Anger Management Rehab

Get Inpatient and Outpatient Support for Anger Issues at Icarus

Emotions are a powerful force that can change how you act and feel. They might even cause you to say and do things that you regret, making it hard to maintain relationships and socialize.

Strong emotions like anger can even put you and your loved ones in danger if you’re not able to control them effectively.

If you (or someone you love) find that you’re having a hard time communicating because of your emotions or are experiencing violent urges, it’s crucial that you seek anger management rehab before things get worse.

With the help of a trusted addiction and mental health treatment center like Icarus Behavioral Health, you can learn to cope with these feelings safely.

Keep reading to learn more about anger’s impact and how anger management rehab centers like Icarus can help provide relief!

What Happens When You Get Angry?

When something impacts you emotionally, you can get angry – whether you want to or not.

Once you’ve become angry, your brain can interpret these feelings as danger, causing it to activate the ‘fight or flight’ response. As part of ‘fight or flight,’ your brain will trigger your adrenal glands to release cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. These three stimulating hormones help prepare your body to fight against or flee from the perceived danger by increasing your heart rate, blood pressure, and energy.

‘Fight or flight’ can also inhibit your frontal lobes, the rational part of your brain responsible for reactions, thinking, and reasoning, which causes you to act irrationally. Without your frontal lobes in charge, preventing your anger from escalating and calming yourself down becomes harder. Losing this rationality can contribute to violent or regretful actions that are associated with anger issues that require anger management rehab.

What Causes You to Get Angry?

Anything can make you angry. Traditionally angering or frustrating things like getting cut off in traffic or being yelled at for messing up a customer’s orders will often generate an angry reaction.

However, because anger depends on how your brain reacts to stimuli, even non-aggressive statements or actions from someone you love may cause these same strong feelings, especially if you suffer from addiction or another mental health disorder.

The Role of Mental Health Disorders in Anger

As an emotion, anger is heavily influenced by your mental health. Conditions like anxiety and other stress-inducing disorders can directly impact the frontal lobes, diminishing your ability to react rationally when anger is triggered. Depression also contributes to increased anger because of the irritability and emotional sensitivity that it causes, making it easier for you to feel attacked or frustrated about the way you feel, encouraging angry reactions.

Certain mental health conditions can also directly cause you to feel anger and lead to anger management issues if they go untreated. According to the DSM-5, anger can be caused by five different conditions:

• Intermittent Explosive Disorder
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder
• Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
• Borderline Personality Disorder
• Bipolar Disorder

Adults generally have intermittent explosive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and bipolar disorder while oppositional defiant disorder and disruptive mood dysregulation disorders primarily affect children and teens.

The Connection Between Addiction and Anger

Addiction and anger are closely linked, with each having the potential to make the other condition worse.

People suffering from addiction generally experience depression and anxiety relating to their dependence on substances and the impact it has on their relationships and everyday life. You may experience anxiety from trying to hide your drug and alcohol addiction or during withdrawal, which makes you more prone to anger.

The repercussions of addiction, like poor relationships with family or other health conditions, may also lead to depression that makes you more likely to feel anger. Additionally, drugs can influence your rationality by affecting your frontal lobes directly.

Struggling with anger management also reinforces addiction, creating a vicious cycle. If you’re experiencing strong emotions regularly, it can create traumatic experiences and feelings of hopelessness. If you don’t have effective coping skills, you may be tempted to turn to substances like drugs or alcohol to numb the feelings or make you forget them, causing an addiction.

This strong connection between addiction and anger makes dual-diagnosis programs that treat both the cause and symptoms of addiction, mental health conditions, and anger issues especially valuable.

When Does Anger Become a Problem That Requires Rehab? 4 Possible Scenarios

Anger is a normal emotion that everyone has experienced at one point or another. Generally, the reaction is proportional to the cause of the anger and is isolated to that event instead of carrying over. However, if you suffer from anger management issues, the intensity of your anger and the amount of time it lasts can be harmful to you and those around you.

Here are some cases where your anger may not be normal.

1) Having Uncontrollable Extreme Reactions

It’s normal to feel angry when someone harms you in some way, whether physically, emotionally, or through inconvenience. But if you don’t know why you’re angry or you’re far angrier than you should be, you may be exhibiting angry reactions that aren’t controllable.

For example, if you order a pizza and they forget one of your toppings, a normal response would be to call the restaurant and let them know, then listen to how they want to make it right. An extreme reaction would be to drive to the restaurant and scream at the staff who made the mistake.

2) Violence Towards Yourself or Others

Anger activates the ‘fight or flight’ response, so it’s an emotion that has a strong connection to your body. Once this defense mechanism is activated, someone who struggles with managing their anger would become ready for a fight instead of considering fleeing to survive, leading to potential violence.

For example, if you’re talking to someone and they make a sarcastic joke or call you a name you don’t like, a normal reaction would be to talk to them and de-escalate the situation. An extreme reaction would be to throw a punch in response to their insult.

Many forms of therapy can help process anger differently and less caustically, such as Cognitive Processing Therapy, as well as both CBT and DBT and Motivational Interviewing.

3) Holding Grudges and Seeking Revenge

In addition to the severity of your anger, the duration can also be a factor in determining whether you need professional help. Anger should be a temporary emotion you can overcome in a reasonable amount of time, given the severity of the trigger. But if you weaponize your anger for revenge, it’s a sign of anger issues.

For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, honking at them would be a reasonable response. However, if your reaction is to get out of the car and confront them or drive dangerously close to them as revenge, anger management rehab can help you stay safe.

4) Regretting Things You Do or Say When Angry

It’s not easy to stay level-headed in an argument or altercation with strangers, but in most cases, managing anger should be easier when the trigger comes from a loved one. Unfortunately, if you suffer from anger issues, you’re more likely to let your emotions get the best of you and say or do something you regret.

For example, you may have anger management issues if you sell or break your child’s toys as a punishment, tell a partner you hate them or break up with them because of an argument, or break something sentimental that you or a loved one cherishes in a rage.

The Risks of Untreated Anger Issues

Suffering from anger issues can have a significant impact on your health, relationships, and life as a whole.

Uncontrolled anger puts you at risk of harming yourself or others through risky behavior like getting into fights or driving recklessly. It can also lead to depression, anxiety, hypertension, and more. You’re even at a higher risk of substance abuse as a coping mechanism when you’re chronically angry.

Anger management struggles can also greatly impact your ability to find and maintain employment due to trouble with social skills, cause you to struggle with intimacy and dating, and lead to problems with law enforcement because of defiance towards authority.

Anger Management Treatment Options

While anger issues can greatly lower your quality of life, there is hope. Therapy for anger management can help you learn how to manage your feelings and control your reactions.

Anger management treatment options include both inpatient and outpatient programs.

Outpatient programs are primary treatment and talk therapy that you attend at a rehab or recovery center before returning home. In traditional outpatient programs, you’ll meet with your doctors and attend group therapy sessions semi-regularly. Intensive outpatient requires you to commit to a schedule where you attend the facility more often for longer periods, allowing you to receive more intensive care. Many anger management patients will benefit from an outpatient or intensive outpatient program.

Inpatient programs, or treatment plans where you stay at the facility instead of going home, are effective if you suffer from substance abuse or mental health disorders in addition to your anger management issues.

Icarus Offers Substance Abuse and Dual Diagnosis Options as Well

As part of addiction treatment in inpatient programs, you can undergo a medical detox so drugs don’t impact your emotions while you learn how to work through them. It’s also a safer environment to learn how to control your emotions without becoming violent because of the constant supervision.

During your anger management therapy, you may participate in cognitive-behavioral therapy that helps you determine your triggers and change your thinking so that you’re less likely to jump to anger. Group therapy is also used to build communication skills, practice your coping skills, and talk about how you feel with people who understand what you’re going through.

Additional therapies that focus on finding peace and exploring emotions can also be used, including music therapy, art therapy, yoga therapy, family therapy, and more.

Get Anger Management Rehab and Treatment Options at Icarus Today

Anger management problems can control your life, but they don’t have to. Effective treatment can help you prevent, manage, and overcome your anger so you can stay safe, maintain your relationships, and live a fulfilling life – as long as you have the right help.

At Icarus Behavioral Health, our comprehensive and holistic treatment programs address all kinds of mental health and substance abuse conditions that stop our clients from living their best life.

We offer both inpatient and outpatient programs that include individual and group therapy as well as medical detoxes and dual-diagnosis treatments that help you overcome co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders that feed into each other. Our safe and supportive environment gives you everything you need to grow and improve.

Give us a confidential call today to learn more about how we can help with proven support for anger issues!

References

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3753223/
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27188635/#:~:text=Anger%20is%20present%20as%20a,Personality%20Disorder%20and%20Bipolar%20Disorder.
3. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/anger-how-it-affects-people#:~:text=Summary&text=The%20long-term%20physical%20effects,learning%20relaxation%20techniques%20and%20counselling.