When anger becomes a problem

Anger is natural – we all feel angry from time to time. When expressed in a healthy way and resolved quickly after being triggered, there is nothing inherently wrong with feeling angry or annoyed.

However, intense, ongoing and destructive fits of rage are not healthy and can have a catastrophic effect on your life and the life of those around you. When anger leads to violence, domestic abuse, and criminal charges it is especially devastating.

Unlike depression or anxiety, anger issues aren’t diagnosed as a specific condition.

Signs of an anger problem can include:

• Frequent feeling of anger
• Anger results in violent behaviour, or verbal or emotional abuse
• Work and personal relationships are impacted
• Using aggression and force to get what you want
• Feelings of anger aren’t comparative to the trigger (ie – losing control over something inconsequential)
• Using drugs or alcohol to manage anger problems
• Anger continues long after the triggering event

Often anger has other side effects, like depression, PTSD disorder, or substance abuse issues.

Seeing a psychologist about anger management

If you are dealing with anger issues, speaking with a psychologist can help. They will take you through therapy sessions focused on techniques to control the anger associated known as anger management therapy.

What is Anger Management Therapy?

Anger management therapy can be conducted by a psychologist, therapist, social worker, or counsellor.  During the process you’ll work through understanding your anger, what triggers angry outbursts and learn healthy coping strategies to control them.

Anger treatment can take place in group therapy or one-on-one sessions. Depending on your situation, the sessions may take place over a few weeks or months.

During anger management therapy, your psychologist will use different techniques to help you explore the thoughts and beliefs around your outbursts and introduce new behaviours to cope with them. We explore these techniques further along in this article.

What Anger Management Therapy Can Help With?

Frequent and uncontrolled anger and rage can have a profound effect on your physical and emotional health. It can also cost you intimate, family, social, and professional relationships. 

The benefits of working with a psychologist to help get your anger under control include:

Improved mental health and mood

Unhealthy anger diminishes feelings of wellbeing. This, in turn, can lead to depression; the two issues often go hand in hand. Learning how to express anger in a rational way can have a dramatic impact on overall feelings of life satisfaction, mood and happiness.

Better physical health

Anger triggers a range of physical symptoms; energy pumps through your body and adrenaline enters your bloodstream. Your heart rate and blood flow increase, and your muscles tense up. Over time, unchecked rage can affect your cardiac health, lead to high blood pressure and compromise your immune system. 

Healthier, happier relationships

Relationships with loved ones can be destroyed through episodes of rage and angry outbursts. Processing emotions and learning new coping skills with your psychologist will improve communication with friends and family members. It may even encourage reconciliation for estranged relationships.

 A more fulfilling career and workplace environment

Is your anger sabotaging your career? Explosive outbursts and seething passive aggression towards your co-workers can have a disastrous impact on your career. Strained professional relationships also increase the stress and tension in the office each day.

Through anger management, you’ll find ways to to help improve your work environment and forge productive relationships with your coworkers.

What is the best therapy for anger management?

There isn’t really a definitive ‘best’ therapy for treating anger but the most widely used type of therapy in this area is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Depending on your situation, there are various techniques and types of therapy a psychologist may employ in your sessions together.

Types of therapy for anger management therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT is based on the idea that if we change our thoughts, we can change how we feel and behave. In anger management, CBT helps identify negative thought patterns and understand why you get angry. Then, you’ll explore new coping skills to deal with triggering situations in a calmer way.

Psychodynamic Therapy

During Psychodynamic therapy, you’ll reflect on the underlying psychological reasons for your anger. When you’ve identified the root of your emotional distress and maladaptive behaviour patterns that follow, new ways to cope can be introduced.

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical behaviour therapy blends aspects of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)  with concepts like acceptance and mindfulness.

It focuses on changing unhelpful behaviours and ways of thinking while practising acceptance of who you are. This form of therapy is particularly well suited to those who experience overpowering emotions, such as anger.

Common techniques in therapy sessions

Throughout the sessions, your psychologist will use a series of techniques to treat anger issues.

These techniques can include (but aren’t limited to) the following:

Relaxation-based interventions

As we covered above, anger triggers physical response and relaxation-based interventions are techniques that focus on the body.  You’ll learn to use relaxation techniques to lower the emotional and physiological arousal response to anger.

This may include breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, or rhythmic movement. Exercising these relaxation techniques will blow off steam, and in a more relaxed state, we can think through responses and behaviours with clarity.

Social skills training

Anger issues can result in antagonistic behaviour towards others. Social skills training strengthens listening and conflict management skills and considers the impact of a person’s anger on others.

Social skill development and learning how to communicate calmly can prevent angry emotions and conflict from spiralling into rage or violent behaviour.

Cognitive restructuring

At its essence, cognitive restructuring means changing your thoughts. Through therapy, you’ll learn to recognise flawed thinking patterns and beliefs that can spark anger responses.

For example, feeling angry about a comment that was not intended to be taken personally.

Thoughts are not fact, and our beliefs can often skew our sense of reality, which means we’re likely to respond (in this case, in anger) based on a false reality. Through therapy, you’ll learn to develop more supportive, rational thinking processes to diffuse an aggressive response.

Stress inoculation

This technique involves rehearsing internal dialogue (coping statements) to prepare to handle anger-inducing situations with more self-control,  in advance.

Inaccurate thoughts increase the chance of expressing anger in an explosive, confrontational way while a coping statement can calm the situation. For example:

Inaccurate thought – She’s picking on me with this presentation feedback

Internal coping statement – It’s not personal, it’s work and it is fair to receive feedback

You may create various internal coping statements to help reframe a difficult situation.

No matter what technique is used, the practical coping skills you’ll learn in therapy will equip you to manage anger, frustration, and feelings of rage whenever they arise.

Can anger management issues be cured?

Anger is a normal human emotion that will continue to arise throughout life.  Rather than ‘cure’ it, the aim of therapy is to learn how to manage anger in a healthy way without negative consequences.

Working with a trained mental health professional can help regulate intense emotions and play a key role in shaping appropriate anger responses.

To find out more about dealing with anger issues with one of our experienced psychologists, reach out to our experienced team at Inspire Health and Medical.

Via: https://www.inspirehm.com.au/

Lifestyle medicine is the clinical application of healthy behaviors to prevent, treat and reverse disease. More than ever, research underscores that the “pills” today’s physician should be prescribing for patients are the six domains of lifestyle medicine: whole food plant-based eating, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, addiction reduction or elimination, and positive psychology and social connection.

We are a primary care preventive medicine physician and a computational immunologist, both committed to applying state-of-the-art research to inform the clinical practice of lifestyle medicine. Our findings and recommendations were just published. We highlight the key take-home points for each of the areas below.

Whole-food, plant-based eating

Diets high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains and lower in animal products and highly processed foods have been associated with prevention of many diseases. These diets have also improved health and even reversed common cardiovascular, metabolic, brain, hormonal, kidney and autoimmune diseases as well as 35% of all cancers.

We believe that future research should include larger trials or new research methods with emphasis on quality of diet. This would include more data on the micronutrient composition and protein sources of plant versus animal-based foods – not just proportion of fat, carbohydrates and protein. Such trials should include children, as many adult disorders are seeded as early as infancy or in utero.

Regular physical activity

For decades, surgeon generals’ guidelines have emphasized that daily moderate-to-vigorous aerobic physical activity has both immediate and long-term health benefits. For example, why we age and the rate at which we age – chronological age versus biological age – is determined by multiple molecular processes that are directly influenced by physical activity. And now scientists are gaining a better understanding of the cellular and molecular changes that exercise induces to reduce disease risk.

Research priorities for scientists and physicians include obtaining a deeper understanding of the type, intensity and frequency of activity, and better insights into the molecular and cellular alterations that occur with exercise.

Restorative sleep

Sleep helps the cells, organs and entire body to function better. Regular uninterrupted sleep of seven hours per night for adults, eight to 10 hours for teenagers and 10 or more for children is necessary for good health.

Though understudied, there is evidence that high-quality sleep can reduce inflammation, immune dysfunction, oxidative stress, and epigenetic modification of DNA, all of which are associated with or cause chronic disease.

Therefore, research into the biological mechanisms that underlie the restorative properties of sleep could lead to environmental or population-based and policy approaches to better align our natural sleep patterns with the demands of daily life.

Stress management

Though some stress is beneficial, prolonged or extreme stress can overwhelm the brain and body. Chronic stress increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel disease, obesity, depression, asthma, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders and obesity.

One of the most powerful mechanisms to reduce stress and enhance resilience is by eliciting a relaxation response using mind-body therapies and cognitive behavioral therapy.

More research is need to gain a better understanding of how these therapies work.

Addiction reduction and elimination

Many social, economic and environmental factors have fueled the national rise in substance abuse generally and, most tragically, the opioid epidemic.

Physicians and researchers are beginning to understand the underlying physiology and psychology of addiction.

Yet the continued stigma and disjointed or absent access to services remains a challenge. Clinicians and scientists need to explore how to predict who is more vulnerable to addiction and find ways of preventing it. Treatment that incorporates integrated care focused on all the patient’s needs should be prioritized.

Positive psychology and social connection

Maintaining a positive mindset through the practice of gratitude and forgiveness has a significant impact on psychological and subjective well-being, which are, in turn, associated with physical health benefits.

Social connectivity, namely the quantity and quality of our relationships, has perhaps the most powerful health benefits.

Conversely, social isolation – such as living alone, having a small social network, participating in few social activities, and feeling lonely – is associated with greater mortality, increased morbidity, lower immune system function, depression and cognitive decline.

Further study is needed to uncover how an individual’s biology and chemistry change for the better through more social interactions.

Inflammation’s role in lifestyle-related diseases

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors produce a vicious cycle of inflammation. While inflammation is a healthy, natural way the body fights infections, injury, and stress, too much inflammation actually promotes or exacerbates the diseases described above.

The inflammatory response is complex. We have been using machine learning and computer modeling to understand, predict, treat and reprogram inflammation – to retain the healing elements while minimizing the detrimental more chronic ones. Scientists are unraveling new mechanisms that explain how chronic stress can turn genes on and off.

Overcoming challenges and barriers

We and others who study lifestyle medicine are now discussing how we can leverage all of these approaches to improve clinical studies on the impacts of lifestyle interventions.

At the same time we and our colleagues realize that there are environmental challenges and barriers that prevent many people from embracing these lifestyle fixes.

There are food deserts where healthier foods are not available or affordable. Unsafe neighborhoods, harmful chemicals and substances create constant stress. Poor education, poverty, cultural beliefs and racial and ethnic disparities and discrimination must be addressed for all people and patients to appreciate and embrace the six “pills.”

The application of lifestyle medicines is particularly important now because unhealthy lifestyles have caused a pandemic of preventable chronic diseases that is now exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately afflicts those with these conditions.

Ask your doctor to “prescribe” these six “pills” for a longer and better life. After all, they’re free, work better than or as well as medications and have no side effects!

Via: https://theconversation.com/

Missed breaks have a range of negative consequences – from the practical discomfort of being unable to go to the toilet and the lack of opportunity to eat healthily to the feelings of demoralisation and dissatisfaction and cognitive changes that lengthy work periods with inadequate breaks can produce.

The cognitive changes that occur when working for lengthy periods without a break are one of the key arguments in support of regular breaks. We are all familiar with the experience of feeling tired and drained at the end of a long working day, struggling to make decisions or unable to concentrate on the task in front of us. This drop in cognitive performance is entirely natural, and reflects the fact that human cognition is simply not designed to focus continuously on the same task for long periods of time. In fact, in cognitive terms, fatigue is an adaptive signal – a sign that we have spent too long ‘on task’ and need to take a break before mistakes start to be made.

More than a century ago, the negative effects of working continuously without a break were clear.  In one of the most heroic examples, Tsuro Arai, the first Japanese woman ever to earn a PhD, forced herself to complete a work task that required concentration (solving complex multiplication problems) continuously for 12-hours over several consecutive days without rest. Unsurprisingly, as time on task increased, her performance became slower and less accurate; demonstrating empirically for the first time that optimal cognitive performance cannot be maintained over 12 hour periods without a break. Despite this, modern healthcare workers often spend this kind of period working without adequate rest breaks. A landmark study of  around 400 nurses over more than 5,000 shifts showed that in line with Arai’s experiment, nurses who worked more than 12 hours at a time (around 40% of sampled shifts) made significantly more errors.

In addition to errors related to slips of attention and memory, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that decision making changes predictably over lengthy periods of work -a phenomenon referred to as ‘decision fatigue’. As people make more and more consecutive decisions without a break, they start to progressively shift towards decisions that are in some way cognitively easier (e.g., going along with the default option, passing a decision on to someone else, or using rules of thumb or shortcuts). In healthcare, we see clear evidence of this over working shifts. For example, GPs are more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics towards the end of clinics and nurses become progressively more likely to refer patients on to other healthcare professionals as time since last break increases. The last example raises a key point. Cognitively, it is not the overall amount of work that is the problem –it is the amount of work completed without a break. In other words, it is the timing and presence (or absence) of breaks within the work period, rather than overall workload which is critical in maintaining optimal cognitive functioning over time.

Ensuring that healthcare staff take rest breaks in a busy health service is of course easier said than done. But here, the evidence is clear: any break is better than none and regular breaks should be considered an essential and non-negotiable part of the working day. Even when there is no time to take a proper break, the evidence suggests that taking a couple of minutes to step away from your task, stretch and breathe deeply is beneficial. ‘Microbreaks’, breaks of a few minutes’ duration, appear to be enough during demanding activities to mitigate some of the negative effects of long periods of unbroken work. Studies show for example that surgeons who take regular, brief microbreaks during operations (of 90 seconds to 5 minutes) report; better physical and mental performance, reduced stress, and fewer intraoperative events. Importantly, the operations which included these microbreaks took no longer than standard operations, suggesting that the breaks ‘pay for themselves’ by counteracting normal reductions in speed and efficiency over time.

In short, breaks are an essential part of the working day for healthcare (and other!) workers.

Via: https://practicalhealthpsychology.com/