Are Anger Management Courses Truly Helpful?

Sarah — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:45:16 +0000

Anywhere you go, online or retail, there are countless articles and books claiming to help you beat your problems with anger management. These information sources provide lots of techniques for learning to tame your temper. The claim is that they can help you learn to gain control of your anger before you do or say something that worsens the situation.

The problem is that some of these resources aren’t particularly effective. Anyone can claim to be an anger management expert and offer advice. However, if they don’t have the credentials to back up their advice, you can’t be sure of their credibility. Naturally, this makes some people question the usefulness of anger management techniques in general.

The answer is both yes and no. Certain criteria must be in place before an anger management class can be considered effective. Basically, you must be committed to an investment of effort and time towards putting into practice your newly learned skills.

You don’t have a chance of being successful if you’re not prepared to change your behavior. It’s essential that you carry out the techniques you have been taught. It’s not enough that your friends and family want you to overcome your problems with anger management. Real change has to come from within. That requires that you deliberately choose to change your usual reaction to certain situations. You need to be determined to replace them with the healthier skills that you have learned.

Lots of professional associations and organizations specialize in psychological issues, including anger management. Through their work over the years, they have developed methods of learning new skills that can help people overcome their anger management issues. Take a look at the website of the American Psychological Association, for example. You’ll find a lot of information there that deals specifically with anger issues.

There are lots of case studies that document the success rates of individuals with different levels of anger management issues. The association has worked with these individuals using the strategies presented on their site. The results are documented and available for anyone who is interested.

There’s a common theme among both the non profit websites and the ones that provide online anger management classes. Most of the strategies that are recommended involve relaxation and breathing techniques. Also, it’s important to back away from the situation mentally so you can think things through logically before responding. You also have to change your cognitive thinking patterns.

If you’re willing to really follow these various anger management tips, you’ll have success. Training can actually be very effective. But only if you’re prepared to work hard and implement the techniques. The reward, however, is a more peaceful, healthy and happy life.

Mental Association

Sarah — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:32:41 +0000

Mental Association is something that you cannot ignore. I was going through a near meltdown just two days ago, because my holiday from work was ending, and I was going back to work. I had come to associate my work with a lot of negative stress. One reason is that I cannot cope with the amount of work.

Even though I was on a short break, I still had work to do. I had associated the end of the break with working through the night and morning just to complete an assignment, right before the deadline, and maybe even missing the deadline. So, instead on starting on the work much earlier, I went to play my favourite computer game, Civilization IV, for four days non-stop. I’m still thinking about my game, but I decided that I had to do something about it.

I still had to complete my work and there was no way I could run away from it. I went for a meeting before my break was over, and the bosses stressed how important meeting the deadline was and the quality of the report determined how our performance would be graded. I felt myself squirming in my seat. Another colleague showed us his report for us to take a look, way before the deadline.

Instead of going through the same problem that I face all the time, I decided to change my mental associations. It’s called mental disassociations. Instead of associating writing reports to high stress levels, I changed that. I decided to visualise how easy it was for me to find the information, and how easy it was for me to write a report based on the information. I also decided to break the steps down into easier parts, and get started. Usually, I faced difficulty in starting on my work because I had this mental association of how tough it was to find the information I wanted.

To my surprise, I found the information I wanted quickly. It was the second google attempt, and the first file I clicked on that got me what I wanted. Now that I have shifted my mental association, I am going to find the next piece of information as easily as I did, and I am sure I will complete the work by tonight. After all, I had already visualised myself completing that, and working on something else the next day.

Update: I probably need more practice. I took an extra day to complete that, but throughout doing this, my stress levels were extremely low, and I still managed to meet the deadline.

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Are Anger Management Courses Truly Helpful?

Mental Association