New Anger Management Certification Training Dates

Our Anger Management Professional Certification training is quickly becoming one of the recognized and used anger management models. With almost 40 participants at our last anger management training seminar in San Bernadino, our training organization, Century Anger Management has expanded its 2006 calendar.

Participants of our last training were so enthusiastic about the ease of use of our model, "The 8 Tools of Anger Control" and our workbook, "Anger Management for the Twenty-first Century" that we sold out of all of our copies at the training. We will be offering new professional certification locations in Long Beach, Ventura and San Diego for the upcoming months of 2006.

We currently have providers through out the state of California and other locations in the U.S. We also have affiliates in Malaysia and are in discussions with other affliates in parts of Europe. For more information about our training and the Century Anger Management model of intervention please visit either www.centuryangermanagement.com or www.ajnovickgroup.com.

Chapman University Presentation a Success

Yesterday, I gave a presentation to over 400 students and faculty at Chapman University on the subject of Anger Management. Their interest was to learn more on how to help college students become aware of the skills needed to better manage and control their own anger and aggression. I went over the concepts of our curriculum, "Anger Management for the Twenty-first Century", which is approved by the California State Board of Corrections for the training of Parol, Probation and Correctional officers. Topics covered where skills in effective communication and listening, how to have better judgement and impulse control, empathy, stress management, forgiveness, positive self-talk, and much more.

College students are under a tremendous amount of stress and are often over looked as a population that has a problem with anger. Most of the students as this conference raised their hand when asked if they "had an anger problem". Most felt that if they could get exposed to skills in how to more effectively control their anger outbusts they would want to participate.
I believe that every college as part of their risk management program should install an anger management requirement using a model that focuses on the skills in our curriculum. If colleges can teach students to effectively manage anger, they will ultimatly reduce the number of violent acts agaists their classmates.

Changing Self-Talk Helps

Change That Self-Talk

It is crucial to change your self-talk before returning to your partner, co-worker, or friend, or else you may find yourself angrier when you return than you were when you left. This is the time to use Tool 4 frou our client workbook "Anger management for the Twenty-first Century"—changing that conversation with yourself. Following are additional self-talk phrases that may be especially helpful to you during your “Retreat and Think Things Over” time. Check those that might apply to your situation and those that would be helpful to you:

{ }I am responsible for my own anger and my own feelings
{ }Maybe we are trying to solve an unsolvable (perpetual) problem
{ } I need to look at my part in the conflict
{ } Nobody is perfect. I can forgive myself for behaving badly.
{ } Nobody is perfect. I can forgive him/her for behaving badly.
{ } I must remember all the reasons I love him/her
{ } Maybe I expect too much from others
{ } Maybe I expect too much from myself
{ } I need to work on seeing things from his/her point of view
{ } My partner is doing the best she/he can
{ } It doesn’t matter who is “right” – solving the problem is the important thing
{ } I will try to solve the problem, according to what my heart told me in “freeze-frame”
{ } Having a good relationship is more important than “winning” this issue
{ } It is damaging to our children to witness this conflict
{ } This issue is not that important – I will pick my battles
{ } I can decide how I will respond best to this situation
{ } I have handled more stress than this in the past
{ } I let myself get out of the box by ignoring my warning signs
{ ] I can repair the emotional damage I did
{ } I will try a “softer” startup to start a discussion going when I get back
{ } Maybe we can find a compromise to the issue or problem

Recent Family Violence Project Conference

The AJ Novick Group was recently an exhibitor at the Family Violence Project conference for "Children in Need" last month. This was an excellent conference on protecting children and adolescents from danger and violence at home, school, and in their communities. We were asked to exhibit at this conference due to our involvement helping teens through the Orange County Sheriff's Department youth diversion program. Adolescent violence and aggression is becoming an epidemic and this conference focused on interventions working with youth. Judge Pamela Isles was the key note speaker and she gave wonderful information on the cycle of violence from the perspective of a Superior Court judge.

Anger management is an extremely effective intervention working with adolescents. It teaches them concrete skills in a variety of areas including judgment and impulse control, effective communication, stress management, forgiveness, emotional awareness, self-talk, expectation management, and much more. Our approach, using the Century Anger Management model has been highly effective working with adolescents. The feedback from the Sheriffs department has been extremely positive and we hope that more parents will turn to Anger Management to help their children with learning these effective strategies.

For more information on our Anger Management programs working with Adolescents, please visit our website at www.ajnovickgroup.com

New Approval Granted for AJ Novick Group

It is very difficult for providers in anger management to gain approval by probation departments and other governmental agencies. Our curriculum, entitled "Anger Management for the Twenty-First Century", which was co-authored by licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Tony Fiore and myself, Ari Novick, M.A., was developed after a very extensive literature review of current and past research on the field of anger management. The effectiveness of this model is currently being evaluated, and the results to date are looking extremely promising for helping clients reduce aggressive and hostile behaviors as well as improve communication skills, developed better judgment and impulse control, learn how to forgive others, and increase empathy and emotional awareness.

The AJ Novick Group along received full approval by the California Department of Corrections (now called the Corrections Standards Authority) for the training of correctional staff, parole, probation officers and management using our curriculum and training materials. This govermental agency is considered to be one of the defining groups, where there are currently no state laws to regulate anger management providers or the materials used. They were extremely impressed with our model and newly developed training plan. Our Certification number is 03530-031088. This is very exciting news, as there are very few organizations that have received this type of approval in the field of Anger Management. This curriculum has also been recently approved by the National Anger Management Association, which is also exciting news.

For questions or inquires, please feel free to visit our site at http://www.ajnovickgroup.com/ or contact [email protected]

Some thoughts on Anger Management

I recently had the good fortune to meet with one of our Superior Court Judges in Orange County to discuss his views on anger management. As an approved provider for the Probation Department, he asked me if I thought anger management helps. My response was that all of my participants take a pre and post educational evaluation and almost unanimously they improve over the course of the program. He also asked if I only offer the "10-week" program. I informed him that I offer programs up to 52 weeks. In Orange County, participants are typically mandated for 10, 12, or 22-week programs and very rarely up to 52 weeks. I also informed him of our new curriculum, “Anger Management for the 21st-Century”, which is an educationally based model, introduced earlier this year. It is currently being used by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department's youth diversion program, the Capistrano Unified School District, as well as the Orange County Probation Department.

As with any curriculum, it takes time, energy and resources to learn the effectiveness, validity, and reliability of a new model of intervention. Currently, there are limited studies in the field of anger management that have clinically validated a single model with peer reviews. I believe there is latitude for a variety of models of anger management. Much more research needs to be done to decide what kinds of interventions work with the greatest result over an extended period of time. My exposure to the field is some what new, just a few years, and I am rapidly learning how important the intervention of anger management can be on those in need of help.

I also have been speaking with Raymond Novaco, Ph.D. He is a Professor and researcher at UC Irvine in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior and author of numerous books, articles and reviews in the field of Anger Management. He is the person who coined the term “Anger Management” back in 1975. He is currently reviewing our curriculum and has asked if I would be interested in doing some additional work together with him in the future. Dr. Novaco is also known for his clinically validated assessment tool, the Navaco Anger Scale (NAS) and Provocation Inventory (PI).

The Century Anger Management (CAM) model is based on 8 tools of anger control:
Tool #1 Dealing with Stress
T00l #2 Empathy
Tool #3 Respond instead of React
Tool #4 Change that conversation with yourself
Tool#5 Assertive Communication
Tool #6 Adjust those Expectations
Tool #7 Forgive, but don't forget
Tool #8 Retreat and think things over

For more information please visit our website at http://www.ajnovickgroup.com/. For more information on the interests of anger management providers there are two useful sites to review. http://www.namass.org/ and http://www.angermanagementproviders.com/

When it's Time for Anger Management

The AJ Novick Group was recently featured in HR Magazine!

"Fortunately, the majority of angry employees aren’t assailants in the making. “Most of the people I see are not violent,” says anger management provider Ari Novick, president of the AJ Novick Group in Laguna Beach, Calif. “Instead, they’re simply people who have a difficult time expressing anger in an appropriate way.” For some, rage is less an explosion than a slow burn. "

To read the full story click here: http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0605/0605andrews.asp

or visit http://www.ajnovickgroup.com/news.html

Learn to Adjust Expectations-A Smart Choice!

"Learning to adjust expectations is often tricky to do because different people have different ideas of this. One way to do it is to think about it when you are calm and cool. Things that seemed "reasonable" when you were worked up often seem rediculous and petty when you are relaxed and calm. Make sure that you make your important decisions when you are not in an escalated state of anger or stress.

Another way to do it is to compare someone's behavior with other people in that situation or age group. For instance, we have different expectations for teens and adults, for single people and married people, for normal cercumstances and difficult ones.

If you are still not sure if your expectation is reasonable, try asking peers or friends to give you honest feedback. Good friends will tell you the truth and help you adjust those expecations in line with common standards in your social group or community."--Published in our book, Anger Managment for the Twenty-first Century.

Ari Novick, M.A.

Anger Management Home Study

It might be difficult to attend a weekly anger management class due to a busy work schedule or personal life. One option is to take a comprehensive home study course in anger management. Home study anger management programs can offer some of the same benefits as its weekly counterpart without the time commitment to coming to weekly classes. The AJ Novick Group recently produced two hight quality instructional and educational anger management home study programs. These programs are suitable for most court referrals, couples, individuals, and adolescents as well as business professionals or law enforcement personel. For more detailed information please visit www.ajnovickgroup.com for more information.