Anger Management

Anger management is a learned response. Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence describes a series of brain imaging studies that tested two groups of people: one group was identified as being highly resilient to life's ups and downs. The other group was easily upset by life events. Richard Davidson, the Director of Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, tracked their brain functions as they performed several stressful tasks.

The resilient people made rapid recoveries from stress, with their prefrontal cortex starting to calm the amygdala--which is the remnant of our repitilian emotional brain, the brain that cannot negotiate itself out of an emotional rut; instead it floods the body with a cascade of cortisol or stress hormones.

The people in the resilient group were able to institute "stop orders" through the prefrontal cortex to keep the amygdala in check. They were optimistic, action oriented people who could change their self talk and look for action oriented solutions. The people in the vulnerable group were locked in inaction, misery, anger or depression.

Goleman is not suggesting that the resilient group is lucky; what he is saying is that we can change the way our prefrontal cortex responds to stress. We can learn to activate the prefrontal cortex so that our emotional reptilian brain can be put in check.

Enhancing the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex can help a child in the throes of an "explosive" episode. Dr. Ross W. Greene describes this situation in the explosive child as a form of "brain lock." The child gets locked into a response--anger-- and he has tremendous difficulty getting himself unlocked from it. Brian lock is a good explanation of what actually happens when a defiant child explodes.

In his book The Explosive Child, Dr. Greene provides several methods parents and teachers can use to handle defiant children. Ultimately his message is that we help the child develop executive skills that are often delayed in the explosive child. These skills can be and should be taught to children.