Anger Management and Counseling in Palmdale, CA.

Is your anger getting the best of you? Perhaps its ruining your relationship or compromising your ability to move up in your career. Maybe its just a feeling--you're always tense, stressed, worked up, you feel "on edge." Whatever your experience is, there is health to be had and hope to be found. Something in you knows there's got to be another way to live. Together, we'll explore what your anger is really about and develop strategies to get you feeling more healthy and whole so you can have the relationship with others you want to, the internal peace that people talk about, and the ability to move well through stressful situations.

Being angry is not bad in itself. It is when we use the energy that anger gives us to hurt others and ourselves that cause problems. Anger is a "red flag" that tells us that something is not right in our lives. If you are experiencing this type of anger, you owe it to yourself and the others you love to find out what you can do to control and even let go of destructive feelings and behaviors and have a much more productive, happier life.

Anger is one of our fundamental emotions, part of the basic machinery of our mind and personality. In some ways it is a useful tool that helps to motivate and energize us in seeking fairness and justice in the world around us. But this powerful hold-over from our primal history can also be enormously destructive if we lose control of it. If your anger is slipping out of your control and you find yourself saying or doing things that damage your reputation or your relationships, hurt those around you, or otherwise consistently put you on the outside of society's expectations for behavior, you need help to find tools or strategies to change this and I would be happy to help.

Anger can be a difficult beast to manage that can fracture or relationships and create guilt and shame, but it is possible to treat it. With the aid of tools like EMDR CBT and guided visualizations I can help you overcome this issue and heal from the issues that drive it. Additionally, I can provide tools, coping skills, and other resources to help you manage this particular issue.

Everybody gets angry. Anger is a human emotion which can serve both positive and negative ends which, in itself, is neutral. Frustration, fear, feeling threatened or treated unfairly can trigger an angry outburst in any animal. Anger is a normal human emotion. It can be an appropriate response to injustice, unfairness or discrimination. However, what we need to achieve is a way of expressing anger that is reasonable, measured and proportionate. Cognitive behavioral therapy provides one of many possible answers to managing anger. Feelings are often created by our thoughts and examining our thought processes to see if they are reasonable and rational can help us with emotional regulation.

As a culture, we do not do well with healthy expressions of anger. Often we are raised to suppress it and then we have limited practice at dealing with big emotion. There is a spectrum of healthy aggression- to keep us safe and to maintain boundaries- and rage- our body's strategy for safety. Anger management is about applying the right "dosing" to maintain boundaries yet not fracture relationships or suffer other losses. I am able to help you learn to regulate your body to be able to apply the appropriate "dose" to be effective and not destructive.

A technique I use with Anger Management is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), which looks at our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Anger is a behavior that is an expression of our thoughts and feelings. I will work with you to help unlock the thoughts and feelings causing the anger. We can often correct negative thoughts that can help alter our feelings and behaviors. We can also look into other techniques to develop other coping mechanisms for anger. We resort to anger because that is what we were taught when we were younger. When you have other tools to express yourself and different thoughts, your anger isn't as necessary as often. You are still you. Just a calmer you.

Consider anger a socially acceptable mask that we wear to protect ourselves from more vulnerable feelings. It’s easier to show anger than hurt feelings. The way I work with anger is to explore what’s fueling the anger, what’s underneath it. Once the underlying feelings are identified and acknowledged, the anger becomes less intense and more manageable. I also use a somatic approach to anger, using physiological cues to recognize it before it grows out of control.

I believe anger is a secondary emotion, covering other feelings such as grief, depression, anxiety, and/or hurt. Often times anger management is a signal for a need for trauma work, which can include explore prior experiences that felt stuck or emotionally taxing. Often times when others are angry, it's the only way they can feel heard-- having anger is not the problem, it's, what we do with the anger is what needs to be explored as appropriate or not.

Anger is not only something to "manage." The feelings in anger need to be recognized, understood, and responding to in a way that make sense. You're not bad because you are angry, you treat yourself and others badly when your trapped in intense feelings. I help people come out of the shame of being labeled in negative ways because they struggle with anger. Anger becomes less of a struggle when you're not alone in it.

Anger is a normal feeling but sometimes it can be so extreme or out of our control that it starts to affect our relationships and our own sense of self. There are ways to manage anger by learning coping skills, such as relaxation techniques, changing the way we perceive the situation, and logging our thoughts/feelings/actions. Sometimes we may go back to your past to see the source of your anger or we may just stick to how to manage it here and now. By working together as a team and by you trusting the process, we can help you manage your anger thus improving relationships and your life.

My approach to addressing anger management is practical, empathic and non judgmental. I aim to help clients look at what is underneath the anger, identify patterns and triggers to the big emotions and to develop adaptive ways in which to better communicate and cope. Together we work toward greater emotional awareness, improved self control, and more meaningful interpersonal relationships.

Frustration can often lead to aggression. Cognitive-behavior therapy, as practiced by Dr. Levine, is a valuable tool in reducing the impact of frustration and reducing the resulting degree of anger. He will work with you to help you alter your reaction to frustration and develop alternative mechanisms to react to these events. Once your anger response is reduced your relationships with your family and friends are also likely to change in a much more positive direction.