Psychotherapy for Anger and Jealousy

It may surprise you that often anger and jealousy happen because a person is frightened. You may see them as being scary, shouting, angry, manipulative , perhaps even being abusive or violent but deep down they are probably very scared. In the case of someone being jealous, they are probably frightened of losing love, friendship, self-esteem. It is rarely about being jealous of someone else's car!

When a person flies off into a rage over what appears to be nothing to someone else eg another car pulls out in front of you unexpectedly - do you really want to force the other driver off the road and hit them?

                            anger + anger + anger =ANGER

                                             ANGER + ANGER + ANGER = ANGER!

In your brain you have two hot buttons (amygdalae) that respond to situations where they think your life is in danger by giving you a huge dose of adrenalin, your heart beats much faster and your muscles are prepared for the Fight or Flight Syndrome. So, basically you either stand and fight the hungry lion or run away from it very fast. As we don't have many wild lions in the UK, being late for work, someone pulling out in front of you unexpectedly, moving house, changing job, getting married, getting divorced, being made redundant, bereavement and a thousand other little stresses will all help to trigger the response.

The three important facts are:

 a) that you can learn to control it

b) you probably can't learn to control it without someone helping you to learn how to do it

c) it is easy to control it for good once you know how to do it.