Anger is a common force of addiction recovery. You may suffer anger at multiple people and entities in your life, such as family, friends, the courts or society, in general. You need to learn how to manage this anger, so you can process your emotions productively. Many of these skills come from an anger management therapy program, a major part of your treatment and recovery. One of the biggest reasons why you must deal with your anger is recovery wellness. Anger is a possible cause for relapse. Anger also stalls your recovery and causes health, legal and relationship problems. Together, all of these potential issues make the reasons clear for taking part in an anger management therapy program. An anger management therapy program teaches you how to deal with your anger in healthy ways. A cognitive-behavioral therapy program (CBT) also helps. CBT therapy teaches you how to stop thinking and feeling negatively, thus driving your negative behaviors.
What causes anger?
Anger is a natural response to situations throughout one’s life. But when you anger too easily, lash out, or misdirect your feelings, you suffer consequences of doing so. Sometimes anger is healthy when controlled, and sometimes it is unproductive and harmful. Two of the root causes of harmful anger are pain and fear. Fear that leads to anger comes from a desire to not embarrass yourself, look ridiculous or get left behind. Pain at the root of anger often comes from loss, feeling unfairly treated or being hurt by someone else. By getting to know what causes your anger, you can then address this problem at its roots.
How Your Body Reacts to Anger
When you feel angry, your brain releases a flood of energy-related hormones. You also feel on edge for an extended period of time, ranging from a few hours to several days. These edgy feelings come from the arousal of your adrenocortical system. Your body releases more adrenaline and increases your heart rate and blood pressure when you act out from anger. Holding your anger in is not healthy, as many people believe. Instead, you suffer the physical wrath of doing so, such as pain in your muscles, head, neck or back. Regardless of whether you fly off the handle in anger or hold all of your feelings in, you are not responding to these negative emotions in a healthy manner. To better deal with anger, you need an anger management therapy program and most likely also a CBT program.
Getting to Know Your Own Anger In an Anger Management Therapy Program
Effective management of your anger is a learned skill of anger management therapy. You must learn to understand what brings on your anger, triggering it to occur. These triggers possibly include home life, family problems, work situations, social issues and public interactions with strangers. You can also feel angry because of your support group meetings or how therapy taps into difficult issues. Issues that cause many people to become angry include:
- Feeling unwanted or unloved
- Being misunderstood or unfairly treated
- Seeking perfection
- Feeling helpless
- Being misled
- Feeling exhausted
- Being criticized
A Complete Program with Anger Management Therapy
Besides anger management therapy, other methods of treating your anger take place in your drug or alcohol addiction treatment program at The Ranch. With locations in Tennessee and Pennsylvania, The Ranch provides the help and healing you need for strong, sustainable recovery. These programs and therapies include:
- Medical detox
- Inpatient and outpatient rehab programs
- 12 step support groups
- Dual diagnosis treatment
- CBT, DBT, EMDR, and CPT
- Equine-assisted and art therapy
- Craniosacral and acupuncture therapy
You can work past your anger and the root causes of your addiction and get the life you truly want. Call The Ranch today at 1.844.876.7680 to learn more about how anger controls your life and ways that an anger management therapy program can help.
