Anger

Understanding and Addressing Anger Problems: Help for Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Anger is a natural human emotion, but when it becomes frequent, intense, or difficult to control, it can damage relationships, create problems at work or school, and leave you or your loved one feeling trapped in patterns that seem impossible to change. Whether you’re struggling with your own anger, concerned about your child’s explosive outbursts, or worried about your teenager’s volatile behavior, effective help is available.

When Anger Becomes a Problem

Not all anger is problematic. Anger can be a healthy response to genuine frustration, injustice, or boundary violations. However, anger becomes concerning when:

  • It occurs frequently, leaving little room for calm or positive interactions
  • It’s easily triggered by minor frustrations that seem disproportionate to the reaction
  • It’s expressed through aggression—verbal attacks, physical violence, or destruction of property
  • It damages important relationships with family members, friends, partners, or colleagues
  • It leads to problems at school, work, or with the law
  • It’s followed by guilt and regret, yet the pattern repeats
  • It masks other painful emotions like hurt, fear, or shame that remain unaddressed
  • It’s managed through unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance use or withdrawal

Anger Across the Lifespan

Anger problems look different depending on age and developmental stage:

  • In Children: Anger often manifests as tantrums, defiance, aggression toward siblings or peers, difficulty accepting “no,” and emotional meltdowns that seem out of proportion. Young children are still developing emotional regulation skills, but persistent anger patterns can become established early if not addressed. Early intervention is crucial to prevent these patterns from solidifying as the child grows.
  • In Adolescents: Teenagers may show anger through intense verbal confrontations with parents, physical aggression like punching walls or slamming doors, extended periods of hostility or silent treatment, defiant behavior, school problems, and sometimes substance use (particularly marijuana) as a way to cope with angry feelings. Adolescent anger often involves struggles for autonomy and respect, making the parent-teen relationship a particular flashpoint.
  • In Adults: Adult anger can appear as persistent irritability in relationships, explosive outbursts at partners or children, workplace conflicts, road rage, difficulty letting go of resentments, passive-aggressive behavior, or a constant underlying sense of frustration with life. Adult anger often has deep roots in past experiences, current life stressors, or longstanding patterns that have gone unaddressed for years.

Where Does Problem Anger Come From?

Persistent anger rarely has a single cause. Common contributing factors include:

  • Temperament and personality: Some people are naturally more reactive or sensitive to frustration
  • Early experiences: Growing up in households where anger was modeled as the primary emotion, or where anger was forbidden and never learned to be expressed appropriately
  • Past trauma or emotional wounds: Unresolved pain from childhood, relationships, or adverse experiences that gets triggered in present situations
  • Current life stressors: Work pressures, financial worries, relationship problems, health concerns, or feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities
  • Unmet needs: Feeling powerless, unheard, disrespected, or chronically frustrated by circumstances
  • Underlying conditions: Depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, substance use, or other mental health challenges that contribute to emotional dysregulation
  • Learned patterns: Discovering that anger successfully gets needs met, establishes boundaries, or keeps others at a distance

The Importance of Treatment

Without intervention, anger patterns tend to worsen over time and become more entrenched. For children and adolescents, addressing anger early prevents these patterns from becoming permanent aspects of their personality and relationship style. For adults, treatment offers the opportunity to finally break free from patterns that may have been causing problems for decades.

The good news is that anger problems respond well to psychotherapy, regardless of age. With appropriate support, people can learn to understand what drives their anger, develop healthier ways of expressing emotions, improve their relationships, and find greater peace in their daily lives.

Evidence-Based Treatment Approaches

I use evidence-based psychotherapy approaches that have been proven effective for anger problems across all age groups. Treatment is tailored to the individual’s age, circumstances, and specific needs:

For Adults: Therapy focuses on understanding your personal anger triggers and patterns, developing practical skills for managing anger in the moment, changing thought patterns that fuel intense reactions, improving communication and conflict resolution skills, processing underlying issues like trauma or unresolved pain, and building awareness of emotions beyond anger. The work is collaborative, non-judgmental, and aimed at helping you develop a healthier relationship with this powerful emotion.

For Children and Adolescents: The most effective treatment for young people’s anger problems centers on working with parents to modify parenting approaches and develop new skills appropriate for the child’s developmental stage. This isn’t about blame—it’s about recognizing that even well-intentioned strategies can sometimes inadvertently maintain anger patterns. The focus is on reducing power struggles, minimizing parents becoming targets of anger, replacing disciplinarian methods with teaching approaches, and strengthening the parent-child relationship. Children and teens also benefit from individual sessions to build emotional awareness, self-regulation skills, and healthier ways of expressing their needs.

Throughout my work at the Center for Children in La Plata and in private practice, I’ve seen individuals and families make remarkable progress in transforming anger patterns and rebuilding damaged relationships.

Why Psychotherapy Rather Than Medication?

While medications are sometimes helpful for underlying conditions like depression, anxiety, or ADHD that may contribute to anger, they don’t address anger patterns themselves. Psychotherapy offers tools for understanding and changing the thoughts, behaviors, and relationship dynamics that maintain problematic anger. The skills learned in therapy become resources you or your family member can use for a lifetime.

Taking the Next Step

If anger has been affecting your life or your family’s wellbeing, reaching out for help is a sign of strength and wisdom. You don’t have to continue struggling with patterns that cause pain and damage to important relationships.

I invite you to call me at 410-970-4917 or email edgewaterpsychotherapy@gmail.com to schedule an initial consultation. Together, we can explore how evidence-based psychotherapy can help you or your loved one develop better emotional control, improve relationships, and find greater peace and satisfaction in daily life.