Anger Management Courses

Call 01-5240708 or email admin@accesscounselling.ie

Or click here to send us an enquiry or book online.

Anger Management Courses take place regularly throughout the year. Our next course is taking place on Friday February 7th 2025 – from 10am – 4pm. There are places still available.

Price: The cost is only €290.

This course is limited to 6 places only so book early to avoid disappointment.

On successful completion, all participants will receive a Certificate stating that they have completed an Anger Management Course at Access Counselling Clinic centre. with CPD points of 6 hours.

Facilitator: Tomas Fitzpatrick BA (Hons) Counselling and Psychotherapy, MIACP.

Tomas is with us since 2016, and has extensive experience in all areas of anger management and other issues such as anxiety, depression,  relationships, bereavement, stress and many other areas. Tomas uses a cognitive behavioural approach when teaching anger management techniques, and also believes his roll is to increase the client’s own awareness, which is fundamental to controlling anger. Tomas also uses interventions which are taken from a variety of therapy approaches.

Duration: This course is held on Saturday from 10.00 am to 4pm

Course Outline: Learn to manage your anger and improve your life.

Course Aim: Cognitive Restructuring

Simply put, this means changing the way you think. Angry people tend to curse, swear, or speak in highly colourful terms that reflect their inner thoughts. When you’re angry, your thinking can get very exaggerated and overly dramatic. Try replacing these thoughts with more rational ones. For instance, instead of telling yourself, “oh, it’s awful, it’s terrible, everything’s ruined,” tell yourself, “it’s frustrating, and it’s understandable that I’m upset about it, but it’s not the end of the world and getting angry is not going to fix it anyhow.

Be careful of words like “never” or “always” when talking about yourself or someone else. “This fxxxxin machine never works,” or “you’re always forgetting things” are not just inaccurate, they also serve to make you feel that your anger is justified and that there’s no way to solve the problem. They also alienate and humiliate people who might otherwise be willing to work with you on a solution.

Remind yourself that getting angry is not going to fix anything, that it won’t make you feel better (and may actually make you feel worse).

Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is “not out to get you,” you’re just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you get a more balanced perspective. Angry people tend to demand things: fairness, appreciation, agreement, willingness to do things their way. Everyone wants these things, and we are all hurt and disappointed when we don’t get them, but angry people demand them, and when their demands aren’t met, their disappointment becomes anger. As part of their cognitive restructuring, angry people need to become aware of their demanding nature and translate their expectations into desires. In other words, saying, “I would like” something is healthier than saying, “I demand” or “I must have” something. When you’re unable to get what you want, you will experience the normal reactions frustration, disappointment, hurt, but not anger. Some angry people use this anger as a way to avoid feeling hurt, but that doesn’t mean the hurt goes away.

This course will teach you to apply these and other skills to your life to empower you to control your anger. It will also help counsellors to use CBT to help their clients overcome anger management issues in their lives.

Anger Management Course Structure:

1. Define what is Anger?

People with problems controlling their anger have difficulty coping with pressures from the outside world, other people, and the way these external stresses impact on them. Day to day problems, negative thoughts and beliefs, and interpersonal relationship problems are interrelated because an increase in stress-related tension also increases the likelihood of anger and aggression.

There is a broad spectrum on the anger continuum between irritability and anger caused by the belief that life is unfair, and that someone has violated our strong internal standards of behaviour at one end of the continuum, and hostility and uncontrollable rage at the other.

Rage is caused by childhood situations where a person has been repeatedly criticised and humiliated and made to feel that they are neither worthy nor lovable. These wounds to the self over a long period of time become the trigger where people defend themselves against these negative feelings by mobilising extreme aggression to protect their repeated feelings of low self-worth.

There is a big difference between losing your temper because someone has violated your standards of housekeeping, order, driving competence or childrearing, and the potentially explosive and violent outbursts which are activated by jealousy, rejection, and in circumstances where one is fighting for ones life against punishing or destructive relationships.

But all these anger problems have the same ingredients

• The way we interpret our experience.
• The way we recognise, express and control anger.
• The errors in communication with others.
• The Physiology of Anger: When we are experiencing the symptoms of anger in a stimulus/response situation the hypothalamus area of the brain is electrically stimulated. The hormone adrenaline is produced causing the following symptoms:
  • increased heartbeat and palpitations
  • deeper respiration
  • increased cortisol to depress the immune system
  • pupil dilation
  • released glucose
  • suspension of digestion
  • increased blood pressure
  • increase of testosterone (men)
  • increased energy
• Anger Management-  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – Neurological Mind-shifting – Learning New Skills
  Whether working with clients in a counselling practice, or looking for strategies to handle your own anger management or those of your partner, friend, child or work colleague, Anger Management can help you in many ways and help you to improve your quality of life, your relationship with yourself and others.We will look at psychological assessment techniques to help you evaluate your levels of anxiety, depression, self-esteem and personality types. We discuss an anger test which is used to understand the specific areas that trigger anger responses and an individual diagnosis and treatment plan.We look at making a problem list with 5-6 problems that you or your client want to change through Anger Management. The programme has three stages of change:
• Stage One: Extensive stress reduction and relaxation programme to reduce the sense of threat, violation, frustration, fear and guilt that these outbursts and loss of control can produce.
• Stage Two: The second part of the treatment is designed to use standard CBT to challenge negative thoughts and beliefs about the self, other people, and their future by:
  • first identifying these negative automatic thoughts
  • testing them as hypothesis rather than facts
  • discovering what errors of logic are being made
  • substituting them for a more balanced way of thinking
• Stage Three: The third part of anger management looks at deeper core believes and schemas from early life (up to sixteen) which are then modified to aid in relapse prevention in the areas of:
  • subjugation (being controlled or invalidated as a child)
  • mistrust (feeling abused or exploited by others)
  • punitive parent (criticising, shaming, verbally abusive)
  • emotional deprivation (in the areas of nurture, empathy, protection, mentoring)
  • vulnerability to harm from others
  • not being good enough/worthy

These are often present as some of the underlying non-conscious beliefs which are at the source of anger problems.

Call 01 5240708 or email  admin@accesscounselling.ie  to book a place on the next course, or to book an appointment with a private counsellor.