GWEN HAM
Abnormal Psychology
Our overall programme is targeted at addressing the issue of emotional dysregulation and one of the emotions we scoped down was anger. We wanted to teach the children healthy methods to handle their anger and so the first activity was identifying triggers. In this activity, we helped the children to identify what triggers their anger by getting them to reflect on some of the words and actions that other people do that makes them angry. They also shared with us their reactions to their angry feelings and how they deal with anger. After penning these thoughts down in their journals and sharing their responses with the group members and us, we pointed out behaviours which were unhealthy in response to their angry feelings and suggested some healthy methods to deal with their anger.
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We chose to do this activity because according to Golden (2004), the first step to teaching children healthy anger management is by helping them identify and recognize the negative emotions behind their anger. This activity was effective in helping them manage their anger as most of the children were better able to choose suitable methods to handle their anger after identifying their triggers.
However, there were certain sentences that were too difficult for the children to understand such as, ‘triggers’. One recommendation to counter this problem and ensure a better understanding is to simplify our vocabulary while maintaining the overall meaning. For example, instead of ‘identifying triggers’, we can say ‘know what makes you angry’.
