COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

The course comprises 9 lessons, as follows: 

Lesson 1. Nature and Scope of Anger

• Introduction.
• The autonomic nervous system.
• Anger and arousal.
• Galvanic skin resistance.
• Voice stress analyser.
• Polygraph.
• Degrees of arousal.
• Difficulties of arousal theories.
• Theories of emotion.
• James Lange theory.
• Cannon Bard theory.
• Schachter's theory.
• Lazarus's appraisal theory.
• Weiner's attribution.
• Averill's social construction theory.
• Facial feedback theory.

Lesson 2. Managing Anger with Counselling

• Causes of anger.
• Frustration.
• Breaking personal rules.
• Self defence.
• Expression of anger.
• Counselling strategies.
• Empty chair technique.
• Recognising psychological arousal.
• Thought stopping.
• Relaxation exercises.
• Progressive muscle relaxation.
• Time out.
• Assertiveness training.
• Three steps in assertiveness training.
• Five stage assertiveness training interview.
• Mental blocks to assertiveness.

Lesson 3. Managing Anger with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) 

• Cognitive behavioural therapy.
• Identifying antecedents.
• Assessment of anger.
• Beginning therapy.
• Teaching CBT.
• Inferences.
• Evaluations.
• Chaining.
• Disputing inferences and evaluations.
• Independence and blocks to change.
• Use of imagery.
• Emotional insight Exposure.
• Termination.
• Working with anger problems in CBT.
• Problems with CBT for anger management.

Lesson 4. Anger Management Techniques for Violence

• Introduction.
• Anger and violence.
• Appearance.
• Posture.
• Affect.
• Speech.
• Causes of violence.
• Cold violence.
• Hot violence.
• Reactive violence.
• Tips for dealing with a violent client.
• Strategies for violence prevention.
• Action after violence.
• Managing violence against others.
• Mental disorders and violence.

Lesson 5. Anger Management for People with Mental Health Issues

• DSM dimensions to diagnose mental illness.
• Dementia.
• Dementia and anger.
• Supporting clients with dementia.
• Grief.
• Anxiety.
• Depression.
• Stages of grief.
• Tasks of mourning .

Lesson 6. Managing Anger in Children and Adolescents

• Introduction.
• Toddlers.
• Temper tantrums.
• Older children and anger.
• Adolescence.
• Psychological changes in girls.
• Psychological changes in boys.
• Depression.
• Eating problems.
• Adults sharing anger.

Lesson 7. Anger Management for People with Special Difficulties

• People with personality disorders.
• Psychopathology.
• Borderline personality disorders and treatment.
• Psychopath and treatment.
• Road rage, symptoms and abuse.

Lesson 8. Anger Management Services

• Counselling.
• Anger management clinics.
• Courses and workshops.
• Group and individual work.
• Conflict management.
• Conflict handling techniques.
• Life coaching.
• Setting up an anger management consultancy.

Lesson 9. Deciding on a Course of Action

• PBL (Project Based Learning) Project to create and present a plan of anger management to support an individual experiencing serious anger difficulties. 

COURSE AIMS

• Discuss the nature and scope of anger including psychological and physiological manifestations.
• Explain the biological, social and psychological causes of anger and the strategies used by counsellors to deal with the underlying causes in an effort to diffuse the build up of anger in people.
• Explain how anger problems can be addressed through the application of cognitive behavioural counselling.
• Discuss anger management techniques to diffuse violent outbursts and manage violence
• Consider anger management issues for people with specific mental health issues.
• Explain the causes of anger in children and adolescents, and review a wide range of techniques for addressing those issues.
• Determine the nature and scope of anger management services in society.
• Identify ways to support clients seeking anger management services.
• Evaluate a situation where anger is becoming a problem and determine an appropriate course to follow in response to the problem.  

During the course, you will understand more about anger -  

START BY UNDERSTANDING ANGER

The most common cause of anger is being prevented from achieving a valuable goal, although it can also occur when we get something we do not want. When this happens people become frustrated. Frustration can be something relatively small such as when someone jumps the queue in front of us, or it can be a major event such as losing out on your dream job. The cause of the frustration might be another person, a situation, an organisation or indeed, yourself. Nevertheless, frustration need not develop into problematic anger and can be adaptive if we were to consider that we simply wished that the frustration had not happened. 

Another common cause of anger is when we perceive someone, or something as having broken our personal rules. They have not treated us with respect, due care, politeness, and so forth. However, it is more realistic and adaptive not to expect everyone to treat us in a particular way, but to just prefer it. A third common cause is ‘self-defence’ anger. This occurs when an individual’s self-esteem is challenged by the responses of an organisation or another individual. Their anger serves as a self-defence mechanism to protect them from a negative evaluation of themselves.   

Passive Anger

Passive anger is a way of expressing our anger by displaying different forms of behaviour, such as:

• Ignoring someone.
• Giving them a fake smile.
• Not responding to the anger of someone else.
• “Sitting on the fence” in an argument.
• Controlling how they feel by substance abuse.
• Overreacting.
• Being evasive.
• Avoiding conflict.
• Being defeatist – setting yourself or others up for failure.
• Relying on unreliable people.
• Being accident prone.
• Sexual difficulties – such as objectifying others, sexual impotence etc.
• Psychological manipulation, such as emotional blackmail.
• Secretive behaviour.
• Gossip.
• Poison pen letters/tweets/social media/trolling and so on.
• Self-blame, apologising too often.

Aggressive Anger 

Unlike passive anger, aggressive anger more often involves violence, such as:

• Bullying physically – pushing, shoving, hurting, driving someone off the road.
• Bullying emotionally – oppressing others, playing on their weaknesses.
• Destructive behaviour, such as harming animals, vandalism, destroying relationships, substance abuse.
• Showing off.
• Expressing mistrust.
• Sexual abuse/rape.
• Verbal abuse, such as foul language, vulgar jokes, discriminatory jokes.
• Ignoring people’s feelings.
• Speaking too fast/driving too fast/working too fast.
• Selfishness.
• Frightening and threatening people.
• Being unpredictable.
• Seeking revenge/refusing to forgive and forget.

What Next?

Everyone experiences anger to some extent at some time in their life. For some people and in some situations, this becomes debilitating. Studying this course will help you to understand more about anger and how to manage anger when it does occur.  A great course for anyone wanting to help people to manage their anger.

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