Anger issues commonly appear with substance use disorders, as those who struggle with their emotional state may turn to drugs or alcohol for symptom management. If you have an anger disorder and an addiction, dual diagnosis treatment is vital. Contact BlueCrest Recovery at 888.292.9652 to learn more about our anger management program.
What Is Anger Management Therapy and How Does It Work?
Various therapies can be used in anger management treatment, and the therapist will determine which is best suited to your goals and lifestyle. Here are some that are commonly integrated.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): With this approach, you learn how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact. Cognitive restructuring is often integrated, involving identifying and changing anger expression patterns and developing healthy coping mechanisms to manage emotions.
Assertiveness Training: This technique teaches you to express feelings constructively. You learn communication skills so you can talk about how certain activities affected you and solve problems without getting angry.
Relaxation Techniques: These stress-reducing exercises can be done at set times each day or on the spot when you feel anger coming on. Examples include deep-breathing exercises, which immediately lower heart rate and reduce the fight-or-flight response. Progressive muscle relaxation, which involves tensing and relaxing various parts of your body, is also effective for reducing anger.
Role-Play Exercises: Therapists often ask patients to role-play various scenarios to practice responding to frustrating situations without anger. The skills they develop in sessions can later be used in real life.
Anger Management Techniques and Coping Skills
The techniques you learn in therapy can become practical skills for managing anger in real life. Basically, they focus on controlling anger before it controls you. Here are some you can try.
Take a Brisk Walk or Engage in Physical Activity: Exercise instantly boosts endorphins, elevating mood and reducing stress levels. It also removes you from situations that may cause anger. Taking a walk is ideal because it can be done anywhere at any time, but any type of physical activity can lower anger.
Deep Breathing and Relaxation Techniques: As mentioned earlier, these stress-reducing techniques can be used on the spot to ease anger. Deep breathing is especially convenient, as it’s discreet and provides instant results. There are various techniques you can learn online or through workshops and mentors. Find the one that works best for you to manage anger.
Developing Healthy Ways to Express Anger: You must also determine the best ways to express anger without letting it escalate. Here are some suggestions.
Avoid passive-aggressive behavior; it rarely solves problems. It often goes unnoticed, allowing anger to build up inside of you. If it is detected, it can make others angry, leading to escalation. It’s best to express your feelings.
Problem-solving Approaches: Rather than getting angry, determine ways to address and solve issues that bother you. Your communication skills will help you work with others to achieve this goal.
Avoid Sarcasm: Like passive-aggressive behavior, sarcasm can go undetected, and when noticed, it breeds more anger. Remember, you get more flies with honey than vinegar.
Taking Quiet Time: Sometimes it’s best to be alone when angry feelings escalate. Find a way to step away from the situation and go somewhere to calmly deal with your feelings. Breathe deeply or find another way to relax.
Anger Management Classes and Group Therapy at BlueCrest
BlueCrest offers structured anger management programs with a specific duration, helping people work towards their goals and achieve results within a set timeframe. Time frames vary depending on the severity of the issues, but the idea is to set a finite target for improvement rather than an ongoing approach.
Various techniques are integrated, including the following:
Group Therapy: Anger management is often taught in a group therapy format. Members of the group learn from each other and develop a sense of accountability. They role-play and form support networks that can be useful inside and outside of sessions.
Individual Therapy Sessions: While group therapy is useful, individual therapy allows people to work one-on-one with their therapist for a more customized approach. CBT and other behavioral therapies are often used to help individuals develop coping skills.
Family Therapy: Families are often brought into therapy sessions so they can understand how their behaviors may contribute to anger issues and substance use. They focus on repairing relationships and learn to provide a healthy environment for their loved one that is conducive to healing.
Expressing Anger in Healthy Ways: Skills for Long-Term Recovery
Anger is something everyone feels at some point. However, the difference between healthy emotion and harmful anger comes down to how we express our feelings. Here are some examples of how to handle anger in a healthy way.
Assertiveness vs. Aggression: There is nothing wrong with being assertive when you feel like someone is treating you unfairly. However, you should use your communication skills and draw the line at aggression. Look out for behaviors such as raising your voice or becoming violent. If you notice these symptoms, try deep breathing or step away from the situation to calm down.
Taking Responsibility without Blaming: Anger can escalate when you project blame. Instead, take a step back and consider how you may have contributed to the situation. Be ready to take some responsibility to avoid escalation. If you truly feel someone else is to blame, watch how you frame your words. Try to take the ‘you’ out of the situation and focus instead on what went wrong.
Avoid Behaviors That Fuel Anger: These include passive aggression, replaying negative events in your mind, hostile communication, blaming, holding grudges, impulsive reactions, self-attacking, and substance use. Once you learn to recognize these behaviors, you can stop them before they get out of control.
Once you start learning the best way to express anger, you will notice improved relationships in your personal and professional life. You can maintain these skills through long-term recovery to experience a higher quality of life.
While anger is a natural emotion, someone in need of anger management therapy will experience chronic anger. They will experience this emotion more often, more intensely, and for a longer time than others. The National Library of Medicine reports that approximately 7.8% of people in the United States experience intense anger that they cannot control.
Anger is often associated with frustration, but it can also be a symptom of other mental health conditions, like depression or anxiety.
Some of the most common symptoms of an anger disorder are:
Periods of anger that last more than 30 minutes
Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated constantly
Frequent ranting
Becoming engaged in arguments easily
Frequent angry outbursts
Dealing with constant bouts of anger can impact your life in many negative ways, leading to health issues like heart disease, high blood pressure, and interpersonal issues.
For those struggling with anger issues, trying to find ways of managing the symptoms can lead you to substance use disorders that only make the symptoms worse.
Getting treatment for both anger management and addiction is essential.
Dealing with Anger
To manage anger, you must first consider what is making you feel angry. Common themes include work and relationships. Certain interactions may leave you feeling powerless, disrespected, frustrated, stressed, or insulted.
Once you identify situations that trigger anger, you can learn to control your anger. For example, you may determine ways to:
Cut them out of your life, i.e., find a new job or leave a toxic relationship
Problem-solve to make the situation better for you
Use communication skills to express your feelings
Recognizing Signs of Anger
It’s also important to learn how anger feels in your body so you can address it before it escalates. You may experience:
Physical signs include a tight jaw, clenched teeth, muscle tension, elevated temperature, a rapid heartbeat, a knot in your chest, trembling, and pressure in your head.
Emotional signs include irritation, annoyance, impatience, and thoughts of unfairness. Your thoughts may speed up, and you may begin replaying the event in your head, blaming yourself and others, and fantasizing about revenge.
Behavioral signs may also appear. Your voice may rise. You may talk faster, cut people off, and say sarcastic things. Slamming doors, banging things, and driving more aggressively are other behavioral signs of anger.
When you notice these symptoms, practice anger management skills and calming techniques to keep them under control.
Consider the Impacts of Anger
It’s also vital to consider how anger impacts daily life and relationships. remind yourself of the consequences of what you’re doing. Think about the possible legal, emotional, physical, and financial impacts.
Reminding yourself of the possible consequences of anger should prompt you to consider the negative outcomes before you act.
The Connection Between Anger Issues and Addiction
People with anger issues often use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. Illegal substances may temporarily calm you down, but they make matters worse in the long run. They imbalance brain chemestry, making it harder to handle emotions, and increasing the risk of personal and professional issues.
A better approach involves addressing the underlying cause of anger, often pain and trauma. When you can handle negative emotions without turning to drugs and alcohol. BlueCrest offers dual diagnosis therapy, treating mental health and addiction issues simultaneously to promote long-term healing.
We offer various programs to treat anger problems, ensuring you find the one that best suits you lifestyle. Our options include:
Partial Care Program
Our partial care anger management program option involves staying at the facility for several hours a day to receive therapy and returning home at night. it provides the structure and stability you need, along with treatment that helps you understand where the anger comes from and how to manage it.
We provide individualized treatment plans to ensure we can help you with your exact needs, with cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy being our top choices for the treatment of both anger and addiction.
Partial care is an excellent option for those who have just begun their recovery and want to gain self-confidence in their ability to heal. At BlueCrest Recovery, we offer support groups to help you feel less alone with your struggles and family conseling to give your loved ones a chance to heal as well.
During partial care anger management counseling, you can also receive medication management if that is something you need.
Here’s what anger management may look like in a PHP setting:
Assessment and Goal Setting: The staff will ask about your anger issues, screen you for co-occurring disorders, and set specific goals, such as using 2 coping skills before reacting.
Psychoeducation: You will learn about anger and its causes.
Skills Training: Your therapist will help you learn coping skills to manage anger in a healthy way.
Crisis Management: Therapy can help you reduce anger in emergency situations.
Aftercare: After PHP is completed, the therapist will recommend the best way to continue care.
Intensive Outpatient Program
Our intensive outpatient anger management program is deal for people who need a bit more freedom to manage a job or family responsabilities but who still want structure as they recover from anger and addiction problems. Rather than staying at the facility 6-8 hours a day, as you would in PHP, the program may require a three-hour-per-days-a-week schedule.
Our intensive outpatient program is best suited for people who have a stable home enviroment. This can mean staying with your loved ones or living in a sober living facility.
Our intensive outpatient programs for anger management and addiction have sessions in the morning or evening, allowing you to take the time you need for your responsabilities while still continuing your recovery.
IOP can be a primary form of care. In these instances, it will be similar to the PHP program but involve fewer hours in the office and more time doing homework. It may also be a follow-up to PHP, in which case, less assessment will be involved.
However, you will still continue with the same structured care. You will develop anger management skills, focus on triggers, learn emergency responses, and continue with aftercare.
Outpatient Program
People who have gone through anger management therapy and addiction treatment and feel stable may move on to an outpatient program. These programs provide access to medication management, 12-step programs, relapse-prevention services, and more.
You also receive mental health care, including anger management counseling, to ensure you still have the support you need from professionals.
In these final stages of therapy, you may only have one session a week, which will feel more like a check-in. Your therapist may ask you about events that triggered anger throughout the week and ask you how you dealt with them. They will note your progress and recommend areas of improvement.
Homework will still play a role in therapy sessions. Your therapists will ask you to continue working on skills between sessions through set assignments. Journaling is typically integrated, requiring you to record triggers and warning signs to share with your therapist and guide future behavior.
Anger Management for Co-Occurring Mental Health and Addiction
Uncontrolled anger is usually the sign of a deeper problem. It may be related to anxiety, depression, grief, and unresolved trauma. These feelings can build up, making it difficult to control emotions, especially when you feel frustrated.
Many people turn to substances to control anger, but dealing with the underlying cause is a better approach. Our dual diagnosis treatment addresses anger, mental health issues that contribute to anger, and substance abuse resulting from anger. We work with you to determine the root cause of your emotional symptoms to prevent them from interfering with your lives.
We stand out from other treatment centers for our holistic approach. Our team considers the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of substance abuse to promote healthy emotional balance. We find this approach to be most effective in long-term recovery.
Start to Heal at BlueCrest Recovery with Anger Management Therapy
If you have anger issues as well as a substance use disorder, it is important to reach out for help. BlueCrest Recovery can offer partial care and outpatient treatment plans to suit your needs.
Contact BlueCrest Recovery today at 888.292.9652 to make a change.
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If you are truly ready to put in the work and commit to a sober life, I can honestly say BlueCrest is your best option. I would not be sharing this if I didn’t genuinely believe it with my whole heart.
The environment is clean, welcoming, and focused on recovery, which made it easier to stay motivated and focused on my goals. They also provide great resources and tools for long-term sobriety, not just short-term treatment. From the detox center, to housing, to outpatient, everybody and anything went above and beyond for me, and there isn’t enough thank yous in the world to show my appreciation.
If you or a loved one is looking for a recovery center that genuinely cares and goes above and beyond, I highly recommend BlueCrest. They made a life-changing difference for me.
'Blue' is how most of us walk through those doors—regretful, sad, broken, and down to our very last shred of hope. It’s that heavy feeling of being at the bottom.
'Crest' is the hilltop you can actually achieve if you truly want to change your life. It’s the view from the top once you’ve done the work.
A word of advice: The PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program) here is not for someone who just wants to go through the motions or check a box. It is an intense, 'brainwashing' program in the best way possible—it works to completely rewire your thinking seven days a week. It challenges everything you thought you knew about yourself.
If you are tired of the same old cycle and you truly want a new chance at life, this is the place to go. They provide the mountain; you just have to be willing to climb it."
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The program gave me the tools, structure, and guidance I needed to begin healing and build a foundation for lasting recovery. I’m incredibly thankful for the care I received and would highly recommend this center to anyone seeking help.
Got Questions? We've Got Answers
Anger management therapy aims to help people identify triggers and the underlying cause of anger issues and develop healthy coping strategies. Cognitive behavioral therapy is often used to identify and address negative feelings that may cause anger. Group and family therapies are also integrated.
Many people self-medicate anger issues with drugs and alcohol. Although substances temporarily dampen emotions, they often lead to a downward spiral, imbalancing brain chemistry and causing additional personal and professional issues.
Various techniques are taught in anger management treatment to keep emotions under control. Popular ones include deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and communication skills.
Yes, BlueCrest offers anger management classes as part of our addiction treatment. We recognize anger as an underlying health problem, contributing to substance abuse, and treat it at its root.
CBT helps with anger issues because it encourages people to identify negative thought patterns that may contribute to anger, and helps them develop coping mechanisms.
Yes, anger management can help with relationships and communication. It helps people communicate their feelings about issues that might make them angry, promoting problem-solving rather than outbursts. Relationships improve as a result, allowing individuals to share their feelings in a healthy manner.
The duration of an anger management program varies depending on the severity of the issue, but typically lasts 4-12 weeks. This aligns with the timeline of most substance abuse programs.
