Helping to Manage Anger

Anger itself is not a disorder. It's an ordinary emotion, something every person feels at one point or another. When it shows up, you might notice your jaw tightening, your fists curling, your pulse picking up. None of that is the trouble. The trouble starts with what a person chooses to do once the feeling arrives.

For some people, anger stops behaving like a passing reaction and starts running the show. PsychGuides.com describes how it can erode a person's quality of life: friends and coworkers slowly drift away, relatives begin steering clear of the household to dodge the next outburst, and in some cases the people closest to the individual feel genuinely unsafe around them. When anger has climbed from a healthy response to negative input up to this level, it has crossed into disorder territory.

Clinicians diagnose mental health conditions using the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Several listings in it include anger among their symptoms. Intermittent Explosive Disorder is one. Impulse control disorder appears as well, and anger also figures into certain personality disorders.

Figuring out whether a true problem exists is best left to a trained professional, but there are observable markers. Loss of control is one. The consequences piling up around a person are another: run-ins with the law, slipping performance at a job or in the classroom, strained marriages and relationships. These are the kinds of fallout that signal something beyond the occasional bad temper.

If you recognize these patterns in yourself or in someone you care about, professional treatment makes a real difference. The author points to a help line at 1-866-948-9019 for anyone ready to reach out.

Starting a conversation with a person who struggles to manage anger can be frightening, and it may stir up anxiety before you even open your mouth. Sometimes it has to happen anyway. You may need to ask a friend or family member to get help. Nothing moves forward until that person is willing to admit a genuine problem is there; without that first agreement, no real attempt at a solution gets off the ground.

Teenagers complicate the picture. As PsychGuides puts it, adolescents are still growing both physically and emotionally, so their beliefs, their behavior, and the coping methods they've patched together so far are all shifting almost constantly. The explosions and tantrums of this month can fade, gradually or all at once, into a calmer and more reasoned temperament as the teen matures.

That said, serious anger problems reach well past ordinary adolescent meltdowns. A Harvard study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that close to 8% of teens may be dealing with intermittent explosive disorder. Spotting the symptoms and getting professional treatment can genuinely help.

Picking up anger management skills is hard work, and most people need treatment to actually learn them. Help is available around the clock at 1-866-948-9019. Anyone worried about a person in their life who can't keep anger in check should call sooner rather than later and talk to someone who understands the situation.

Treatment tends to draw on more than one approach, and often blends several. Cognitive therapy works on building positive strategies: learning to spot triggers and shaping better responses through how a person thinks. Relaxation-based therapy teaches various techniques for calming down. Skills-training therapy aims at redirecting the flood of negative feeling before it spills over.

As PsychGuides notes, nobody is born knowing how to help a loved one who is suffering, let alone where to track down treatment for a friend or relative who needs it. If any of this sounds like you or someone you hold dear, the advice is not to wait. Dial 1-866-948-9019 for guidance.

Source: Kim B. M.S. "How to Find Help Treating an Anger Management Problem." Retrieved January 23, 2015, from PsychGuides.com.