Court Ordered Anger Management: It Really is a Big Deal

It's easy to think of court ordered anger management as something to not be too concerned about. But it is. If you've been ordered by a judge to take anger management classes, then you must take this very, very serious. If any part of the court ordered anger management obligation seems silly, you have to stop yourself, and remind yourself of the fact that the judge has dictated this be done. Often, these classes that are court ordered are all that stand between you and jail (though it isn't uncommon to find that jail sentence is coupled with court ordered anger classes). It won't all be cheesy, though.

There's some really hard, firm science in play here. It's sort of like car insurance: anger management classes aren't court ordered for no reason. The gist of the classes basically entails developing more control over your emotions. Study after study about court ordered anger control principles have shown that when there's problem anger, there's typically a problem with control of other emotions about the person as well. So, though these programs and regiments are referred to as "anger" control courses, they really deal with the entire spectrum of feelings and emotions. Now, again, you have to remember to try to take these things seriously. For some, even the word "feelings" or "emotions" tends to incite something along the lines of allergic reactions within some people. Sometimes, it's about being "cool." The person is too cool to be in these classes, and really dismisses the content of the programs outright, at the outset. If you fall into this category, you've got to fight this impulse.

This impulse will only do you harm down the line. The best piece of advice for of this mind would be to not react. Take in all of the information; don't come to any conclusions right away. Just take it all in (again, as silly as it all may seem), and make sure that you understand not only what the person's saying, but where the person's coming from. If you can't get into empathetic place about what this counselor's talking about, then you're trying hard enough. And believe this: it will be tough. There will be times wherein you'll basically say, "Forget court ordered anger management. I'm leaving." And people that do leave, they're usually people that feel that the whole matter's (A) hopeless and (B) too difficult, or they get angry because they don't like being challenged, especially when they don't want to be there in the first place.

The bottom line is that whether you want to be there or not, you can learn something. And, failing to fulfill your court ordered anger management obligation could land you in jail.