
Anger Management
22 Wednesday Mar 2023

22 Wednesday Mar 2023
15 Wednesday Mar 2023
Posted Handout, Mental Health, Psychoeducation, recovery
inI often do men’s groups and have worked with men in recovery from intoxicant use. Below is a handout I sometimes use to facilitate discussion.
1. SAMHSA studies (1996 and 2000) have found that the vast majority of American men over 12 years of age (82.6%) had used alcohol at least once in their lifetime. The data indicate that 9% of men reported heavy alcohol use (five or more drinks at one time in the previous month), compared to 2% of women. Approximately 34% of the sample reported using illicit drugs.
2. Men are more than twice as likely to develop substance use disorders as women. Men begin using substances earlier than women and have more opportunity to try drugs. Men become intoxicated twice as often as women and are 3-4 times more likely to experience problem drinking and alcoholism. These patterns cross all demographic lines of race, income, education, marital status, and geographic location.
3. Men suffer far more adverse consequences of substance abuse than women. Clearly, the social construction of masculinity plays a significant role in these statistics.
4. Men’s attitudes toward alcohol and drugs tend to be generally less negative than women’s attitudes. The use of substances is not viewed as a problem for men but rather as a rite of passage, a sign of true manliness. By contrast, substance use is more likely to be viewed as something for women to avoid due to increased sexual vulnerability. Moreover, such behavior is viewed as incompatible with female roles, including family and relationship expectations.
5. Co-occurring psychiatric disorders occur commonly among men. One study found that 55% of the men identified as having a substance abuse problem also experienced mental health problems. Men often suffer from depression in conjunction with a substance abuse problem. On the other hand, men are not as likely as women to express their feelings of guilt, sadness, or worthlessness (all signs of depression) and may engage in reckless behavior as a way to deal with their depression. Men are also at greater risk of depression when they have experienced a trauma such as combat, an accident, or physical violence.
6. Men are also at greater risk for co-occurring medical problems, such as disorders of the liver, pancreas, and the neurological and gastrointestinal systems. Heavy alcohol use correlates with greater risk of prostate cancer and lower amounts of testosterone. Men who abuse alcohol are more likely to engage in unprotected sex and are at greater risk of contracting HIV, hepatitis, and other STDs.
7. Violence is closely associated with substance use and abuse among men. The relationship between early childhood sexual trauma and substance abuse in men has been well documented. Substance using and abusing men also show high rates of violence.
8. Men who use and abuse substances also tend to have higher rates of problems related to fatherhood and families. They are twice as likely not to pay child support as those without
alcohol and drug problems. Substance abuse and violence may also be a factor in separating men from their families. The results of this alienation are dramatic: when men are not in relationships or do not have children they are less likely to complete treatment.
08 Wednesday Mar 2023
Posted Handout, Honesty, Uncategorized
inTags
22 Wednesday Feb 2023
Posted Coping Skills, Handout, Stress
inTags
Alter the situation
If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Figure out what you can do to change things so the problem doesn’t present itself in the future. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life.
There as many ways to reduce stress as there are stars. I use and recommend that people engage a variety of healthy coping and preemptive stress reducing techniques.
15 Wednesday Feb 2023
Posted Coping Skills, Handout, Stress
inTags
Avoid unnecessary stress
Not all stress can be avoided, and it’s not healthy to avoid a situation that needs to be addressed. You may be surprised, however, by the number of stressors in your life that you can eliminate.
There as many ways to reduce stress as there are stars. I use and recommend that people engage a variety of healthy coping and preemptive stress reducing techniques.
08 Wednesday Feb 2023
Posted Handout, Mental Health, Self Esteem
inI am a group therapist who generally works with adults. I facilitate groups using creative arts, processing oriented, or psycho-education. Sometimes I actually sort of combine these in to a psycho-educational process oriented creative group. I provide info (psycho-educational, we talk about it from a personal perspective, and than create something out of the discussion.
One thing I have notice over the decades is that when people are stressed or overwhelmed about events in their life they tend towards a negative self perception. Below is a handout that I often use. One way of using this is to start out discussing what is positive self esteem, how you get it, maintain it, and why bother with it. I than pass out the hand out and folks write and than we share it in the group or in groups of 2 or 3 folks.
Positive Statements about you
25 Wednesday Jan 2023
Posted Coping Skills, Handout
inTags
With this handout I usually had folks write in the category areas what worked for them, what didn’t work, and what will work in the future.
18 Wednesday Jan 2023
Posted Handout, Uncategorized
inTags
A basic handout I have used with groups. Ideally I use handouts only to get a conversation going. The handout becomes a frame work for people to open up and start sharing.
Cognitive Distortions and Strategies to dispute them
11 Wednesday Jan 2023
Posted Anger, Anxiety, emotions, Handout, Mental Health
inOnce a week I facilitate a anger management group. I use a variety of handouts and activities to have a process oriented group interaction. One of the hand outs I use is below. I use it in 1 of 2 ways. I have folks fill it out first and then we discuss or we go through it together and discuss. We explore as a group, learning from each other.
ANGER WORDS
anger disgust grumpiness rage aggravation dislike hate resentment agitation envy hostility revulsion annoyance exasperation irritation scorn bitterness ferocity jealousy spite contempt frustration loathing torment cruelty fury mean-spiritedness vengefulness destructiveness grouchiness outrage wrath
Other:_________________________
Prompting Events for Feeling Anger
Losing power.
Losing status.
Losing respect.
Being insulted.
Not having things turn out the way you expected.
Experiencing physical pain.
Experiencing emotional pain.
Being threatened with physical or emotional pain by someone or something.
Having an important or pleasurable activity interrupted, postponed, or stopped.
Not obtaining something you want (which another person has).
Other:_______________________________
Interpretations That Prompt Feelings of Anger
Expecting pain.
Feeling that you have been treated unfairly.
Believing that things should be different.
Rigidly thinking “I’m right.”
Judging that the situation is illegitimate, wrong, or unfair.
Ruminating about the event that set off the anger in the first place, or in the past.
Other:____________________________
Experiencing the Emotion of Anger
Feeling incoherent.
Feeling out of control.
Feeling extremely emotional.
Feeling tightness or rigidity in your body.
Feeling your face flush or get hot.
Feeling nervous tension, anxiety or discomfort.
Feeling like you are going to explode.
Muscles tightening. .
Teeth clamping together, mouth tightening.
Crying; being unable to stop tears.
Wanting to hit, bang the wall, throw something, blow up.
Other:__________________________
Expressing and Acting on Anger
Frowning or not smiling; mean or unpleasant facial expression.
Gritting or showing your teeth in an unfriendly manner.
Grinning.
A red or flushed face.
Verbally attacking the cause of your anger; criticizing.
Physically attacking the cause of your anger.
Using obscenities or cursing.
U sing a loud voice, yelling, screaming, or shouting.
Complaining or bitching; talking about how lousy things are.
Clenching your hands or fists.
Making aggressive or threatening gestures.
Pounding on something, throwing things, breaking things.
Walking heavily or stomping; slamming doors, walking out.
Brooding or withdrawing from contract with others.
Other:_____________________
Aftereffects of Anger
Narrowing of attention.
Attending only to the situation making you angry.
Ruminating about the situation making you angry and not being able to think of anything else.
Remembering and ruminating about other situations that have made you angry in the past.
Imagining future situations that will make you angry.
Depersonalization, dissociative experience, numbness.
Intense shame, fear, or other negative emotions.
Other:______________________
04 Wednesday Jan 2023
Posted Addiction, Drug Tests, Handout, Marijuana
inTags
People who are exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke may feel a bit of the “high” that comes with using the drug, a study finds. They may also feel unable to think clearly, and they may even have detectable levels of the drug in their urine or blood. But all of this happens only if they are exposed to marijuana smoke under severely unventilated conditions, the study found.
“If you’re going to breathe in enough passive cannabis smoke to feel high and potentially be slightly impaired, you could fail a drug test,” said Evan S. Herrmann, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “But this only happens under a very extreme situation.”
Cannabis is the world’s most commonly used illicit drug. It is often smoked in small, enclosed spaces with poor ventilation, according to the study.
Studies in the 1980s showed that such “social exposure” to pot smoke could trigger positive drug tests for cannabis’ main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). But such studies had several limitations. They used marijuana that had much lower potency than that available today and they failed to account for normal levels of ventilation in rooms. They also did not examine how people may feel or behave after such exposures.
“This study probes a question people have been wondering forever,” said Ziva Cooper, an assistant professor of clinical neurobiology at Columbia University, who was not involved in this research. “Do people actually get high from these ‘hot box’ effects? And if so, does it change your capabilities or cause you to fail a drug test?”
In the first study of its kind, Herrmann’s team recruited about 20 healthy people between the ages of 18 and 45, including some who smoked marijuana and some who didn’t use the drug. The researchers tested the participants’ blood, saliva, urine and hair samples for cannabis biomarkers, and then asked six smokers and six nonsmokers to relax in a Plexiglas and aluminum smoke chamber about the size of a dorm room. Participants underwent two separate sessions, each an hour long.
The researchers gave each of the six smokers 10 marijuana cigarettes, each containing 1 gram of high-potency weed, and instructed them to smoke at their leisure for the hour while the six non-smokers sat by their side in the chamber.
During one test session, the room’s ventilation system was switched on, allowing air to flow in and out at a standard office-building rate. In the other session, the researchers restricted the airflow in the chamber. After the 60 minutes, each participant completed a series of biological, cognitive and subjective surveys and tasks at regular intervals for up to 34 hours after exposure.
“Our results are pretty consistent with what we expected,” Herrmann said. The new findings confirm “it’s really hard to get a positive [drug test result] from passive smoke unless you’re in an extreme scenario,” he said.
Under the unventilated, “hot box” condition, the nonsmokers showed slight impairments on cognitive tests, reported feeling high, and had detectable levels of THC in their blood and urine for up to 22 hours post-exposure. Those in the ventilated condition had much lower levels of THC in their blood, did not feel impaired or high, and did not test positive for THC in their urine.
But the unventilated room is not representative of most real-life situations, the researchers said. “We modeled the worst-case scenario,” Herrmann said. “You are in an enclosed room for an hour with 15 grams of cannabis being smoked.”
Ideally, the study would have had a placebo group, in which nonsmokers were exposed to smoke without THC. This would have helped the researchers determine whether the feeling of being high was due to the marijuana or simply a placebo effect, from being exposed to smoke.
Still, “this study is really important because it adds to our limited knowledge of the direct effects of cannabis smoking and the potential dangers of second-hand smoke,” Cooper said.