is wrong. We may feel unfairly treated, overpowered, and hurt. As a result individuals may become defensive, withdrwan/silent, or even aggresive if they sense injustice and then go the attack. Quite often if the intensity of the anger response seems out of proportion to the current incident then this is most likely due to a cumulative history that comes rushing in to the present and hence the over reaction.

We work with individuals who want to work on and take accountability for their anger and violence. We offer a dignity informed approach to understand and offer insight and support in issues of anger and violence. Our hope is to delve into the context and history of the individual and determine what is happening in the anger and violence and help with accountability and different choices around the anger and violence.

When anger gets the best of us, we can say and/or do things that we later wish we could change or take back. Anger is an instinctive universal emotion, one in which we all have, but not all expressions of anger have to be hurt. In fact, anger works as a great informant and can motivate us to take action to improve our own lives and the lives of people that we care about.

Anger is a useful emotion. The feeling of anger makes sense in the perspective of the one who is angry. Anger is an appropriate response to injustice or a reaction to being misjudged. Once we are able to determine the interpretation the client has made of the anger-inducing experience, we determine a concrete response to the triggering experience. Anger does not have to be so loud when its trigger is understood from the client's perspective and the energy redirected to a more authentic response.

Anger is an emotion that can make you feel out of control or alienate you from others if it is unleashed in volatile ways. Understanding how anger works and learning some anger management skills can help you take a stand and make your point but not at the expense of losing relationships. My approach includes first gaining a clear understanding as to how anger is negatively affecting your life and then providing you both knowledge and skills to positively address your situation.

Anger can often feel so overwhelming that it causes you to do things you later regret. Not knowing what came over you, there are many unanswered questions: why do I keep doing this? why can't I stop myself? Sometimes, alcohol, substances, or other addictive behaviours lead to this anger, making it more difficult to control. As an addiction counsellor, I help clients overcome addictions leading to anger issues so they can regain a sense of control, rebuild relationships, and gain clarity about how to move forward. If you are unsure where to start, send me a message and I can help. If I'm not the right fit, I can connect you to the right support so you can start gaining back control, today.

I work closely with my clients to become aware of how anger affects them and help identify what their triggers are. We will work together at finding better coping strategies to help them manage their behaviour before it escalates, as well as work through several mindful relaxation techniques to help them achieve inner peace and a greater sense of calm.

Anger is often an expression of unhealed loss and pain. I will guide you to finding healthy ways of expressing anger and explore with you the underlying issues which may be fuelling the anger. Often we respond in the way we observed others express anger and other emotions. The important thing to know is that there are other options to use in expressing anger and we will find those ways together.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) specifically focuses on providing clients with skills in four specific areas: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotional Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. It is widely used to successfully treat many issues including anger management issues, domestic violence, PTSD, Substance Abuse, and Depression. We work with the individual to teach them how to manage and alter intense emotions, increase their ability to tolerate negative emotions, and communicate effectively in a non-emotional manner

I work with voluntary clients who want to change how they express their anger. Very few of us were lucky enough to see anger modelled in healthy ways in the families we grew up in. I will support you to slow down and pay attention to what leads you to feeling frustrated and angry. You'll discover your "anger styles", what types of interactions and situations tend to set you off, and the internal and external cues it’s important for you to notice so that you can get a handle on this problem. The goal is for you to gain mastery over your anger, learn how to express it in skillful and fair ways, and see your relationships and self-esteem improve.

Anger can be misunderstood and therefore experienced as one of the scariest emotions to work with or experience. In our work together we will learn what is underneath your anger, and the function of these emotions in order to support you in learning to unlock more supportive ways of experiencing your emotions and heal from past hurts and therefore heal your relationships.

Anger management equips individuals with the tools and insights necessary to understand and regulate their anger effectively. A range of techniques are utilized, including cognitive restructuring, relaxation exercises, and assertiveness training, to help clients identify triggers, manage physiological responses, and express emotions constructively. By fostering self-awareness, empathy, and problem-solving skills, counseling empowers individuals to break destructive patterns of behavior, cultivate healthier relationships, and navigate conflicts with greater resilience and composure.

Personally, I struggle with the term "anger management". Anger is an important emotion that needs to be viewed through a lens of acceptance not barred to a back room. Until a person understands the myriad of emotions that lie under the surface of 'anger', they are often controlled by these emotions, One of the purposes of anger is to alert the emotional person to the fact that something is wrong (much like pain signals the body when something is wrong). People do need to "control" their behaviour - especially when feelings are strong. i believe that people can learn to manage their life better once they understand what is affecting them AND what they want to accomplish by their action.

While anger is a natural human response to frustration or upset it needs to be managed appropriately. In counselling, I help clients of all ages identify and understand their anger "triggers." We then process together appropriate responses to such triggers and practice such reactions. Over time, the goal is for clients to use the tools and strategies learned in counselling and apply them in their everyday lives at home with family, at school with peers and in the work place with colleagues. I look forward to working with you to make positive life changes.

Anger can take control of your life, and your reactions to anger can jeopardise your personal and professional life. I work with males and females clients that are mandated by the court to take Anger Management Therapy, The treatment plan allows you to identify the triggers, recognise what behavioural patterns needs altering and how to transform unhealthy anger and healthy anger.

Anger has costs psychologically, physiologically and in personal relationships. There are times when no amount of awareness or will, can calm ones Central Nervous System (CNS). When you find yourself reactive to a trigger, and the limbic system of your brain is fired up making anger seem to come out of nowhere, it is difficult to use reason. By utilizing tools of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Neurofeedback(NFB) or EMDR, I can assist your body and brain to learn to calm the CNS, allowing you to think first, act second.

I focus on what the underlying cause of your anger is. I can help you identify the emotions that you may not have expressed. You can choose how to express your anger and learn how to more effectively communicate your feelings. Understanding what your triggers are helps you manage the anger so that you can feel more in control and more confident about yourself.

I help clients to distinguish their racket (unauthentic, manipulative) feelings from their genuine feelings of anger. I teach them the meaning/role of anger as well as other three basic feelings: sadness, fear and happiness. Together we explore if there is another feeling covered by the feeling of anger and in the case of authentic anger, what did the client need at the time. The clients also learn a number of coping strategies.

Anger can become emotionally addictive and yet this may not be obvious to a client. They may have many reasons for being angry and may feel very justified in their anger. Anger can jeopardize meaningful relationships. I help clients get to the core of their anger and give them new tools and methods to handle these explosive feelings. I will also help my client uncover the underlying beliefs and sources of their anger. There is no need for them to continue to suffer.