SINOUÉ

TANTRUMS

Understanding anger management and distinguish normal from pathological anger

What is pathological anger?
Causes

What is pathological anger?

Anger is a violent and transient emotional state, the result of a feeling of aggression or unpleasantness, expressing great dissatisfaction and accompanied by brutal reactions.

Anger, like any emotion, is a reaction to an event. However, it is never an event in itself that triggers emotion and anger. Anger occurs when an event contrary to an expectation or a desire occurs. Intolerance to the frustration generated causes anger.

The angry man has the need to see his desire satisfied immediately, and cannot bear the frustration linked to his dissatisfaction. Anger is a signal that indicates and expresses the frustration of a desire, the questioning of an expectation, the attack of a value.
The question to ask is whether the unfulfilled expectations are realistic. Anger is normal and useful when it expresses the annoyance linked to a legitimate and realistic expectation. Anger becomes pathological when it is caused by inappropriate interpretations and expectations.

Causes

How to manage anger attacks?

One possible treatment for pathological anger is Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy (BCT) for anger.
Cognitivists focus on “cognitions,” that is, the thoughts of the individual immediately before, during, and after anger. The work on thoughts is the most important to teach the angry patient to regain control of his emotion. Anger is based on inappropriate expectations and expectations. The BCTs for anger therefore consist in questioning the realism of the patient desired anticipations.

The BCT therapist usually asks the patient to fill out a table in order to analyze their anger. This work based on this table of self-observation has a double function. That of knowing, for the individual and for the TBI psychologist, the singular mechanisms of the patient’s anger, but also that of regaining self-control because by self-observation, the individual takes a step back on the situation, on his or her expectations and desires, which allows him or her to start managing his or her anger.

Once the constant cognitive patterns are identified through automatic thinking, the patient and the BCT psychologist work together on the individual’s beliefs and inferences.