Anger Management and Counseling in Osprey, FL.

We all know what anger is, and we've all felt it; whether it's felt as a temporary annoyance or as an outright rage. Anger is a completely normal & usually healthy human emotion. It's a natural, adaptive response that incites powerful feelings & behaviors. Therefore, a certain amount of anger is necessary to our survival. But here's the catch: When anger gets out of control and becomes aggressive and/or destructive, it can lead to problems at work, in relationships, and even with your health. My goal is to help you gain control over your anger BEFORE it controls you. With professional help, you CAN learn to express your anger in assertive, healthy, & non-aggressive ways.

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.

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.

Our body and brain are connected in such a way that sometimes we react to a situation before we even realize what is happening. Being able to control your actions is such an important part of living. It affects our relationships, our work, our home life, even our self-care time. If you have been struggling with handling anger appropriately, I will help you understand the mind-body connection and what you can do to stop and think before automatically responding to a situation.

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.

I often coach men on how to better regulate their emotions, including anger. I can teach you strategies from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, provide relationship insights from the Gottman Method, and help you practice calming strategies to take control back. You might have every right to be angry. But if it’s making things worse, it’s time for a change. At Lion Counseling, our mission is to help you escape the cages that hold you back and become the lion God created you to be.

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.

Anger is a common emotion- one that is neither good nor bad and one that can have positive or negative consequences. Anger management therapy helps clients recognize their anger and develop skills and strategies for effectively managing their anger. I will help you identify triggers and underlying issues, identify your body’s response and/or reaction (physical symptoms) and provide education on the difference between reaction and response, help identify effective ways to express feelings, and greater self-awareness.