Regardless of why a child exhibits extreme anger, we should always seek to directly help them tame their anger so they can socialize and learn effectively.
“Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
And I think the same can be said of anger. Rage can reduce even the brightest of adults to an almost toddler-like state.
Rational decision making? Reasoned, articulate debate? Compassion? Not in the blind furnace of fury!
The most (usually) articulate among us can quickly be reduced to a blathering, tongue-tied lesser primate when our ire is raised. Our IQ drops the angrier we get – and even the pumping efficiency of the heart can be compromised.1
And yet, unlike emotions such as fear, anger can sometimes feel, well, good.
Feel-good anger?
Anger has its attractions for some people. It can feel quite addictive. Anger may confer apparent advantages, such as instant attention, others’ fear (which can feel like respect), getting our own way, and a wonderful feeling of certainty and righteousness, energy and vitality.
And of course anger, in the right amount and in the right context, can serve us powerfully. Anger can banish fear, for example, make us act to right a wrong, or lead us to stick up for ourselves and others.
But of course, anger is often not in the right amount, nor the right context.
Inappropriate anger and irritability may be a signal that one or more of our primal emotional needs is not being adequately met. If I’m feeling angrier than usual I might do well to ask myself why. What needs in my life are being compromised right now? If we can respond to our own anger in that way, it might lead us somewhere useful.
But uncontrolled, chronic, ‘toxic’ anger is always a problem.
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Lives laid to waste
Chronic (and acute) anger issues can lead adults to ruin their relationships, jobs prospects, and health. But often the anger habit starts young. Certainly, many angry adults were also angry children.
Regardless of why a child exhibits extreme anger, we would still do well to help them learn to tame the anger early so it doesn’t become a lifelong, problematic pattern.
Yes, the anger might signal problems at home or even developmental issues, but alongside searching for and seeking to ameliorate any causes, we should always seek to directly help the child tame their anger so they can socialize and learn effectively.
It’s not a stretch to say that helping a child overcome a chronic anger habit may help prevent a lifetime of pain for them, and for those who cross their path.
Not so long ago I was asked during a Q&A call about any ideas I might have for helping a 10-year-old boy who’d been diagnosed with various emotional and developmental conditions deal with his anger.
Bearing in mind I don’t know the boy or much about his history or background, I give rather a broad, brushstroke answer – but I hope it’s useful and gives you some useful ideas. Actually, these ideas could apply to adults too.
You can listen to the question and my answer here or read an approximation of my answer below.
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Question
I wonder what is the best way to work with a 10-year-old boy who has a severe problem with anger? He may have Asperger’s syndrome, is ADHD, and has anxiety disorder. He is on medication now, as he used to be aggressive towards his classmates. Now he is not aggressive, but every little misstep sends him into an angry fit. He is intelligent and can understand social situations and emotions (e.g. in stories) but loses this ability whenever these situations revolve around him. Thank you for any ideas!
My answer
Hi Simona.
Well, it’s good that this boy seems to have some emotional intelligence and understands emotions and feelings of characters in stories and so forth. And he sounds like he’s been diagnosed with a lot already, and we’ll have to put aside, I suppose, any potential side effects of the medication he is on and how, if at all, that might affect his development.
First off, we need to look at whether the anger is giving him anything. Anger can be a very seductive, powerful emotion. It can feel quite good to feel self-righteous! In the moment, it’s like a trance, and consequences can go out the window.
So what is he getting from it? Is he getting attention? Are people doing what he wants more often? Is he feeling more powerful? If he is, we need to build up a sense that actually, it’s working against him. We can look at the benefits of controlling anger or not even getting angry. Anger might seem to be a way of getting control, but controlling anger is the greatest form of control.
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We can also work to separate anger from the boy’s core identity, not by parroting clichés that he is not the anger and so forth, but by talking with him about the anger as though it is not really his central self.
You can ask him to imagine that anger as a person – what would it look like; what has it stolen from him in terms of time or friendships and so on; if it had a voice, what would it sound like? How could he stand up to it in future and not let it boss him around? You could even rehearse with him standing up to that anger.
So just as we might with an addiction, we can help detach him from the anger so that he becomes less identified with it. You can then start to explore with him and seek suggestions from him as to how he could and can in future not be dictated to by that emotion.
What are other ways of responding? Can we teach him calm assertiveness skills? If things aren’t going the way he would like, what might be another way of requesting that things go his way? Or can he relax with things not going his way?
Another question might be: Has he learned this angry pattern from anywhere else? We tend to learn as children not by being told things but by seeing things, being exposed to them. So is there another angry pattern in his life – his parents, other kids, something online? If so, is that something that can be addressed?
Anger, of course, can make us stand up for ourselves when we feel we, or someone close to us, are having the completion of our emotional or physical needs threatened in some way. But like anything, it can be triggered when it doesn’t need to. Along with ADHD and Asperger’s, this boy has been diagnosed as having an anxiety condition. An anger problem can be the flip side of fear – the fight-or-flight response. So what specifically has been triggering this boy and what alternative ways of responding to those specific triggers can we explore?
By talking to him calmly, you can get some typical trigger times. What, specifically, has pushed that anger button in the past? Anger is all about narrowed focus of attention – it’s a type of trance state.
So we need to widen context in the moment. Anger as an emotion is extremely lateralized to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the part that narrows focus and misses wider context. This is why for some people with a right-hemispheric deficit, such as those on the autistic spectrum, it might be an issue. So it’s all about narrow context or loss of context.
So how can we get him to appreciate the wider context? Well, one way is to do a context-widening exercise, because it can start to unhook the emotion from the kinds of situations that had been tripping him up. This is a mini hypnotic induction, so you can do this along with regular relaxation to get him generally calmed down, so that if his stress is generally heightened, perhaps partly through lack of sleep or other needs not being met, it can be lessened. We can all become irritable when we haven’t slept, for example.
So you could ask him to close his eyes and recall a time he got really angry… maybe with classmates. When he has recalled that and perhaps got a slight bit of the angry feeling again, have him open his eyes… then suggest he can close his eyes again and review that memory in a more interesting way.
Now have him close his eyes and view that time from the outside. When people view an emotionally charged memory from the outside, it invariably feels less emotional for them. So we’re asking him to notice things about himself in that situation – maybe the way his face looks, or his body posture, or the reactions of other people… then you can suggest to him he can notice how much calmer it feels to view it from the outside.
Once he’s experienced that, suggest he open his eyes… then close them again, and he can again watch himself calmly from the outside, but this time see himself had he not been pushed around by the anger, but remained cool and calm instead. So you’re changing the template – this time he’s learning from himself in the past, had he dealt with that time in a different way. Ask him to notice the differences in himself when he observes that… then finally, you could have him drift into that self and experience it from an associated, ‘inside’ position, noticing what it feels like to remain calm in that time. And because he’s only 10 years old, you may find that this works very quickly.
So you are seeking to change the unhealthy pattern match so that those triggers instead start to trigger calm and coping, and wider context perception. You could do this exercise with all those trigger times.
What people often find after doing that exercise is that now when you think about it (if it made you feel angry to think about it before), it doesn’t make you feel emotional anymore in the same way. It feels as if it’s processed; it’s started to change the pattern match.
So to summarize, we can:
- Externalize the anger from his core identity
- Work on the trigger times
- Explore how well his emotional needs are met in other ways
- Help him learn to be calmly assertive.
Why Does Mark Insist on Using Hypnosis?
If you’ve been reading Mark’s articles for any time, you’ll know that hypnosis is central to much of his therapeutic work, and for good reason. If you’d like to know why he values it so highly and how you can learn it online, take a look at his online course Uncommon Hypnotherapy.
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About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.
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