Things around you seem to escalate very quickly. Your child seems to go from 0 to 60 in an instant. When something doesn’t go their way, you watch them escalate from what would be a minor issue for most children to a level of anger and irritation that your child can’t seem to manage.
Child Anger
Your child has a hard time pulling themselves back together once they’ve gone over the edge, and it’s really starting to impact the tone of your home and your child’s success in school and with peers.
The level of tension both in and surrounding your family is nearly unbearable. You are distressed, but you also feel terrible that your other family members have to deal with the fallout of your child’s behaviors. You wish you could wave a magic wand and restore a sense of calm to life, but you can’t seem to imagine how that life can ever be possible at the rate things are going.
Lately, you wish you could just disappear for a few days or weeks for peace and quiet where you aren’t waiting to batten down the hatches until the storms pass. You truly want to help your child feel less angry, but you now recognize that your child’s issues go deeper than you can manage.
So here you are, ready to reach out to see if therapy can help your child control their anger and restore a sense of order in your home.
A lot of the time, your child feels so overwhelmed by the emotions inside of them that they take their anger out on everyone else.
You truly want your child to find relief from the internal pressure that seems to make their emotions so ready to erupt. But you have no idea what else to do for your child to help them overcome their highly volatile temperaments. You never imagined it would get to this level. And you certainly didn’t expect you’d need to reach out for profession help.
Signs That Your Child Might Be Struggling with Anger
- Behavioral: your child is seen clenching their jaws or grinding their teeth, often has frequent anger outbursts, and/or cries frequently due to frustration with others or life
- Cognitive: your child blames others for their own mistakes or thinks everything is unfair
- Mood: your child often feels irritated, guilty, sad, or resentful
When You Seek Support for Your Child from The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
- Your child will learn to identify triggering situations and thoughts associated with anger
- Your child will learn how to frame thoughts in ways that make them less angry or no longer angry
- Your child will learn anger control strategies so that they will not later regret their actions
- Your child will learn to tolerate the feeling of anger and irritability
- Your child will learn that intense emotions will pass if they just “ride the wave”
The Anger Counseling Process
Therapy for children dealing with anger is intended to help children overcome the obstacles getting in their way of healthy relationships, social functioning, and school success as well as to help them feel better in their own skin. Together, your child and their therapist will work to understand the root of the symptoms and to effectively utilize the most current and powerful scientifically-backed, evidence-based therapies to tackle their anger and irritability when it arises.
Therapy for children with anger and irritability issues is focused on uncovering the underlying beliefs and emotions leading to the emotional overload. Sessions will help them learn proven techniques that can help them to more effectively manage the overwhelming feelings and respond more positively to such emotions through their behavioral choices and symptom management.
Here’s what to expect…
FIRST CONTACT: Free phone consult
Prior to beginning treatment with us, we want to make sure that we are a good fit for you and your child’s needs. For this reason, we offer a free 15-minute initial phone consult to learn more about your/your child’s current circumstances and to determine if we are the best resource for you. Assuming that we are a good match, you will then schedule an intake session.
WEEK ONE: Intake Session
During this initial 90-minute session, the assigned therapist will meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to gather background information on your child and to fill out rating scales to provide an assessment baseline upon which to build our treatment plan and goals.
WEEK TWO: Child Intake Session
During this 45- to 60-minute session, the therapist will interview your child as well as meet with you as the parent(s) to ask any follow-up questions which may be helpful in treatment planning and goal-setting to best meet your child’s needs.
WEEK THREE: Feedback Session
Now that we’ve thoroughly assessed your child’s needs, we will meet with you to discuss the diagnoses, identify starting goals, and provide education on the apparent causes and factors which are leading to your child’s troubling thoughts and behaviors.
WEEK FOUR and Beyond: Child Anger Therapy
At this point, you (and depending on your child’s age, your child) will attend regular weekly therapy sessions. A typical course of treatment calls for 12 to 16 weeks of therapy sessions, but treatment length depends on many factors and, therefore, could require more or less weeks. Additionally, your therapist may determine that you need to come more or less frequently, depending upon your child’s presenting symptoms.
Together, in each subsequent session, your child and their therapist will use evidence-based psychotherapy models to help your child learn to identify and address the challenges they experience. This typically includes the integration of techniques from Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based CBT, Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), or other evidence-based modalities.
Your therapist will help your child to learn positive coping skills for emotional regulation so that they can better ride the waves of emotion that are causing them distress. Lastly, they’ll learn how to gain control of their responses through the use of more helpful replacement behaviors.
TERMINATION: The Final Sessions
As your child gets closer to their therapy goals, we will develop a plan for successfully transitioning them into a life without weekly therapy. This often means moving sessions from once a week to every other week, to monthly sessions, or to finishing out services completely. We also work with you and your child to develop a relapse prevention plan at this time. Our goal is for your child to be able to retain what we have worked on together and to implement all they have learned in therapy outside of sessions in their everyday life.
Are we the right providers for you?
Click below to request more info, and we’ll be sure to give you all the details about how we can help you take back control of your life.
More About The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
As a team of licensed therapists, we are experts at teaching you to make the behavioral choices that get you closer to your goals.
We work from an evidence-based perspective. This means that our job is to help you understand your struggles and provide solutions proven to be very effective. Negative thoughts, distressing feelings, and unhelpful behaviors don’t have to be part of your life, and anxiety therapy at The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management is about changing the way you think, recognizing how your beliefs are holding you back, becoming informed, seeing the world more accurately, and engaging in behaviors that you won’t regret later.
We make it our mission to help you regain control of your life by providing effective strategies supported by science. We are dedicated to being on top of the most recent knowledge and helping you solve problems based on what the research says is effective. It is our passion to educate you on what is and isn’t working in your life so that you can get back in the driver’s seat and take yourself where you want to go.
Who Benefits Most from Child Anger Counseling
Therapy for children with anger management issues is best for those who need to replace behaviors that are negatively affecting their relationships with others, their own happiness, and their success in life with better coping skills.
Often, anger is a secondary emotion, one that helps to cover up the real root of the issues. Anger often masks sadness, hurt, or confusion and masquerades as control and power when we are feeling the exact opposite inside. Anger counseling will help your child to discover the emotional root of the problem so that they can better learn to deal with their feelings, self-soothe, and therefore, better interact with others.
Your child will benefit from anger counseling if:
- Your child is ready to learn how to better manage their emotions
- Your child is motivated to get control over emotional tirades
- Your family can commit to weekly sessions with the therapist
- You and your child are willing to practice helpful techniques outside of sessions
- You and your child are willing to collaborate with your therapist
There are certain situations where your child might not be ready for counseling sessions with us.
These include, but are not limited to :
- When your family does not have time to attend sessions on a weekly basis
- When you and your child are not ready to practice the techniques provided in therapy
- When your family cannot commit to the process of therapy for the full course of treatment
- When you want a quick fix
If you are currently experiencing any of these issues, we can provide you with appropriate referrals for your level of care.
What Does Anger Therapy Cost?
Anger counseling is a fee-for-service program which means that we require payment at the time services are provided. We would be considered an out-of-network provider and would be happy to provide you with receipts which include all of the information you’d need for submitting directly to your insurance company for your own reimbursement.
When and Where are the Counseling Sessions?
Our office is conveniently located at 259 Main Street in Chester, NJ, 07930.
Sessions are currently held by appointment only Monday – Saturday.
Your Next Steps
Your family absolutely can stop having to walk on eggshells around your child. Your child will learn the strategies that they need to effectively manage their overwhelming emotions.
Knowing how much your child is struggling with anger and irritability, it may seem like household peace is a long way off, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t proven, scientific ways to get your child the help that they need to be better able to control outbursts and negative reactions. They just need the support of a caring professional while they figure it out.
They will start to feel more in control of their responses to the frustrations of life. And they’ll also be able to engage better with others and feel better about themselves.
Ultimately, they will learn to self-manage their emotions in a better way. We can help.
Call 908-914-2624 or email us (info@anxietyandbehaviornj.com) to schedule your 15-minute phone consult to see if we’re a good fit for your child’s anger needs today!
Our Team
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Our therapists’ commitment to providing quality treatment and giving you practical, action-oriented strategies are why we are one of the most sought after mental health practices.
