Anger Management

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Albert Ellis

From time to time we get angry. We can be offended by people’s words, behaviour or attitude and feel anger and resentment. The way we react to the feeling of anger, how we control our emotions and our communications skills are essential in managing our angry and frustrated emotions. Those people who can control their emotions and express themselves in a controlled way stand to preserve their relationship with others or to build new ones more easily. In contrast, those who have a temper can explode at the drop of a hat and have significant difficulties to communicate with others. People keep their distance from such individuals and this in itself leads them to become more isolated and angry.

The majority of difficulties in anger control come from the lack of emotional skills and not knowing how to respond to challenges and confrontations. The solution is not to stop getting angry, but to learn how to control the response and use assertive communication.

This course takes advantage of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and provides valuable techniques to manage self-talk and help people understand the root cause of anger.

The course is provided in 8 distinct sessions that can be easily delivered across multiple days if necessary (guidelines are provided in the course notes). This way, techniques thought in the course can be applied to real world scenarios and the tutor can provide feedback in the next session based on delegates’ experiences and their use of these techniques. Each session contains theory as well as specific and tailored exercises that help the delegates practice what they just learned.

In this highly practical course delegates will learn:

Definition of Anger

• Why do we become angry?
• Is anger good?
• How does anger affect your emotions?
• What are the anger myths?

Aggression Cycle

• What is the sequence of events leading to aggression or temper?
• How can you take advantage of this sequence to deescalate your anger?
• What are anger cues and how can you respond to them?

Controlling Anger

• How can you stop getting angry?
• What techniques can you use to increase the effectiveness of your communication with others?
• What kinds of mental and physical techniques can help you to manage your temper or escalating emotional levels?

Assertive Communication

• What is assertiveness?
• How to present your view systematically and assertively
• How does assertiveness differ from aggressive or passive behaviour?
• How can assertive communication help you to control your emotional balance?
• How can you appeal to emotions to deliver your true meaning and get results?

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

• How can Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) help you manage your anger?
• How can you prevent self-defeatism and irrational self-talk?
• What are the fundamental beliefs that can help you to strengthen your relationships with others?

Responding to Conflicts

• How can you handle emotional conflicts?
• How to use a simple formula to quickly respond to potentially annoying situations without offending or feeling overtly emotional about the conflict

Managing Confrontations

• How to use a powerful 5-step technique to handle confrontations and respond to events to get best results
• How to hold your emotional balance and show that you are in control when confronted with others

Apologising & Forgiveness

• How to deliver an apology to get maximum benefit and significantly reduce the likelihood of emotional confrontations
• How to use forgiveness to feel better about yourself and defuse charged situations
• How apology and forgiveness impact your self-talk

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Beginners & Intermediate

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

• Understand the root of anger, how we become angry and how to break the habit
• Disrupt the life cycle of anger to prevent its escalation and remain emotionally focused
• Reduce your anger using a variety of preventative and immediate strategies
• Use assertiveness to maximise the effectiveness of your communications with others without getting too emotional or making others angry
• Use established techniques based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to manage your emotional response to events
• Respond to conflicts using a simple yet powerful formula where you can express your position without risking your relationship
• React to confrontations quickly and efficiently while maintaining your emotional balance
• Deliver a meaningful apology to manage emotional encounters and also forgive others to reduce your self-talk and feel better about yourself

Emotional skills such as anger management are best learned through practice and this course is specifically designed with this in mind. The course focuses on two distinct aspects; attitude and step-by-step guidelines to handle various situations.

Many emotional problems can be resolved through self-probation and understanding that your perception of the world can be significantly different from reality. The course focuses on this topic and presents it in various forms through repetition so that delegates can fully grasp the idea. This will help them to re-examine their encounters with others and question their assumptions. Research shows that this alone can significantly help people to manage their encounters better in future interactions.

Having covered the fundamentals of attitude change and mental states, several techniques on handling conflicts, assertive behaviour, managing confrontations, etc. are provided that can help people to quickly respond to various situations. It is important to master these step-by-step guides so they can be executed promptly when needed. The exercises will help the delegates to memorise these techniques during the course using accelerated learning principles.