Activities for Anger Management Groups

What are useful activities for anger management groups and why is anger management helpful?

Anger is a very destructive emotion. If left unchecked, anger can cause all kinds of physical and mental health problems, and when anger turns into aggression, the results can ruin lives.

Anger management therapy groups can be a very useful way of helping people with anger issues learn to deal with their negative emotions and replace anger and aggression with more assertive ways of coping.

An anger management group will be led by a trained therapist or social worker and the session will include a number of activities that encourage the members to participate and get involved.

Activities for Anger Management Groups

Role Playing
Role playing activities are useful in that they encourage participants to recreate situations where anger might be an issue. For example, one participant might pretend to push another in an aggressive manner that would normally lead to an outburst of anger.

Role playing in this way can help the group find healthier ways of dealing with the situation and learn techniques for handling their anger and frustration so that the situation is not allowed to escalate in a destructive manner.

Writing Exercises
Writing exercises and activities for anger management often follow a preset curriculum in conjunction with other exercises such as games and role play. Writing activities might involve questionnaires given to participants.

These can provide the therapist with more information in the early sessions. Writing exercises can also include more reflective exercises help the participants gain a greater level of self awareness about their own anger issues.

Writing Activities
Writing activities for anger management groups are a useful way of teaching the participants more about what situations are likely to trigger their anger and frustration as well as what thoughts might precede such an outburst and how they can learn to control their temper.

Games
Games are very useful activities for anger management groups as they are challenging on many levels: games soon place participants in a losing position, thus causing anger and frustration.

Competitive games also are a good opportunity for the group and its leader to reflect upon and discuss how anger develops and what are the best ways for the participants to cope with the situation.

Games such as Jenga and Operation are great for anger management groups to play as they create a situation where the player is not in control, a scenario that often leads to feelings of anger and frustration in susceptible individuals, but any popular board game will do. These games also require some skill and are challenging enough to appeal to most adults.

Activities for Anger Management Groups: Kids

Anger management groups designed for children are not all that dissimilar to those aimed at adults. Role play and games such as Jenga can be just as useful for children in a group therapy setting.

Other group activities for children include the “water spill game”, which involves splashing a small amount of water on a participant. This helps to teach the child that not all issues need to be blown up into a major problem.

Another popular activity is asking the child to open a milk carton with a spoon.