What Are the Best Tips for Anger Management for Teens?

Some of the best tips for anger management for teens include methods of redirecting the focus of attention, finding healthy ways to express the anger and discussing ways to talk about anger issues. Occasionally, anger management for teens will involve keeping an anger journal, finding an anger management sponsor and developing alternative behavior plans. Another tip for aiding in anger management for teens is to develop a list of positive and negative results for anger outbursts, as well as to create better ways of expressing the anger.

Anger is a healthy and needed emotion when expressed in a positive manner. The problem many teens encounter is the belief that all anger is bad or unhealthy. One of the most important tips in dealing with anger management for teens is the ability to explain to the teens that all anger is not necessarily bad. Another important tip for providing anger management for teens is to form a group counseling or discussion session. This allows the teens to identify how the unhealthy manner of expressing anger has impacted other teens. This also spawns discussion on better methods of expressing the anger through comparison of results from different methods.

Actively listening to the teens is perhaps one of the best methods of understanding their anger. A child will typically tell a counselor or anyone listening to him or her what the troubling issue is. A tip is for the interviewer to listen carefully enough to what is being said to be able to ask the proper questions to draw the reason out. A tip for effective communication with a teen is for the interviewer to be honest with him or her and not to tell the teen untruths. It is typically best that counselors do not tell the teen what they want to hear just to appease the teen, as this behavior can be the reason for the anger problem in the first place.

Other tips for anger management for teens include having the teen keep an anger journal and an alternative to anger reaction list. The anger journal should maintain a record of unhealthy anger outbursts, the reason for the outburst as well as the result of the anger outburst. An anger alternative reaction list must list both a typical anger outburst that the teen commonly expresses and an alternative reaction that could better express the teen's feelings. In order to provide healthy anger management for teens, a tip for the alternative reaction list is to develop the list in a group setting. This allows fellow teens to share ideas for managing anger.