Conflict Inoculation: A Catalytic Therapy for Conditioning Emotional Stability For Interpersonal Conflict

“Anger Management” is the most popular lay term today for any therapy designed to eliminate destructive rage in relationships. The therapeutic community also uses the expression “anger management” most frequently, in lieu of any other term, when marketing to the public’s needs in this area. From a marketing perspective, this makes good sense. Yet, there is a subtle loss of opportunity if all concerned take the term too literally. The word “management” implies conscious control as in having to control one’s feelings. Therefore, anger management is about learning skills to consciously avoid, redirect, or cap off intense angry feelings that may otherwise be overwhelming. The keyword here is “consciously.” With anger management such a marketable term, there is a strong bias to meet public demand with therapies that rely on “top down processing” (i.e. therapies that rely on conscious insight to manage powerful emotions involving lower brain structures). The present protocol is an alternative.