A series of guides to some of the basics of Christian schools work.
You can read the guide online or download it as a pdf.
Run an anger management group
However, it’s also worth noting there are challenges in working with groups:
Group dynamics are important and the students participating will need to be selected carefully in order to avoid any potential pitfalls. For example, two students who do not get on or trust each other, or students who bully or harass other students, may have a negative impact on how the group functions. Age may also be relevant: putting a Year 7 student in a group with Year 9 and 10 students may also create difficulties. Where the group dynamics are wrong, the chances of running a successful programme are much smaller.
A group may give rise to behaviour issues among group members who are more likely to be disruptive in this context than if on their own.
It may be hard to locate a suitable room for group work in a school. Most schools were not designed and built with pastoral work in mind and finding an appropriate space can be difficult for five or six people to work together without disturbance. Of course, one-to-one work also faces the same issue, although sometimes offices and smaller rooms can be used.
Key issues to address in anger management
Anger management programmes are increasingly common both in schools and elsewhere. In this section, we’ll think about some of the key areas that need to be covered and a few of the basic exercises and approaches available.
Triggers
For many young people, there are certain situations or events that cause them to get angry. Identifying these and helping the young person understand why they ‘trigger’ an angry response is an important stage in helping manage anger. For example, a young person may be especially sensitive about their family or their parents, perhaps for a specific reason like a family breakdown. As a result, if anyone insults or even comments on their family, this may be a trigger for the young person to become angry. Another example might be being told off by someone, like a teacher. The point of identifying these triggers is to help the young person either to steer clear of these situations altogether or be prepared with some ‘cooling down’ strategies if they cannot be avoided.
Common triggers among young people include:
A practical exercise to help identify triggers could include role play or a sorting task where young people have to put in order a list of possible triggers beginning with the most relevant to them.
Physical impact of anger
Most young people can identify anger as an emotion, but few of them recognise the huge physical effects of anger on their bodies. Getting angry has a strong physiological dimension. One of the most important lessons for a young person is recognising how long many of these effects take to subside. That means that although getting angry may have only taken a few moments, it may be many hours before the body returns to its normal state. In this period of time, the young person may be more likely to get angry again.
Physiological changes include:
It’s useful to work with young people to identify what kinds of physical impact anger has on them This work can be linked with looking at ‘cooling down’ techniques (see below) which can help alleviate some of these changes.
A practical exercise in looking at the physical effects of anger could involve writing the different suggestions from the group on a large outline of a body.
How you show your anger
People not only express their anger in different ways, they may also show anger differently according to the context they’re in. Anger may be shown in a very controlled way, where the young person feels in command of their actions, or it may be uncontrolled and the young person may talk about ‘not knowing what they were doing’. These are all important areas to explore.
Some people show anger in a visible and extroverted manner by shouting, slamming doors, swearing or even physical violence. Others show their anger in less visible ways like remaining quiet, ignoring, spreading false rumours or simply leaving a room. This way of showing anger does not mean the anger is less intense. It’s common in anger management programmes to talk about ‘visible’ anger and ‘invisible’ anger to describe these two different reactions.
Some people may be very quick to show their anger - classically called ‘hotheads’ - others may be ‘slow burners’ building up to a point where their anger comes out, often in an intense way.
Practical exercises to draw out how young people show anger could include reviewing when young people have got angry in the past week and how they showed it. Alternatively, young people could score from 1 to 10 a range of ways of showing anger according to how often it applied to them.
Cooling down and avoidance techniques
One of the problems with trying to help young people with their anger is that it may be almost impossible to remove the triggers or causes of the anger. For example, if a young person is struggling with various issues at home that provoke or cause anger, the reality may be that they have to continue living in that context and facing those issues. That means that learning to calm down as they feel anger rising, or cool down once they’re angry, becomes the most useful practical outcome of taking part in an anger management group. Giving plenty of opportunity to explore these techniques is therefore important in the currciulum to be covered.
In fact, most young people instinctively know the cooling down techniques that work for them. When asked how they can cool down, almost all teenagers will be able to name something they do to calm down. Often it’s listening to music, playing sports or doing something else physical, or perhaps lying on their bed at home. The first step in helping young people with cooling down techniques is therefore to help them recognise what already works for them and to think about using it not only when they have already got angry, but also when they sense that they are on the verge of doing so.
However, one way to calm down is usually not enough. Many methods may be impractical in school for example, and young people will need to think of other methods that they can have to hand to cover as many likely scenarios as possible. It’s a good rule of thumb for young people to have three known ways of cooling or calming down that they can try if needed. The group will need to explore what alternative ways of cooling down work for them, especially in a school context.
