How to Stay Steady and Sturdy

Parts 1 & 2

Wendy Behary

When anger enters the treatment room, whether or not it’s directed at us, it can often take us by surprise, rattle our composure, sidetrack the therapy session, and overwhelm us with fear, fury, humiliation, or other triggered emotions. If we allow our clients’ anger to take over sessions, we’re shortchanging them and thwarting the therapeutic process. In this workshop, you’ll focus on practical strategies for dealing with angry clients, including:

• Assessing the different modes of anger (bully, resentful adult, or childlike victim)
• Evaluating how to respond most effectively to each of these modes of anger
• Identifying and defusing your own emotional triggers in the face of a client’s anger
• Applying the technique of empathic confrontation and limit-setting to help clients replace self-defeating angry reactions with more healthy and adaptive responses

Continued with workshop 512

Wendy Behary, LCSW, is the founder and director of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and The New Jersey Institute for Schema Therapy. She’s the author of Disarming the Narcissist and Let’s Face It!.