Anger Management and Counseling in Tysons Corner, VA.

Anger is a natural emotional response and it emerges as a combination of thoughts, statements, physical reactions, and overall physical arousal. One goal of therapy is to use anger as a helpful and constructive tool in recognizing and establishing boundaries or advocating for your needs. Another goal is to reduce agitation, aggression, argumentativeness, and tension, by learning and practicing skills that help you improve interactions with others and develop healthy ways to communicate your emotions.

I help clients develop strategies and techniques for managing intense anger or aggressive episodes. These techniques involve learning ways to “cool off” and validate underlying feelings so that they may be communicated more effectively. Generally speaking, difficulty with anger is typically the result of a person having difficulty regulating their emotions.Emotional Regulation is achieving a balanced emotional life where you are neither numbed out from your emotional experiences nor emotionally overwhelmed by them. Achieving emotional balance is done through both talk therapy as well as learning specific concrete strategies for managing your emotional experiences.

A lot of people struggle with feelings of anger and resentment. Instead of calling it "anger management," I prefer to talk about "anger expression." I am developing a program to help people develop healthy strategies for expressing anger in a constructive and respectful manner. You will learn the root causes of your anger, and gain practical tools to express it in ways that promote understanding and resolution. You will enhance your communication skills, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution abilities.

For you to understand where your anger comes from and what triggers it is most important. I do not believe in managing anger. One needs to learn its source and have coaching in how to change the mind-set behind it. Sometimes anger is tied to PTSD and abuse. These must be uncovered with help, then redirected with coaching. Others can't manage your life, you must be taught how to cope through the mine fields of life. I have found that most have been told they will have to live with "pain" and we will manage it for you. I have not found that to be the real case. I see real change in people. We are not to be trapped in anger. So I know there is real hope.

Anger management counseling can help to identify stressors and learn the steps to stay calm in the face of anger. The goal is to handle tense situations in more constructive and positive ways by reducing the emotional and physical arousal that anger can cause. It will provide the tools to take back your life and resolve the triggers that result in unplanned anger reactions.

While anger has a proper place in our lives, it is easy to get stuck in a cycle of escalating anger. This often happens because of things going on inside of us that we don't know how to work through on our own (and so we compensate, or cope, by getting angry). The good news is that regardless of what is fueling our anger, we are capable of building the necessary emotional muscles to work through those underlying issues, thus enabling us to control our anger healthily (instead of it controlling us). If you are struggling with anger I would be honored to help you make sense of, and work through, what is underneath it so that you can move towards more wholeness and peace in your life.

We treat anger with compassion, as it is our experience that anger is usually a symptom of an underlying issue or feeling that is harder to feel or cope with in life. Issues with anger can also present themselves as a part of someone versus all of them. We treat all mental health issues from a trauma-informed, strengths-based, systems model of care.