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-feeling". A
fear-feeling 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 the fear-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.