Anger Management and Counseling in Valparaiso, 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.

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.

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.

Anger gets a bad rap. Others focus so much on the anger that they don’t understand the pain, triggers, and trauma that often exists just under the surface. If given the honor of working with you, I’ll not only give you tools to manage the anger, but help you get to the root cause of where it’s coming from in the first place and help it to heal.

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?

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.

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.