Anger Management Programme

What is the Anger Management Programme?

The Anger Management Programme is a 2-week programme to help you develop skills to better manage feelings of anger.

It involves attending groups and meeting with a psychological therapist for individual therapy sessions. It does not involve talking about traumatic memories.

Who can attend?

The Anger Management Programme is for veterans with difficulties managing their reactions to strong feelings of anger.

This can include:

• losing your temper over small things that previously didn’t bother you
• shouting or swearing more often
• feeling on edge and easily snappy
• getting physically aggressive with objects or people

You’d usually attend an initial assessment with a psychological therapist to decide whether this type of programme would be helpful for you.

What does the programme involve?

Once you’ve attended an assessment and it’s been agreed that the Anger Management Programme could be helpful for you, you’ll be offered dates at one of our treatment centres to attend the next available programme.

On the programme, you’ll be placed in a group of around 8 veterans and you’ll attend the same sessions together throughout the 2 weeks. This can be helpful for developing good working relationships with other veterans and sharing ideas. Some of the group topics include:

• anger and the military

• anger and behaviour

• mindfulness skills

• relaxation practice

The groups do not involve talking about your individual traumatic experiences and you’re welcome to contribute as much or as little as you like to discussions.

As well as groups, the programme involves attending 6 individual therapy sessions with a psychological therapist.

Many veterans use these sessions to help build on the skills they’re learning in groups, and focusing these skills on their individual problems. For example. someone who struggles with road rage might try practising some of the calming strategies with their therapist and think about how to apply these skills when they go driving.

Some veterans also use these sessions to make sense of their anger difficulties in more detail, such as where the problems came from.

What is therapy?

Therapy at Combat Stress involves working with a qualified psychological therapist to make sense of your difficulties and to learn new ways of managing them. All our therapists are non-judgemental, supportive and caring and aim to work with veterans as individuals. Therapy sessions are confidential, and all information stays within our clinical team

On the Anger Management programme, we use a type of therapy called cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). This involves understanding the negative angry thoughts and patterns of reacting to anger, and learning ways of breaking these patterns, as well as learning ways to calm the body.

It can be a useful preparation programme for more intensive treatment, which does involve making sense of your negative life experiences, particularly in the military, to help you feel better about them.