For both women and men, anger is a normal, natural part of your emotional equipment. Thus the goal is not to eliminate anger, but rather to learn how to exercise better control over the degree of anger and how it is expressed:
1. How to increase your awareness of how angry you are on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being highest.
2. How to keep yourself in the range of 7 or below on the anger scale.
3. How to take targeted timeouts when, despite your best efforts, you wind up in the 8 to 10 range on the anger scale.
4. How to make a commitment never to touch another person in anger, never to insult or use abusive or threatening language.
5. How to make reasonable complaints about another person's mistakes or behavior and avoid criticizing the person or making them feel bad about themselves.
6. How to avoid restraining or blocking a person's entrance or exit from a room or motor vehicle when you are feeling anxious or angry.
7. How to identify and begin to eliminate the inflammatory, irrational and catastrophic thoughts that lead to excessive anger and rage.
8. How to prevent yourself from destroying property or throwing things, especially in the presence of anyone else while you are feeling anger or panic.
9. How to respect another person's personal space (at least 4 feet) during a angry exchange.
10.How to identify recurrent situations that commonly provoke you, so you can begin to plan effective ways to respond and avoid impulsive, angry reactive responses.
11.How to set healthy boundaries for addressing conflictual topics. Thus, you agree not to discuss heated topics late at night, during work hours, for excessive lengths of time or in front of one's children.
12.How to express anger in healthy, nondestructive ways.
13.How to effectively address unresolved conflict that often triggers anger.
14.How to adopt specific guidelines for handling conflict and anger in a motor vehicle.
15.How to make amends for any harm you may have caused through excessive anger and/or destructive expression of anger.
16.How to identify and correct insulting, contemptuous, ridiculing, belittling, humiliating, degrading and sarcastic comments and gestures that contribute to resentment and anger.
17.How to express disappointment, anxiety and insecurity in a moderate, timely fashion and avoid accumulating unspoken anger and resentment that might result in an excessive emotional outburst.
FOR COURT ORDERED ANGER MANAGEMENT:
Official verification of attendance letters provided.
LENGTH OF ANGER TREATMENT
Individuals and couples can expect treatment to range from 10 to 75 sessions depending on:
1. The degree of motivation and willingness to implement what is learned in sessions.
2. The length of time that difficulties with anger have existed from recently to lifelong.
3. The range of situations and people involved that provoke the anger from one situation with one person to many or most situations with many people.
