Anger Management Therapy & Treatment NYC - New York Behavioral Health

Anger Management Therapy NYC

Find relief from anger, so you can engage in your life according to what is most important to you.

Anger Management Therapy for New Yorkers

It is normal for you to feel anger. Anger can even have positive effects on your emotions. It gives you a sense of righteousness – a feeling of morality, justice, fairness, and respect.

Anger can alert you that an injustice is being committed, or that someone is taking advantage of you.

However, not all people experience anger the same way. It’s possible that you get angry more easily and more intensely than the average person. You may easily feel frustration, inconvenience and annoyance, even with what other people consider trivial. You may feel that you are often a victim of injustice, and that other people intentionally frustrate you and make your life inconvenient.

If you have anger issues, you may be having trouble with relationships or work. You may be ruminating and not able to let things go. It may affect your quality of life.

How Our NYC Therapists Can Help

How Cognitive Behavior Therapy Can Help With Anger

Anger Skills Training

When you are angry, you may become aggressive. But it is also possible at times you hold it in and avoid the person or situation. Either approach may not include two skills that have been shown to reduce anger and improve relationships. Those skills are assertive communication and problem solving.

It is really easy when we are enraged to forget to use skills we already have. There may be a solution that you could come up with if you gave yourself the space and time to be calm and adopt a different perspective. But if you are angry, you may want to run headlong into the situation right now – waiting doesn’t seem like an option. Working with a cognitive behavior therapist (CBT), who is specially trained to handle anger can help you develop these skills and enable you to implement them when you need them.

Relaxation Training

Most of us think of relaxation as a state, but it is also important to see it as a skill that we can practice. By doing so, we can get better at it. We can bring on a state of relaxation more and more quickly and even when we are really mad. Another misconception is that we think we are relaxing when we are watching television, sleeping, or jogging.

So, we may be overestimating how much time we are relaxed during any given week. Our nervous systems are not relaxed during those activities. It might sound weird, but our brains are incredibly active in ways they aren’t when they are in a state of relaxation. Working with a specialist can help you find the best relaxation technique for you that will allow you to regularly recharge and be able to relax even in the face of anger.

Strategies to Control Anger in NYC

1. Practice Relaxation

Training yourself to relax by deep breathing and creating relaxing imagery can help you calm down when faced with a situation where you can get intensely emotional.
By turning down your physiology, it makes it very difficult to hold on to the anger. Some theorists explain that a person cannot be simultaneously relaxed and angry at the same time because anger by definition involves a high level of nervous system arousal.
There are many methods you can use to relax. One of the easiest and most effective is relaxation based on your breathing.

2. Solve Your Problem

Channel your energy into facing the problem and searching for solution. Remind yourself that anger does not fix anything, and might just make things worse.
As obvious as it sounds, problem solving has been shown in scientific studies to treat anger problems. Even though most of us believe there is a big problem (often times another person) when we are angry, few of us actively use a formal problem solving process to resolve it.
Most of us respond emotionally and may tell (or yell) the other person there is a problem, but we rarely address the problem with a specific method or system. Here is a very simple form you can use whenever you have an anger problem.

3. Communicate Better

In heated discussions with other people, cool down before making your responses.
Try to listen carefully to what the other person is saying and take your time before answering. Listen to the words being said, as well as the underlying message behind their words.
Also listen to yourself and why you are reacting the way you are.
Calm yourself first before expressing why you are angry. You can combine a quick relaxation technique and center yourself before communicating clearly, it can really help you choose the right words and prevent the situation from escalating or saying something you might regret.
State your concerns clearly and directly without hurting others. It is also important to use “I” statements and to be direct in requesting what you want. This kind of assertive communication can make a big difference in helping to reduce your anger and getting people to understand where you are coming from and even comply with your requests.

4. Use Humor!

Try to defuse your rage by finding humor in the situation. Be careful not to give in to sarcastic humor, which is just another form of unhealthy expression.
Remember, this humor is intended for you to be able to laugh at the situation, not an attempt to provoke another person. Is it possible that this time you are seeing a mountain when it is only a molehill- maybe with time and distance, you will be able to laugh at the situation.

5. Give Yourself a Break

Schedule a “personal time” to get away from it all before or after facing a day that is particularly stressful. Rejuvenating our coping resources is critical to dealing with anger.
There is plenty of evidence that laughter, rest, and fun can really help people to cope better. Many of us can’t imagine scheduling times to replenish and recharge our batteries, but it is a really great technique for not becoming angry. We could learn something from children taking daily recess to play.

6. Avoid the Situation

Avoid the situation or environment that makes you furious. While this isn’t a strategy we want to use exclusively, i.e., we need to learn how to handle things directly, there is a time and place for avoiding a situation.
If you do not believe that you have the skills necessary to handle dealing with a person or situation at that time or that you are an emotional state calm enough to think on your feet, make decisions, and communicate clearly, then it is better to avoid the situation.
It may be important to communicate to someone that you are doing that, e.g., “Lisa it is very important to me that we can discuss the questions you raised in my review. I am under some time pressure right now, so I would like to schedule a time later this week to discuss it. Can you email me some possible times?”

7. Regular Physical Activity

Regular physical activity is a good way to manage stress and keep you from becoming easily angered.
Be careful though that you don’t morph this advice into punching pillows or something similar when you’re angry, as there is some evidence this can make things worse in the long run.

8. Consistent Healthy Meals

Consistent healthy meals can make a big difference in terms of reducing your risk for intense anger.
Even a single instance of low blood sugar can lead someone to become really angry in response to a trigger that normally would not be bothersome.

9. Adequate Sleep

The same goes for being tired and sleep deprived. Most of us have experienced being irritable as a result of not getting enough sleep- and when that happens we are vulnerable to even the smallest anger triggers.
Be sure you don’t let insomnia go untreated or that you don’t choose to stay up beyond what might be healthy. Sleep deprivation accumulates (sleep debt) and can put you at greater risk of anger episodes.

10. Seek Help from an NYC Therapist

If your anger isn’t serious, speaking to a friend or family member to get some support might help. If you feel that your anger makes you act in such away that you feel you are going out of control and you behave in frightening ways, consider seeking help.
An NYC therapist or psychologist can work with you in finding ways to change your thinking and your behavior via anger management therapy.

What is Anger and How Can it Affect People?

Anger can easily get out of control and turn destructive. If it becomes intense and lasts for long periods of time, this may lead to unhealthy and risky behavior such as domestic violence, child abuse, violence against other people, drinking, drug use, tendency to neglect self-care, having accidents, or road rage. These risky behaviors may result in serious physical threats and even legal problems such as assault and battery, reckless driving, and drug possession charges.

Anger can also affect your body. An out of control anger episode can give you rapid heart rate, palpitations, perspiration, shaking muscles, and urges to hit others. Your mind also gets affected, as you experience difficulties concentrating, remembering, ruminating about events, or engaging in revenge fantasies.

When left untreated, uncontrolled anger can wreak havoc on your physical body and may lead to medical problems. Surges in blood pressure, frequent activation of the nervous and endocrine systems, and tendencies to neglect self-care put angry individuals at risk for all kinds of problems.

Certain types of anger can predict all-cause-mortality and reliably predict heart disease as well as blood pressure and cholesterol do. Anger is also tied to strokes, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal problems, binge eating and more.

How Living in New York City Can Trigger Anger

Living in a fast-paced environment such as New York City can expose you to situations that easily provoke anger. Driving in the streets of Manhattan that are overflowing with cars, with drivers and pedestrians that openly disregard traffic rules can easily lead to road rage.

Even commuting can be infuriating to you. Standing and sitting close to other people in the subway or metro bus whose behavior might annoy you can lead to conflicts. Fistfights and other physical violence are not unheard of when people get off subway trains.

Frustrations with work pressures can also be infuriating. Problematic relationships that result from complicated lifestyle may also lead to fights and uncontrolled rage.

The financial stress of the city is another factor that can lead to anger. The background stress of the high cost of living can put New York residents at risk of becoming angry or aggressive.

Manhattan is one of the most expensive cities in the world and every purchase or bill can remind you how stressful having to work enough to pay for things can be. Now all you need is some incompetent person to overcharge you or refuse to pay you, and you have very good reasons to feel angry.

Believe it or not, even the physical environment of New York City can make anger and aggression more common. Dense populations – Manhattan has no shortage of areas with crowds, e.g., Time Square, etc. can increase people’s stress levels, which raises the chances of people becoming angry. We simply don’t have unlimited resources, so as the stress eats away at our coping, we are more at risk of blowing up.

Loud noises (or noise pollution) are another factor that Manhattan has plenty of. It turns out that like overpopulated areas, exposure to loud noise can deplete our capacity to cope with stressors and put us at risk for becoming angry and aggressive in response to things that normally would not bother us. So, New Yorkers have a lot to contend with.

Meet Our Team

How Therapy for Anger Management Works

Step one

Connect with your therapist by either completing our matching form or reaching out to our care coordinators over the phone.

Step two

Attend a 45 minute intake session, where you will get to know your chosen therapist. The point of this visit is to learn what brought you to therapy and how we can help.

Step three

In each ongoing session, you and your therapist will use trusted therapy approaches to help you develop and reach your goals. Collaboratively, you’ll connect in a safe, comfortable space to help you engage in your life in the way you want.

Contemporary care

Empathetic Experts

Our therapists and coaches have combined decades of experience and are specially trained to provide high quality, compassionate support for your health and wellbeing.

Goal oriented

We’re dedicated to using evidence-based methods to ensure you receive the most effective treatment and meet your goals.

Here to support you

personalized matching

We know that having a better relationship with your therapist leads to better outcomes, so we carefully match you with the right therapist to fit your unique needs.

compassionate care

It’s important to our therapists that you feel safe, seen, and understood in therapy. Our offices are judgment-free spaces.

Has anger taken over your life?

Our NYC anger management therapists can help you start your path forward. We’ll offer you a judgment-free space to build the skills you need to effectively manage your anger and live the life you want.