Anger Management and Counseling in Destin, FL.

Anger is a natural response we feel. Anger is not necessarily a bad thing. What we do with the anger can be another story. Acknowledging your anger and asking for help is a brave and responsible step to the right direction. Anger management therapy helps you gain insight into what triggers your anger as well as identifying the anger responses. You will also learn strategies to manage or diffuse it and changing thoughts and attitudes related to anger. Learning new skills and using certain exercises, you can develop the tools that help manage the anger in more healthy and productive ways.

We help our clients to have greater understanding of themselves and their interactions with others to improve the quality of their relationships. We utilize mindfulness, self-exploration, and self-soothing techniques to help improve clients' emotional regulation skills. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, EMDR or ART, Trauma-Focused CBT, and Existential Therapy are especially helpful for healing trauma and improving interpersonal interactions with others.

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.

In anger management, we teach problem solving skills that enable a person to control their anger when in conflict. Individuals learn awareness of their emotional and physical states when they are feeling angry, how to enhance conflict resolution skills, and learn beneficial relaxation techniques. Anger has a bad reputation. Learn from your anger. What is your anger telling you?

Anger issues can be so difficult to manage and come out of nowhere. When we work together, we will gently learn the core of the distress that you are experiencing. As we learn your life journey, we may find that some of the distress is rooted in early childhood trauma and attachment wounding. We will invite forth all parts of yourself and learn about the challenging messages you may have grown up with that manifested into the distress you feel today. Our anger can be a messenger, an alarm telling you that it is time to heal experiences from earlier in life. In our work together, we'll use EMDR, Emotion Focused Therapy and Expressive Arts to help you become your most authentic self.

Anger is a completely normal, human emotion and usually healthy. However when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it will lead to problems in your personal relationships, at work and impact the overall quality of your life. As your therapist I’ll help you to understand and control the anger through different strategies. Cognitive restructuring or simply stated the way you think, the choice of words, logic, problem solving and better communication. Are there forms of relaxation or humor that can help gain a more balanced perspective that might help? These are all things we can discuss.

Grey Matters International and the work of Kevin J. Fleming, Ph.D approaches issues of anger management in a very humane yet fresh perspective. You see, anger is a normal emotion but it is the valence (intensity) as well as the coupling choice of what one does with this that is the problem. Telling someone to "not" do it or modifying behavior with a trite psychological plan that only breeds a compliant response is not the way to change anger. Brainwave optimization is a new cutting edge technology that allows one to rewire circuitry responsible for reactivity driving the anger. Contact Grey Matters International, Inc now at kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161.

In my experience as an EMDR therapist, I pay close attention to the links between past and present. I’ve seen time and time again how unhealed emotional wounds resurface and come out sideways. While anger management can provide helpful strategies, they don’t get to the heart of the issue. Often, anger is what we see on the surface, but the real problem is what’s underneath the anger. Negative beliefs like “I’m helpless,” “I’m out of control,” and “I’m a failure,” start to bubble up, and anger comes to the rescue. It can get us in trouble, but at least it gets the blood pumping. With research-proven EMDR therapy, I help men heal anger at its source so it doesn’t have to be managed.