Anger Management and Counseling in San Diego, CA.

Anger is a normal human emotion. The manner in which individuals exhibit their emotions, particularly anger can be constructive or destructive. If individuals are able to constructively channel their anger, the experience and management of anger leads to neutral or positive outcomes. However, if an individual manifests their anger in a unhealthy manner, it can negatively affect any facet of their lives from their personal relationships to their professional lives. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is key to learning to effectively manage anger. With this approach, clients learn to identify and substitute unhealthy trigger thoughts with healthy thoughts and to utilize anger-reducing strategies.

Clients from various backgrounds take many different approaches to think about, feel and express anger. However, when anger negatively impacts one’s relationships, it is important to explore what is contributing to an unhealthy experience of anger. In my collaboration with clients, we venture out to explore the conscious and unconscious factors that may need to be brought to light, in the context of perhaps other biopsychosocial (biological, psychological or social) factors that may need attention. Clients who learn to understand, better identify and manage their impulses, cultivate insight and explore opportunities to practice developing skills to have an improved sense of self-mastery.

If you have been confronted by others that you have a "problem with anger", it certainly is worth taking a look. What most people don't know, is that those struggling with anger management are most often merely reacting to stress, anxiety, shame, fear, or depression. In men, depression is often experienced more as irritability than as sadness. While you may not know how to make the change others are asking for, be assured that with the right help, you certainly can make very meaningful change, and enjoy the result. Don't for a moment think that controlling your anger means you don't get to be heard. You will enjoy the experience of really being heard and respected.

I specialize in Anger Management. Controlling anger can be a challenge. Anger is a protective response that indicates some kind of violation has occurred. It is a secondary emotion, meaning that there is always a more vulnerable feeling underneath such as hurt or sadness. It is helpful to learn how to express the primary emotion underneath the anger. It is also helpful to learn strategies to be able to take a break and walk away before things get out of control. There are usually triggers that get activated in the present but are fueled from the past. I also use techniques to help release the anger from the original event so that you can respond more calmly in the present.

Rightful anger has an important place in life where and when it must be expressed. However, there are many forms of anger that are internally destructive and can become externally dangerous to ourselves and others. Some forms of anger come from long term contentious relationships and occurrences which can never go away or decrease in pain and agitation. Some forms of anger are explosive on the moment and other anger comes as a gradual escalating irritation that then reaches its limits. Counseling serves to teach skills of anger management and can defuse and even prevent out of control anger from erupting. Counseling is known to be very effective for addressing and safely controlling anger.

Anger can control our lives and destroy relationships. Often anger is an emotional response to unmet needs in our lives, sometimes beginning from when we were children. I work with my clients to help them recognize their unmet needs, the source of their anger, and to identify the different kinds of anger they may be experiencing. At the same time, we work to together in a safe and non-judgmental environment to learn how to manage anger, focusing on one's own responsibility and building a healthy sense of self.

Anger management counseling can help to identify stressors and learn the steps to stay calm in the face of anger. The goal is to handle tense situations in more constructive and positive ways by reducing the emotional and physical arousal that anger can cause. It will provide the tools to take back your life and resolve the triggers that result in unplanned anger reactions.

Often anger is a form of protest of some injustice that has been done. The adaptive action tendency when one is flooded with anger is to help one assert themselves with an advocacy of self in healthy ways. Managing your anger vs. having your anger manage you is a way to be in healthy control of yourself which will benefit your close relationships with others and within yourself.

Anger when used appropriately can be a useful tool to give us the aggressive energy we need to take action when we are feeling helpless or victimized. Unfortunately, it is often misused and becomes abusive, creating whole new problems for relationships and careers. I work with clients to first learn to control their emotional expressions, define the underlying feelings creating the hostility, and learn new skills to better utilize their feelings to resolve conflict in more adult ways.

I help people struggling with anger management by working with them to develop awareness of their anger experience in their body and mind and how it is impacting their body. I help you learn and practice strategies for regulating your body and mind so you do not lose control of the anger. I help you to learn healthy communication of anger, and the development of conflict resolution skills. I support you in exploring issues of transference from past relationships and experiences that may be contributing to your strong feelings of anger in present circumstances and relationships. We create safety, increase positive expression of anger, and reduce or eliminate sources of anger when possible!

During a crisis when everyone is feeling stress, we can feel pushed more into a corner when it comes to getting our needs met and getting along with loved ones, partners, friends and family. Everyone can get angry or irritable, and therapy can help develop easy to use skills for communicating our needs in focused ways BEFORE we lose our tempers. Sometimes it's best to "strike when the iron is cold."

Grey Matters International and the work of Kevin J. Fleming, Ph.D approaches issues of anger management in a very humane yet fresh perspective. You see, anger is a normal emotion but it is the valence (intensity) as well as the coupling choice of what one does with this that is the problem. Telling someone to "not" do it or modifying behavior with a trite psychological plan that only breeds a compliant response is not the way to change anger. Brainwave optimization is a new cutting edge technology that allows one to rewire circuitry responsible for reactivity driving the anger. Contact Grey Matters International, Inc now at kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161.

Anger is a basic human emotion and is fundamental part of our human experience. It is crucial for giving us important information about when boundaries have been crossed or when expectations have not been met. However, when the anger alone takes control of how we react to a variety of triggering situations, we can find ourselves suffering even more, both mentally and physically. Thankfully, as a licensed psychologist, I can help clients cope with anger through proven methods that help clients better understand their anger, re-establish their boundaries, express their disappointments, and move forward in a more balanced, healthy, and productive way.