While you certainly can’t get far in athletics without a healthy passion for the game, sometimes the line between performance-enhancing enthusiasm and inappropriate anger becomes blurred. In recent posts, we’ve talked about a few professional players – from soccer to baseball – who have had to face consequences for their rage-driven outbursts.<\/p>\n
How can you tell whether your frustration over an incomplete pass or tackle is indicative of a greater anger management issue\u00a0or\u00a0just a sign of your dedication?<\/p>\n
Dr. Mitch Abrams, a psychologist who specializes in clinical, sport and forensic consulting, touched on this issue in his book, “Anger Management in Sport<\/a>.” According to Dr. Abrams, it often comes down to instrumental aggression versus reactive aggression.<\/p>\n “Instrumental aggression is\u00a0goal-directed aggression in which harm to another is not the primary goal, although it can be a secondary result of the action,” wrote Abrams. “Reactive aggression, by comparison, is behavior that has as its primary and sometimes solitary goal to do harm to someone,” and is “usually in response to a perceived injustice.”<\/p>\n Think about all the times you’ve ever gotten angry on the field. Have you ever lashed out at a teammate or opposing player because you felt they’d wronged you? Or do you use that aggression and adrenaline as fuel for your performance? It’s ok to get worked up over the course of a game, but\u00a0how\u00a0you release that energy makes all the difference.<\/p>\n If you often find yourself getting into altercations when you play sports, it could be a sign that you need\u00a0anger management classes<\/a>. Our Web-based programs have been developed to help you identify your triggers and respond to difficult situations without resorting to abuse or intimidation. Not sure if\u00a0online anger management courses<\/a>\u00a0are for you? Browse through our program offerings or check out our testimonials page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While you certainly can’t get far in athletics without a healthy passion for the game, sometimes the line between performance-enhancing enthusiasm and inappropriate anger becomes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog",""],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44490,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions\/44490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masteringanger.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}