Anger Management Therapy Toronto
Anger Management
Anger is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences to varying degrees. People become angry when they perceive an injustice, or that they’ve been wronged in some way. It can range in intensity from low-level annoyance to high-level fury, and can lead to changes in physiology, such as headaches, high blood pressure, difficulty focusing, and increase in body temperature.
When someone is often angry, there may be underlying mental health issues that influence how they feel, express, and manage their anger. When someone reacts with intense anger, it may be due to triggers related to learned behaviours from childhood, genetic predispositions, environmental factors, or difficulties with problem-solving and emotion regulation.
Symptoms of Anger Problems in Adults
At present, there are no clinical criteria to diagnose problematic anger, but some patterns of behaviour include:
- Frequent difficulties managing and expressing emotions
- Relationship problems due to behaviours stemming from anger
- Substance misuse and/or addiction
- Unhelpful coping with anger e.g., self-harm, social withdrawal
- Difficulties with performing at work, school etc
- Being short-tempered
- Violent, antisocial, or aggressive behavior
- Legal problems due to problematic anger
Treatment
Psychotherapy for anger management issues can help individuals understand the root of the anger, learn new coping strategies to deal with the anger, and strengthen their communication skills to improve their relationships.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is commonly used to improve anger problems. CBT anger management interventions are designed to improve the emotional and physiological features of anger, and modify the cognitive behavioural processes that drive problematic anger, and/or relationship problems. Including family members in therapy, can also be beneficial as the family can work on improving communication, identifying triggering situations, and setting realistic goals and boundaries.
However, at Greystones Health we combine the tools of Naturopathic Medicine to truly take on a Mind-Body approach. As Psychotherapy explores the individual’s thoughts, emotions and past events, we add in the Naturopathic tools to look for inflammation, food intolerances, gut-brain concerns, blood sugar problems that don’t show up on standard blood work, hormone balance (testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone need to have a healthy balance for both females and males), and consider stress hormones like cortisol levels. There are natural products to help balance serotonin and Gaba to help keep the nervous system calm and better able to engage in the psychotherapy process. This combination of Psychotherapy along with Naturopathic support has been very powerful and has been very successful.
As the individuals, biochemistry improves and their emotional coping skills develop, we additionally improve energy and health behaviours like diet and exercise that the person had often found too challenging to start or maintain.
