Anger Management and Counseling in Upper Montclair, NJ.

I believe children must first want to learn and perfect anger management. I have developed techniques to motivate the child or teen to develop a value system of respectful behavior toward others. Once this is achieved anger management skills can easily be obtained. Without a change in attitude and values, anger management training will fail because the child lacks the motivation to practice such techniques.

I can help you learn how to manage your anger. Often anger is covering deeper feelings such as heartbreak, helplessness and loneliness. I can teach you a three-step anger process that can help you take personal responsibility for your angry feelings and learn what feelings you may be avoiding with your anger and, how you might be using anger to try to control others. Also how to know if you are really angry at yourself for maybe not setting a healthy boundary with someone and instead project your anger onto others.

Anger is a natural reaction to a hurtful or threatening situation. When it becomes uncontrollable, constant, and extreme, unhealthy anger can wreak havoc on our lives. Some people can manage anger with self-taught techniques, reading materials, and other resources. Yet, anger management therapy is considered the most effective treatment option to address these anger issues and adopt healthy coping strategies to handle them when they arise.

The Mars & Venus Counseling Center offers help with moderate anger issues and those affected by these issues. Anger is a natural human emotion. It is a healthy response to disappointment, attack, or loss. Explosive anger, though, can create serious psychological and physical problems. By reducing and controlling anger, an individual can reduce their stress and the stress of others being affected by the anger. Our dedicated counselors will teach the struggling individual to examine their anger triggers and their skewed perceptions of situations and learn constructive ways to express their feelings. Various techniques of renowned leaders in field of anger management will be utilized throughout counseling, including but not limited to self-awareness,...(view profile to read more)

Anger isn't the problem. It's what's underneath it that we need to look at. Most people who struggle with anger aren't out of control, they're overwhelmed, and often carrying a lot more than they realize. Using CBT, EMDR, and emotional regulation techniques, I help clients identify what's actually triggering their reactions, shift the thought patterns fueling them, and develop healthier ways to express what they're feeling. We'll also look at how anger is showing up in your relationships, because that's usually where it does the most damage. The goal isn't to stop feeling angry. It's to stop letting it run the show.

Children and adolescents don’t usually say, “I’m having trouble with my anger right now and I need help coping”. They show us they’re experiencing overwhelming feelings with their actions and behaviors. Whether your child or teen is experiencing frequent tantrums or meltdowns or just difficulty regulating their emotions, I can help. I have extensive experience working with children and adolescents in both outpatient and school settings. Using play therapy, creative modalities, and cognitive behavioral therapy, I can help children and teens to communicate, make sense of their feelings, and begin to gain control over them so that they can overcome what’s standing in their way of happiness.

My main approach is to help my client identify situations (contexts), people, behaviors (his and others) that seem to usher in varying degrees of anger. My main message is that anger is an appropriate feeling to loss and frustration, but it is his learning to appropriately express anger in an adaptive manner that leads to emotional growth and the mollification of the anger itself.

One of the main tools I use with people to help them control anger, is mindfulness. Anger is a normal emotion; we all know what it feels like. No one can help how they feel, but they can certainly control what they do with these feelings. Mindfulness is a way to help people understand what is happening for them in the moment. Teaching people to stop and pause, as they become more aware of what is happening for them, is a way to help them make different choices, rather than jumping into the same patterns which have not been useful in their lives. There are other behavioral skills clients can use as well, but it all starts with slowing the process down and awareness of what is happening.