If You're Looking for Help Online With Your Anger, You're Not Alone
Perhaps you've promised yourself countless times that it won't happen again. Then something happens. You feel provoked, criticised, ignored, rejected or treated unfairly and, before you've had time to think, you're angry again. You may shout, argue, become defensive or aggressive, or say things you deeply regret afterwards. Or perhaps most of the anger stays inside, becoming resentment, irritation, passive-aggression and a constant feeling that something isn't right. Afterwards can come remorse, shame and another promise that next time will be different. I don't think that makes you an angry person.
I see you as someone who has become conditioned into an angry response. That distinction matters because conditioned responses can be understood and changed. Over more than twenty-five years, I've worked with people of all ages and from many different walks of life who have struggled with anger.
You are certainly not alone.
Anger Is Usually Not the Real Problem
One of the most important things I've learned from working with anger is that anger seldom tells us the whole story. Underneath it I often find hurt, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, fear, injustice or a terrible feeling of powerlessness. Sometimes I find love and loyalty too. We can become angry because somebody we care about has been hurt or has died, because something precious to us feels threatened, or because we desperately want another person to understand something that matters deeply to us. None of this excuses behaviour that hurts other people. We remain responsible for what we do. But condemning yourself for becoming angry doesn't help you understand why it keeps happening.
Understanding what is happening beneath the anger gives us a much more useful place to start.
Why Do I Keep Losing My Temper?
Many of the people I've worked with understand perfectly well that their anger isn't helping them. They know they shouldn't shout. They know an argument is escalating. They may even know, while they're saying something, that they're going to regret it. Yet knowing all of that doesn't necessarily stop the reaction. That's because an angry response can become
conditioned and automatic. The reaction can begin before conscious thought has had much opportunity to intervene, which is why simply trying harder not to become angry is often not enough. Our work is about slowing that process down and understanding what happens between the trigger and the angry response. When you begin to recognise the pattern
as it is happening, you begin to recover something anger has been taking away from you:
The ability — and the power — to choose how you respond.
How STOP RIPPing® Works
My work is based on the
RIPP Method — Resistance, Injustice, Powerlessness and Pain. RIPP describes an emotional process I began recognising repeatedly during many years of working with clients. Something happens that we strongly
resist. We experience what is happening as wrong, unfair or an
injustice. At the same time, we feel
powerless to make what is happening conform to what we believe should be happening. Beneath that struggle is emotional
pain. For some people, that process moves outward and becomes anger. It can happen extraordinarily quickly, particularly when something happening in the present connects with experiences and emotional associations that have developed over many years. You may experience only the anger without being consciously aware of everything happening underneath it. STOP RIPPing® helps you learn to recognise
your own version of that process. Rather than simply asking:
“How do I control my anger?” we begin asking:
“What is happening inside me that keeps producing this angry response?”
That gives us a very different place from which to work.
A Brief, Focused and Pay-As-You-Go Approach
I don't believe meaningful change necessarily requires years of counselling, nor do I believe you should have to commit to a lengthy programme before discovering whether an approach is helping you.
Sessions are £100 for a full hour, one-to-one with me. You pay for each session individually, with no predetermined number of sessions and no package to purchase. We begin working from the first session. After each session,
you decide whether another would be useful. Some people need more help than others because every person, their history and their circumstances are different. There is therefore no correct number of sessions. My aim isn't to keep you attending for any longer than you need. In fact,
my aim is to make myself redundant. I want you to understand your own pattern so well that you can recognise what is happening and interrupt it without needing my help.
BOOK INITIAL SESSION
I Don't Teach You About Anger. We Work With Your Anger.
I don't believe you need hours of theory about anger before you can begin changing the way you respond. You don't need to understand how an engine works before you can drive a car. In the same way, you don't need lengthy explanations about the psychology of anger or generic exercises before we can begin working with what is actually happening in your life. From the first session, we focus on
your anger, your triggers, your relationships and the situations in which things go wrong. We look at what happens beneath your reaction, why particular situations have so much power, how your response may have become conditioned, and where there is an opportunity to interrupt that process. You will learn to understand your anger, but that understanding comes through working with
your own real experiences, rather than studying anger as a subject.
We don't spend sessions talking about the work we might eventually do. We get down to the work from the beginning.
What We'll Work On Together
Every person's anger is different, so our sessions don't follow a rigid, one-size-fits-all curriculum. We'll look at your circumstances, your relationships and the situations that trigger your anger. We'll explore what happens emotionally and physically as the response begins and, most importantly, help you recognise the point at which the RIPP process begins to take over. The aim isn't to suppress legitimate feelings, make you passive or take away your confidence and assertiveness. You can disagree with someone. You can say no. You can stand up for yourself. You can challenge something you genuinely believe is wrong —
without being controlled by anger.
The goal is not to take away your strength. It is to give you greater freedom over how you use it.
Private, One-to-One Work With Me
Every STOP RIPPing® session is private, confidential and
one-to-one with me personally. You won't be passed to another practitioner and you won't be expected to discuss deeply personal experiences in front of a group. When we meet, I'm not interested in judging you for things you may already deeply regret. I want to understand you and what is happening underneath the anger. Some people who come to me have reached a point where it feels as though everyone sees only their anger. Partners may be exhausted or desperate, families may have withdrawn, friendships may have suffered and jobs may be threatened. Eventually, the person themselves can begin to believe that anger is simply who they are. I don't start from that position. Behind the anger I very often meet someone who doesn't want to keep hurting the people they love, doesn't want to keep losing control and doesn't want to spend the rest of their life regretting what happens in moments of anger.
That's the person I'm interested in working with.
More Than Managing Anger
I don't want you to spend the rest of your life constantly trying to control something inside you. The purpose of STOP RIPPing® is to help you understand and interrupt the process that keeps producing the angry response. Anger rarely gives us what we're trying to achieve with it. Over time, it can destroy trust, erode love, damage relationships and leave us increasingly isolated from the very people who matter most. But an automatic response does not have to remain automatic forever. When you can recognise the pattern that was previously operating outside your awareness, you have the opportunity to respond differently. That is the difference between simply
managing anger and becoming free from being controlled by it. To me,
managing anger suggests an ongoing battle — anger versus you. I don't want you to spend your life fighting that battle.
The aim is not to become better at controlling your anger. It is to reach the point where anger no longer has the power over you that it once did — and you have the freedom to choose your response.
