Anger can be one of the most challenging emotions that we work with.
Clients are sometimes afraid of their anger. Or, maybe they consider it inappropriate to even feel this way at all.
Not only that, when anger is misdirected, it often leads to poor choices, damaged relationships, and even violence.
But anger can actually be an asset to our clients . . . as long as it’s channeled properly.
So how can we help clients express their anger more effectively?
It begins by helping them understand how anger is triggered, and what happens in the body and brain – especially when anger is chronic or unprocessed.
So we thought it would be helpful for you to have a way to illustrate this for your clients. (And please feel free to make a copy of this to share with them.)
Click the image to enlarge
If you’d like to print a copy to share with your clients, just click here: Color or Print-friendly
(When you make copies to share, please be sure to include the copyright information. We put a lot of work into creating these resources for you. Thanks!)
For more practical tools and strategies to help clients manage anger, have a look at this short course featuring Stephen Porges, PhD; Marsha Linehan, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Ron Siegel, PsyD; Pat Ogden, PhD; and other top experts.
Now we’d like to hear from you. How will you use this in your work with clients? Please leave a comment below.
Thank you so much for the summary of what I always tell people and write down for them in tables and pictures.
You summed it up beautifully.
I would let the person look at it and tell me what the changes in the brain and the rest of the body – as a result of anger. Then, I will ask the person to reflect the details to oneself.
And write about it and one’s feeling before making up the decision of a will to make a change ….
This is great! I’ve been teaching my clients this iformation for several years, but using my own scribbled diagram each time. A super resource.
This is great! Thanks so much for the visual aid.
We have all sorts of harm done to angry and violent people and expenses incurred…drugs, ridicule, imprisonment, put on lists of offenders, death sentences. Why don’t we disconnect the adrenals from the HPA axis? Snip snip, done?
My so is 29 years old. Diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. He had frequent outbursts.many end violent or self abuse with alcohol or marijuana. It’s good to read the science behind his behaviour. Yet crushingly sad that I and other professionals are powerless to make affect for him.
Very impressive! More concise and thorough than other charts I’ve seen, I am personally feeling most of the effects of long term chronic anger in my brain and body…. now what? I could use help going forward from here, Thank you!
I have a client who is currently working on anger issues. I like using brain science to explain topics to my patients as it seems to help them grasp the issues a little deeper. Excited to use this inforgraphic with him and others!
What a great way to explain to clients about the advantages of letting go of “chronic anger”!
Thank you!
I will use it Helping incarcerated women interrupt and understand patterns of behaving. Great visuals thank you!
Wish I had had this yesterday to give to a new client. It would help her and others to begin to understand their own brain and feel more in control and not like they are loosing thier mind. The science works wonders with modern intelligent folks. thanks for all the assistance to make it easier to explain this research to others. I picture is worth a thousand words.
great. will use for clients
Dear Ruth, thank you for your kindness in putting this together and sharing it with the world. Very well structured and I like the step by step guide. I find this useful for myself.
Dear Ruthe, thank you for your kindness in putting this together and sharing it with the world. Very well structured and I like the step by step guide. I find this useful for myself.
This is a great resource. I find that educating my clients gives them a sense of understanding what is going on in their body and helps empower them to link and implement the techniques they learn in therapy. My experience has been that clients find this type of education very validating, especially when we are able to give them the science behind the Mind Body Connection. Information is power and they no longer feel like they are at the mercy of their body with no control.
Couldn’t agree more. it seems most upbringing and education sadly neglects the knowledge of oneself, especially of what resides below the skin. I find it increasingly necessary to help people understand the basics of themselves and to go further with mainly emotions and anxiety.
Thanks for the chart is is very useful for anyone who can read; this in itself is a diminishing ability at a level of more complex information. Diagrams help with this capacity.
great handout!
And, also ‘to be honest’ , as a few have indicated below, the graphic is likely to be overwhelmingly discouraging, and it misses the fact that many people (women especially) are groomed from childhood that anger is primarily a signal to be squashed. It is “true” that now science “can” reinforce that psychological damage with hard science data about all the negative chemical trails of destruction it leaves, but it is rarely useful to do so if someone is struggling with anger….and frequently, thus, also guilt, about experiencing anger at all. It is important to welcome the information that anger contains, as it is intended to help us in a situation that needs changing, that needs good solid attention-over-time, either inter-personal, or intra-personal. It is rather ‘omitted’ that all these chemical cascades happen in nano-seconds, and that the inplied ‘permanent damage’ (death of cells, damage to prefontal cortex or hippicampus) are NOT irreversable processes that leave us damaged people everytime we feel the adrenaline or cortisol wash over us in ‘anger.’
I will also use it to illustrate the impact of extreme fear – mostly the same physiological cascades centrally & peripherally! Thank you – patients will benefit from this. Another great resource for patients is offered just search mind-body interactive at apa.org
Hi Ruth!
This is a wonderful resource! I plan to adapt and present the information in this graphic in a more child-friendly way in order to help my younger clients to understand what is happening in their bodies and brains when they are feeling angry. This will help to establish a wonderful foundation of self-compassion while we work together to build healthy coping skills! Thank you!
Thank you very much for this excellent information.
Ruth, Thank-You for this great graphic. I will share it with my clients. So many of us don’t pay attention to our stress warning-signs, and by pushing anger and not dealing with the anger, we become more stressed. The more a person learns healthier ways to deal with anger, the negative thought-patterns brought-out from anger begin to decrease. The more positive we become, we can sense the changes in our brain, hormones, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and relationships, because these begin to improve. Our bodies, which are interconnected systems, begin to heal as we heal the negative emotional baggage of anger.
I’ve seen a book, WHEN ANGER HURTS, that offers exercises to work with the precursors to anger, labeled “Sources of anger” in the diagram. These are mainly thoughts, beliefs, habits such as “No one should cut me off” “I need people to show me respect” (woulda, coulda, shoulda) etc.
Working to recognize, and perhaps re-write these thoughts can be done when one is calm and in their right mind, whereas dealing with the hormones released by emotion is a bigger challenge.
Thanks for the visual tool about anger’s process in the brain and body. It adds to the resources available when helping people address anger whether it’s a healthy stimulus toward making a positive change or a signal to begin effective self management.
All good info. However, while important to know is insufficient to modify behavior. Negative benefits have limited (usually to two weeks) power to motivate. Better yet would be a chart of benefits to a person for diffusing anger before it gets roiling. YMMV but I found by asking myself, “What do I feel entitled to?” then answering shows me how ridiculous my anger over anything is. For example, just last night I was mad at my husband because for three weeks he had to knuckle down over work and didn’t have a drop of time or energy leftover for anything else. Now that his deadline had passed he was making very nice overtures. I asked myself what do I feel entitled to and answered, a partner who is always available to shower me with attention no matter his work deadlines. I immediately saw the silliness in my thinking as well as the unfairness. Didn’t I often get burrowed down into my looming work deadlines? I’ve taught this trick to friends and family with truly amazing results. Pass this on. Anger can become habitual, contagious, and of course, dangerous.
Powerful interventional question, “what do I feel entitled to?” Thank you! Coupled with an understanding of the harmful biochemistry of anger (as well as our amazing healing capacity), this question alone can be the main tool of change. For those who are ready and willing to approach their anger so honestly.
Thank You so much for this information.
I teach a high conflict parenting class for divorced parents. As you would imagine, we deal a lot with anger and how it affects the children.
This explanation will be of great help.
Thanks again!
Many thanks for this powerful diagram. It speaks volumes.
Warmly,
Elizabeth Agnese, M.A.
This is one of the most brilliant graphics and explanations visually that I have seen when describing Andre and how it effects us all around. So grateful to all of you in sharing with us to share with our clients and families. The awareness in itself will be so beneficial for all of us to respect it’s organic process.
Blessings,
Jocelyn
This is good to educate people. This gives insight in body changes. It’s a way of defusing or metacognition besides the common “what happen(ed)s, what do you think, what do you feel (also what and where do you feel in your body), what do you do, and what are the expected concequences”
You completely neglected the positive side of anger, that it provides the energy to change the situation you’re in on the interpersonal and physical-environment planes. You conflate the short-term benefits of anger with the long-term detriments of unactualized environmental and personal change to present an unequivocally negative portrait of a life-saving emotional resource. Junk-perversion of science by ignoring the dimension of time and emotional sequences in favor of hypothetically static organismic functioning.
The negative affects of anger come from repressed anger, not anger that is recognized and applied in a healthy way. Repressed emotions are the toxic issue, not emotions expressed in healthy ways.
Excellent! Thank you! For many clients it is helpful to have a concrete understanding of what is happening in their brain, even if they don’t grasp it all. I like that it also helps to illustrate the effects on the body, which could be beneficial for clients with chronic illnesses, especially auto-immune disorders.
Great tool! Thanks. Looking forward to sharing this with clients.
I am a coach who uses EFT tapping on any and all of these “symptoms”. It not only calms the amygdula almost immediately, but it can also address subconscious beliefs such as, I’m not supposed to get angry, anger is a bad emotion, I’m afraid of my anger, I saw anger hurt others so I will never get angry…
It not only calms the energy systems, but it also releases the emotions from the body that have gotten stuck on a physical level! It’s a fabulous tool for so many issues. What is also great about it is that you can also “PROGRAM IN” what you desire once the “charge” is low enough for the subconscious to accept a new path. It’s amazing to watch what happens so quickly when programming in new desires.
Thank you for presenting a partial counterpoint. To the negative portrait of a “negative reinforcement emotion.”
This is a very clear, concise and useful diagram to give to clients explaining the effects of anger….. Thank you. I think something that explains the effects of anger so clearly also helps the client contain their anger more.
Thank you, this is so helpful. I work almost exclusively with older adults and their families, and frequently discuss self care. This will be a very important addition to my “Save Yourself” talk!
I have also long suspected that high stress and anxiety over a lifetime must be a part of the dementia risk equation, and this is finally being recognized. Thank you again for all of your good work.
Ann Dolan, LCSW
This is great and certainly helps us see the destructive potential of anger. I’d like the part B of this info gram- describing what helps us channel or discharge anger positively and diffuse the negative impacts of this process depicted above.
Honestly, I feel it is too technical. It’s very good to know for me as a therapist what is the impact on the brain, but I prefer to spend time focusing on change with my clients and help them
acknowledge their feelings of anger, understand the healthy
purpose of that emotion and help them envision and
learn new ways to react when they feel anger arising.
Yes, you’re right. Back in the 60s some women and men invented a process guide they called “Assertiveness.”
Thanks for the information. I will share some of this with my clients
To be honest, for the majority of coaching clients, this information is a bit over the top – they are not CNS scientists. While most of them might find the hormone elevation and impact to the body interesting….they may also interpret this to mean that I am communicating anger is bad and avoid it at all costs. Anger is an emotional indicator that we have inner work to do and I recommend not avoiding feelings of anger. I recommend healthy avenues for release of the anger i.e., running, dancing, drawing, kick boxing, some sort of physical activity, EFT tapping, etc. This will help to get to the core of the issues causing the anger. This is a launching off point. Anger can be much more empowering vs feeling shame, guilt, self-hatred, depression which are all very disempowering emotions. Anger, when faced head on and managed in a loving way toward yourself can be very empowering and enlightening.
I’m a sex educator and counselor and a member of a professional group called “Women Waging Wisdom”. I will bring this to our meeting next week. Thanks for this excellent resource which I will also make available to my clients.
Wow. I am step back. To see this information
I have Big Anger issues
I’m not working with patients any longer; but, as a former military chaplain who co-led PTSD groups, I truly have gained from your insights and focus. Thank you for your fine work.
Really helpful little graphic to help illuminate what happens in the body/brain with anger. Thankyou.
I will use it with the right clients within the therapy I offer.
I will put copies of this in my high school classrooms where I teach a class called Emotional Health. We talk about these systems but a visual explanation will certainly help. We also have a program, started by our PTAA, which has been lovingly termed “Potty Posters” (maybe has something to do with living in NC?)
which puts colorful, informative posters in toilet stalls. The two this year have been non-hysterical facts about marijuana and opioid use/abuse. I can see this poster used in that capacity. We will certainly give credit to any use!
Beautifully presented graphic! Well done!
This is the best explanation about anger and the brain I have seen. Thank you so much for the valuable resources you provide. Dr. Linda Shake
My client is me!
This is a wonderful graphic – clear and well laid out. Thanks for sharing it!!!
Great infographic. I agree with you, anger can be an asset as long as it’s channeled properly, it’s a powerful energy.
Excellent and helpful information in a very usable format. Thank you.
Great infographic. Thank you for sharing.
Nice information. Thanks for sharing!