Douglas Johns, LCSW
Portland, Oregon
503-252-3739
Anger Management Counseling ~ Portland, Oregon
Douglas Johns, LCSW
Anger is a very human emotion. Anger becomes a problem when it regularly interferes with your relationship with yourself or with others. Do you often feel embarrassed, guilty or ashamed of angry feelings or behaviors you exhibit? Do people often respond angrily to you? Do people avoid you or complain about your behavior? These can be signs of an anger problem.
What to do with angry feelings is not always easy to answer. Underlying all anger is a “fear-threat feeling”. Fear-threat may take different forms. It may be nagging anxiety or worry. It may be deep disappointment or concern that some thing just isn't what it should be. It may even be sadness.
It can be difficult and painful to identify our fears. It's normal for many of us to deny our fears, to cover them up and want them to go away. Often we crowd our conscious awareness with experiences or behaviors that dull our fears. Alcohol and drugs can do this. Angry behavior itself can mask fear-threat feelings we experience. Problem anger often uses habitual experience or behavior to cope with fear.
To address anger problems it is important to first accept your anger, accept the fear that fuels your anger, and accept your experience of the fear. This means loving yourself, having compassion for yourself, being kind to yourself. My method helps people identify the root of their fearful anger, cultivate compassion for self and feelings, and identify tools and innate strengths to decide how to relate with anger in the moment. This may include learning stress-reduction skills such as meditation. The more we are able to just be with ourselves in the moment when we feel anger the more space we create in our conscious mind to decide how to behave.
Thank you for your interest in my practice. Please call me with any questions you may have at 503-252-3739.