Anger Management and Counseling in Santa Clarita, CA.

Feeling out of control can be extremely distressing, destructive, and can have a lasting impact on your relationships with others. Learning how to manage your emotions and effectively deal with anger is an important goal, and one that can be accomplished through active participation in therapy. The goals is for our clients to leave therapy with the skills and confidence that they can manage the challenges that come with everyday life. Learning such skills will directly help with increasing the quality of your relationships and decrease the negative impact of your anger in areas such as work, school, and family difficulties. It can also potentially help avoid any negative legal outcomes.

Anger can often feel so overwhelming that it causes you to do things you later regret. Not knowing what came over you, there are many unanswered questions: why do I keep doing this? why can't I stop myself? Sometimes, alcohol, substances, or other addictive behaviours lead to this anger, making it more difficult to control. As an addiction counsellor, I help clients overcome addictions leading to anger issues so they can regain a sense of control, rebuild relationships, and gain clarity about how to move forward. If you are unsure where to start, send me a message and I can help. If I'm not the right fit, I can connect you to the right support so you can start gaining back control, today.

As a culture, we do not do well with healthy expressions of anger. Often we are raised to suppress it and then we have limited practice at dealing with big emotion. There is a spectrum of healthy aggression- to keep us safe and to maintain boundaries- and rage- our body's strategy for safety. Anger management is about applying the right "dosing" to maintain boundaries yet not fracture relationships or suffer other losses. I am able to help you learn to regulate your body to be able to apply the appropriate "dose" to be effective and not destructive.

Consider anger a socially acceptable mask that we wear to protect ourselves from more vulnerable feelings. It’s easier to show anger than hurt feelings. The way I work with anger is to explore what’s fueling the anger, what’s underneath it. Once the underlying feelings are identified and acknowledged, the anger becomes less intense and more manageable. I also use a somatic approach to anger, using physiological cues to recognize it before it grows out of control.

I help people struggling with anger in Los Angeles CA by helping them develop awareness of their anger experience within their body and mind and how it is impacting their body. I help you learn strategies for regulating your body and mind so you do not lose control of the anger. I help you 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. I create safety, increase positive expression of anger, and reduce or eliminate sources of anger when possible!

We all get angry sometimes. The issue is what you do with your anger. If you act it out in ways that hurt yourself or other people, that’s where the problems lie. You may express you anger physically by hitting people, hurting yourself, or breaking things. You may also express your anger by saying things that get you in trouble or damage your relationships. Sometimes it’s what you say, and sometimes it’s how you say it. Together, we can sort it out. We’ll see what triggers the anger and how you express it. We’ll work to undo the triggers and find other ways of dealing with the anger when it arises.

I have extensive experience treating anger management issues. I have conducted anger management groups that teach and reinforce skills for managing anger. My approach to the treatment of anger issues consists of: assisting client's in understanding the Nonproductive Anger Cycle that perpetuates destructive behavior, educating about the different types of anger, teaching anger management skills, and helping clients explore pain and fear that perpetuates their ineffective expression of anger. Anger management treatment includes helping clients learn to accept their emotions and learn how to tolerate and express their emotions more effectively.