Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355
  • Home
  • Therapy Services
    • Fees
    • How Psychotherapy Works
    • Who is it for?
    • Individual Psychotherapy
    • Child Therapy
    • Couples Counselling and Therapy
    • Marriage Counselling
    • Family Therapy and Counselling
    • Group Psychotherapy
    • Corporate Services
    • Leadership Coaching and Consultancy
    • Clinical Supervision for Therapists and Trainees
    • FAQs
  • Types of Therapy
    • Acceptance Commitment Therapy
    • Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Body Orientated Psychotherapy
    • Private Clinical Psychology
    • CBT – Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
    • CFT – Compassion Focused Therapy
    • Coronavirus (Covid-19) Counselling
    • DBT – Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
    • Divorce & Separation Therapy
    • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
    • Existential Therapy
    • Group Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Integrative Therapy
    • IPT – Interpersonal Psychotherapy
    • Non-Violent Resistance (NVR)
    • Family and Systemic Psychotherapy
    • TA – Transactional Analysis
    • Trauma Psychotherapy
  • Types of Issues
    • Abuse
    • Addiction
      • Gambling Addiction Therapy
      • Porn Addiction Help
    • Affairs
    • Anger Management
    • Anxiety
    • Bereavement Counselling
    • Coronavirus Induced Mental Health Issues
    • Cross Cultural Issues
    • Depression
    • Family Issues
    • LGBT+ Issues and Therapy
    • Low Self-Esteem
    • Relationship Issues
    • Sexual Issues
    • Stress
  • Online Therapy
    • Therapy for Anger Management
    • Online Anxiety Therapy
    • Online Therapy for Bereavement
    • Online Therapy for Depression
    • Online Relationship Counselling
  • Practitioner Search
    • Our Practitioners
  • Work with us
  • Blog
    • Ageing
    • Attachment
    • Child Development
    • Families
    • Gender
    • Groups
    • Loss
    • Mental Health
    • Neuroscience
    • Parenting
    • Psychotherapy
    • Relationships
    • Sexuality
    • Sleep
    • Society
    • Spirituality
    • Work
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us – Brighton & Hove Practice
    • Contact Us – Lewes Practice
    • Contact Us – Online Therapy
    • Contact Us – Press
    • Privacy Policy

September 20, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

Why there’s nothing as infuriating as Anger Management

Throughout my career as a Psychotherapist, particularly when working with statutory services, I have often been asked to provide, ‘Anger Management’. Now I do understand that some people desperately need help with their anger and that it often has destructive effects on them and their relationships. However, what was, (its much less heard of these days), called anger management often consisted of cognitive techniques to control anger, breathing exercises, counting backwards etc, and while these may help a few people they don’t really touch the surface for most. The appeal is in a simplistic idea of control, the idea that we can simply choose which emotions to feel.

Once a certain point of anger has been reached rational thought has gone and telling someone to just control their anger is a bit like saying to someone with depression, “hey bud, don’t be sad’.

The psychodynamic approach along with all exploratory therapeutic approaches, seeks to understand the hurt behind the anger, attempting to address the root rather than the surface ‘symptom’.

The root of anger is very individual, each person has their reason to be angry and an analytic approach seeks to understand the reasons, meaning and purpose of an individual’s anger, helping them feel understood.

Anger and Depression

Anger is often part of a complex set of internal feelings and conflicts and is felt to be a bad feeling and sought to be repressed, setting up feelings of guilt and self-criticism. The hurt behind the anger often relates to a personal sense of wounding, rejection and loss. Anger is sometimes directed inwardly towards the self and this is causal factor in depression.

This sense of internal rejection, which of course can come from very real experiences of feeling let down or rejected and while sometimes may be due to genuinely abusive experiences can also be due to a care givers unavoidable unavailability. For instance, if a caregiver themselves suffers a depression, the feeling of the child can be one of personal hurt and rejection, leading to a painful feeling of unwanted-ness, self-loathing and externalised or internalised anger.

However, it can be very hard to be angry at someone one needs or is dependent on, powerful guilt and/or anxiety can be stirred up about these aggressive feelings towards someone loved, with a feeling that these feelings may damage the loved person and therefore the anger has to be split off and directed elsewhere. Splitting is an age old defence mechanism, alive and well in todays world, whichever side of any given debate you can be sure that many on either side will be using that debate to project their bad feelings onto the others over theirs.

The ability to tolerate both angry and loving feelings (ambivalence) towards a loved person is hard and Psychotherapy aims to create a safe non-judgmental space where these feelings and conflicts can be expressed through words, easing the need to either split them off or act them out.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Paul Savage, please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Paul Salvage is Psychodynamic Psychotherapist trained to work with adolescents from 16-25 and adults across a wide range of specialisms including depression, anxiety, family issues, self awareness and relationship difficulties. He currently works with individuals in our private practice in Hove.

 

Further reading by Paul Salvage –

What makes Psychotherapy Different?

What’s wrong with good advice?

Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy 

Analytic Therapy for Addictions

Loss

Filed Under: Paul Salvage, Relationships, Society Tagged With: anger, anxiety, Relationships

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Find your practitioner

loader
Wordpress Meta Data and Taxonomies Filter

Locations -

  • Brighton
  • Lewes
  • Online
loader
loader
loader
loader
loader

Search for your practitioner by location

Brighton
Lewes

Therapy services +

Therapy services: 

Therapy types

Therapy types: 

Our Practitioners

  • Mark Vahrmeyer
  • Sam Jahara
  • Gerry Gilmartin
  • Dr Simon Cassar
  • Claire Barnes
  • David Work
  • Angela Rogers
  • Dorothea Beech
  • Paul Salvage
  • Susanna Petitpierre
  • Sharon Spindler
  • Kevin Collins
  • Rebecca Mead
  • Georgie Leake
  • Fiona Downie
  • Chris Horton

Search our blog

Work with us

Find out more….

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Charities we support

Hove Clinic
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

Copyright © 2022
Press Enquiries
Privacy Policy
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptReject Privacy Policy
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT