by Justin Flam
Daily Lobo
UNM students can benefit from their anger, said Carol Wagner-Adams, manager of the counseling and therapy staff at the Student Health Center.
"Anger is not negative," she said. "The issue is in how do you learn to use it constructively."
Wagner-Adams is involved in organizing a Sept. 17 and 24, two-part anger management workshop.
Wagner-Adams said, the workshops, which will also have sessions in October and November, will last two hours where the goal is to help students redirect their anger in ways that will eventually be positive. Workshops will consist of small groups of individuals sharing their own experiences and discussing various ways of differently handling situations.
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"The workshop is not just for students that have anger that's out of control," Wagner-Adams said.
Instead, she added it is for all students - from those that have been recipients of uncontrolled anger to other individuals hoping to identify emotions that they typically do not address.
"Anger is one emotion that men are socialized to express and often times women are not," Wagner-Adams said.
She suggests that even those who do not consider themselves to have anger management problems could benefit from the workshop.
After several years of organizing similar workshops, UNM's Counseling and Therapy Services reconstructed the format according to input by various professionals. The adjustments made were structured around feedback received from students who had attended in past years.
"I think students become more restless as the semester begins to heat up," fine arts major Sam Johnsen said. "And getting together with others and talking about things can really help."
As a member of the Associated Students of UNM Crafts Studio, Johnsen said that he uses his work with ceramics as a way of alleviating the pressures of everyday life.
"During my childhood I would let problems build up." he said "Now I seem to talk about them earlier and kind of diffuse them before they become bigger problems."
Johnsen jokingly added that students attending the workshop will save themselves the expense of replacing goods lost through destructive behavior.
"You can learn not to destroy personal belongings every time something doesn't go your way," he said.
English major Shawn Brown said the workshop is one of many good campus resources for confronting and releasing frustration.
"I've found that a good game of racquetball allows me to relax and step outside of the bubble," Brown said.
Wagner-Adams said that students can use additional techniques that will help address their anger issues.
"Cooling down time is almost always a good idea," she said, adding that writing about issues that have caused anger can be a positive way of addressing them.
"We're not saying you shouldn't be angry," Wagner-Adams said "But it's important to know when you're angry and how you can use it positively."
