A lot of my clients find me when they are looking for a class in “anger management.” There are a number of ways to gain general knowledge about anger and how to better control it. Taking a class works for some people. For others finding knowledge and techniques in a book is effective.
I [...]

I purchased an updated version of Rollo May’s very fine book, Love and Will. My first copy was purchased at the annual book sale in Hyde Park, was already worn when I got it, and is now very well worn.
 
I flipped to the section titled Love and Will, finding this quote:
 

Both love and will are [...]

I selected several books I use in my practice to advertise on this page (through Amazon). I will get a buck or two if someone decides to purchase one after clicking on the icon, helping me cover the cost of my website. More important, these books are very good resources for someone trying to improve [...]

Assertiveness is a very powerful approach to interactions with other people. Frequently people get trapped in old ways of interacting that do not work in an adult world. Without thinking about doing something different or getting some training, they continue to do what worked, or at least seemed to work earlier in their life. Pouting [...]

Sometimes therapists talk about people having layers of feeling. The idea is that under sadness might be anger, under anger, might be loneliness, and so on. I was thinking about anger and how common it is, especially among men. It dawned on me that feeling angry about having another feeling might be a better [...]

A group of research psychologist and neuroscientists were asked twelve questions that were then formed into a book called The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, edited by Paul Ekman and Richard Davidson (1994). Of course they covered a lot more than 10 things and each author had a different theory. Here are 10 ideas that [...]

I brought a new kitten home a few weeks ago. Now she is more an adolescent. Her name, by the way, is Mimi. She reminded me that people (and sometimes kittens) are an “independent center of initiative.”

I have included the following ideas about emotion in several posts. But remember, repetition, like that used by our coaches and teachers, is a good thing. This is the short version of emotion that more easily fits in a tool bag:
· Emotion is a mental state in [...]

We were finishing a series of sessions and my client had done very well. He accomplished all of his goals concerning an anger issue. Then we talked about how counseling could help a lot of people and that the way counseling went wasn’t what my client had expected.
The compliment… “It wasn’t weird or anything.”
I’ll take [...]

Over the last three years I have developed an approach for counseling people with anger issues. My approach is intended to engage the mostly men I counsel for anger. A lot of I what I do with anger clients is help them understand interpersonal relationships and build better tools for working within a relationship. The [...]