Anger is a normal emotion, but when it shows up too quickly, too intensely, or for too long, it damages careers, relationships, and your own body. Our licensed therapists use proven cognitive-behavioral and dialectical-behavioral approaches to help you understand your triggers, slow the physical spike, and choose how you respond. We work with people who have decided for themselves that they want to change how anger shows up in their lives.
This may be a good fit if you experience…
- ✓Explosive anger, yelling, or damage to property
- ✓Road rage, or flare-ups in public, in traffic, or at games
- ✓Conflict and irritability with colleagues at work
- ✓Anger that sits on top of depression, anxiety, or trauma
- ✓The pull to repeat the anger you grew up with, especially now that you have children
Key benefits
Slower, Smaller Spikes
Learn the physical early-warning signs that come before the spike, and the skills to bring the system back down before you act.
Better Relationships
Reduce the apologies, walking-on-eggshells dynamics, and resentment that anger leaves in its wake at home and at work.
Career Protection
Avoid the warnings, suspensions, and lost opportunities that come from poorly regulated workplace anger.
Physical Health
Chronic anger taxes the cardiovascular system. Learning to regulate it can support blood pressure, sleep, and physical tension.
Self-Respect
Clients describe a shift from 'I hate who I am when I'm angry' to 'I'm in the driver's seat.'
Approaches we use
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Identify the hot thoughts ('they're disrespecting me,' 'this isn't fair') that drive escalation, and replace them with more accurate, less inflammatory ones.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills
TIPP, STOP, opposite action, and other distress-tolerance and emotion-regulation skills give you tools that work in the heat of the moment.
Mindfulness & Somatic Awareness
Anger always shows up in the body first: heat, clenching, narrowing vision. Tracking those cues earlier creates the space to choose your response.
Trauma-Informed Care
Chronic anger is often a protective response to past wounds. When trauma is part of the picture, we address it directly, not just the symptom.
The Four DBT Skill Modules
A practical toolkit for big emotions, taught and practiced in session and at home.
Mindfulness
Notice without reacting
Distress Tolerance
Survive crisis without making it worse
Emotion Regulation
Understand and shift emotion intensity
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Ask, say no, keep self-respect
The CBT Triangle
Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence each other. Change one and the others shift.
Thoughts
‘I'm going to embarrass myself.’
Feelings
Anxiety, dread, racing heart.
Behaviors
Avoid the meeting, cancel plans.
CBT interrupts the loop at any corner, most often by testing the thought.
Our approach at Crown Counseling
Most people who come to Crown for anger management are not 'angry people'; they're people whose anger has gotten ahead of them in moments they regret. Maybe a partner said 'enough.' Maybe you scared yourself. Whatever brought you here, our therapists treat you with respect, not judgment. The goal isn't to suppress anger; it's to put you back in charge of it.
We open every anger-focused course of therapy with skill-building. In the first three sessions you'll learn to recognize your physiological early warnings (heat in the chest, tight jaw, narrowed vision), use TIPP and paced breathing to bring the system down, and rehearse 'opposite action' responses for your most common triggers. These are the same evidence-based techniques the research literature consistently identifies as effective for reducing aggressive incidents [1].
Once the immediate volatility is down, we look at what's underneath. For many clients, anger is a secondary emotion riding on top of shame, fear, grief, or unresolved trauma. CBT helps you identify the 'hot cognitions' (beliefs about respect, fairness, masculinity, justice) that escalate normal frustration into rage. Where childhood or relational trauma is part of the picture, we may integrate EMDR or IFS so anger isn't constantly being reloaded by old wounds.
Research on cognitive-behavioral anger interventions shows moderate-to-large reductions in anger and aggression that hold up over time [2]. Our clients typically commit to weekly 50-minute sessions for 10–16 weeks. We do not provide group-only anger classes; every Crown client works one-on-one with a licensed clinician.
Confidentiality is the standard. What you talk about in session stays between you and your therapist, within the legal limits that apply to every licensed clinician.
What to expect
- 1
Intake call: clarify goals and verify insurance
- 2
Sessions 1–3: physiological awareness and de-escalation skills
- 3
Sessions 4–10: CBT/DBT work on triggers, hot thoughts, and repair
- 4
Sessions 11+: pattern work, relational repair, relapse prevention
References
- Saini, M. (2009). A meta-analysis of the psychological treatment of anger: Developing guidelines for evidence-based practice Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 37(4), 473–488
- Lee, A. H., & DiGiuseppe, R. (2018). Anger and aggression treatments: a review of meta-analyses Current Opinion in Psychology, 19, 65–74