I will be speaking to the Georgia Society for Clinical Social Work this evening, for an interactive workshop on understanding and treating men with a spectrum of anger control issues. Many of the men who come to see me have surface challenges of "anger issues." What I've found (and speculated for a long time) is that there is much more underneathe this anger, and that anger is most often a symptom of something else more deeply rooted. In fact, it's a powerful emotion; a normal emotion. The problem comes when we begin to blur the lines of experiencing an emotion and expressing a defeating behavior, such as aggression. These are not mutually exclusive, nor are they the same thing. I define aggression as intruding in someone else's space without their permission. This can be physically, verbally, or any other way one knowingly invades the space with another, often intending to assert oneself over the other. At the very least, the intention is to get away or make the source of the discomfort go away.
I'll be discussing the neurobiology and physiology of anger, laying out the sequence of events in our brains and bodies. I'll also discuss how our brain creates stories about interactions that lead us down paths of defensiveness and, sometimes, aggression.
If you work with men, identified as having "anger problems," please come join us for a laid back, informative evening at Hillside in midtown Atlanta. Admission is free, and CEUs are also free for members of GSCSW.
See you all there.