Teen Anger Management
Anger is an important part of our emotional lives. When used wisely, it can drive us to reach our goals and can motivate us to enact positive change. However, anger tends to have a bad reputation because it’s often expressed with behaviors like yelling, fighting, and being unkind.
Anger is often a sign that someone is struggling to process or cope with more profound emotions. When a person doesn’t know how to solve a problem or is in an unfamiliar situation, anger is a common reaction, especially in teens, as they struggle more than others often lacking experience or coping skills to deal with complex emotions.
What can cause anger in teens?
Sometimes, teens experience intense anger as a symptom of a mental health issue, trauma, or simply from the stress and pressures of adolescence. There are common triggers of severe anger in teens such as:
Low self-esteem
Being a victim of bullying or persistent & unhealthy peer pressure
Conflict within the family
Traumatic event
Death of a loved one
Adoption issues
Substance abuse
Divorce
Abuse
Grief
How to know if your teen has an anger issue
Teenagers are more independent than younger children and tend to express their anger similar to adults. When their behavior involves unhealthy or unhelpful acts, such as:
Disrespecting adults or figures of authority
Getting into fights with other students
Fits of rage, losing their temper and becoming highly vindictive in what they say
Behavior motivated by payback and revenge
Engaging in substance abuse
Declining academic standards; falling behind the mean for their age
This can be a sign that anger management can be a necessary tool for your teen.
A study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, based on a survey of more than 10,000 teenagers and parents, found that nearly 8% of teens have regular violent outbursts that would fall into the category of a mental health disorder.
Anger management for teens
Finding healthy ways to process anger can be difficult even for the most mature of adults, but for a teenager, this can be a demanding job. Adolescents are full of hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which can have a significant impact on mood. When kids make impulsive decisions or seem like they’re overreacting to small provocations it can be helpful to remember that they’re biologically less equipped to manage overwhelming feelings — like anger — than adults.
Only 6.5% of teens with anger management issues receive help and there are many healthy and effective teenage anger management methods available that should be considered:
Be there for your teen:
Adolescents still crave love, approval, and acceptance from their parents. Positive face-to-face connection is the quickest, most efficient way to reduce stress by calming and focusing the nervous system. That means you probably have a lot more influence over your teen than you think.
Participate in physical activities:
The impulse to do something physical when feeling angry is strong in most teens. Being involved in sports and other exercises helps them express anger on a regular basis.
Teach them the “Rain” approach:
Recognize what’s going on: Acknowledge thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The first step in dealing with anger is recognizing its presence.
Allow the experience to be there: Accept the emotion. Reacting to troubling situations by numbing oneself or focusing attention elsewhere does not address the problem. If you don’t accept the emotion, you can’t deal with it in a healthy way.
Investigate with kindness: Take a look at what’s going on physically, mentally, and emotionally. Ask yourself questions to get in tune with what is happening within you. A greater understanding will increase your ability to diffuse the situation.
Natural Loving Awareness: Identify the small changes that occur in yourself, opening feelings, emotions, and stories.
Stress Management Therapy
The life of a teenager is becoming increasingly stressful. With an ongoing number of social, academic, and professional inputs, they are getting overwhelmed and this stress can often lead to struggles with anger management.
Therapy aimed at reducing stress through relaxation techniques can be highly effective, increasing a teen’s ability to cope with new stress, give your child essential tools to address underlying issues and support them in finding healthy ways to manage anger.
Know when to ask for help:
If your teen’s anger management issues progress to the point where their anger is disruptive to their lives, it may be time to seek outside help.
Knowing when it is time for an intervention to treat teen anger management issues is not a science. Parents are usually in the best position to know when to make this decision.
How can you help your teen?
It can be easy for parents to focus only on the negative with their teen’s anger, however, it is important to be present and try to remember that we’re all doing the best we can with the tools that we are given.
It is essential that parents do the best they can to love and support their child while still keeping in mind that they cannot control their teen’s emotions or actions. The best thing empowering parents can do is provide their teen with proper support within the home and seek appropriate external treatment to help the teen learn how to manage his or her feelings.
As we said in our previous post, at the end of the day, the only person we can control is ourselves. Thinking about who we want to be in these situations and doing our best to respond in line with our values, helps us stay congruent and steer away from cognitive dissonance in our relationships.
Remember: Anger isn’t the enemy—what’s important is valuing our response over a reaction.
Do you think that your teen has anger management issues?
You’re in luck! Our counselors specialize in both teen therapy and anger management.
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