Anger, aggression, and impulsivity referrals, taught as a set of skills rather than a lecture on self-control.
Individuals referred after charges involving anger, aggression, threatening behavior, or impulsive decision-making. That includes assault, disorderly conduct, and property damage that happened in the middle of losing control.
Most people sent here have been told to calm down their whole lives. Nobody showed them how. Anger is a natural and normal emotion that everyone experiences, and it is not the problem on its own. What creates charges is what happens in the seconds between feeling it and acting on it. This program works on those seconds.
Regulation is a skill, not a personality trait. Skills are built through repetition, which is why the program is structured around practice rather than lecture.
Every session is grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, targeting the connection between thought, emotion, and behavior. Because the approach is skill-based, participants leave with strategies they keep using rather than compliance that ends with the court order.
Participants work from the P.R.O.C.E.S.S. Emotion Regulation Workbook, with structured exercises, reflection prompts, and CBT-based strategies in every session.
Tools taught across the program include the anger log and self-monitoring, identifying cognitive distortions such as black-and-white thinking and overgeneralization, assertive communication, mindfulness and grounding skills, and a written long-term emotion management plan.
There is no cost to the referring municipality. Program fees are paid by the participant, and payment arrangements can be made as long as the balance is paid before completion of the group.
A certificate of completion is issued only after a required final presentation in which the participant demonstrates mastery of the skills taught. Attendance alone does not complete the program.
Participants also receive three free individual or family counseling sessions, which may be used during the program or within 30 days of completion.
“Anger management” tells a participant they have a defect that needs correcting. Most people arrive already defensive about it, and defensiveness is the opposite of the openness the work requires.
In collaboration with Shelby County, RCS renamed the program Emotion Regulation because that names a skill a person can build rather than a flaw they have been sent to have fixed. Anger is not the problem. What happens between the feeling and the action is where the work lives, and the name should say so.
Since the change we have seen noticeably lower resistance and markedly stronger early engagement. Clinical content, program length, and court requirements are unchanged. Removing the stigma from the name does not lower the standard. It gets participants through the door willing to do the work, which is where every outcome starts.