TOPIC · AGES 14–18

Anger Regulation

Arousal curve, triggers, and replacement behaviors — a session for the teen whose body moves faster than their words.

DBT
CBT
Mindfulness
Age fit
Why this deck is built for ages 14–18.

Anger in 14–18 reads as behavior rather than affect: the door-slam, the group-text rage, the athletic outburst the coach writes up, and the teen rarely arrives in the room saying the word angry. The body moves faster than vocabulary in this band, so the window to insert a skill between cue and spike is short and the rehearsal has to be quick and concrete — no abstract "use your coping skills" survives the first high-arousal moment. Peer-context escalation starts to supersede family-context escalation by mid-adolescence, so the trigger ladder is more often a hallway, a group chat, or a practice field than a kitchen table. Co-regulation with a caregiver matters because the spike physiologically blocks receptive language and the teen cannot install a new move while the household is still rewarding the old one. DBT distress-tolerance skills (TIPP, IMPROVE, ACCEPTS, wise-mind access) are used here as a skills pull the teen carries into the next spike, not as evidence that a DBT cycle was completed in one visit. Built for the teen whose body is faster than their words, and whose language catches up by Wednesday.

Clinical goals
What this topic is built to land.
  • Map the arousal curve from cue to spike to ride-out so the teen names where they live on it, not just where they erupted — the room gains a vocabulary for the middle that is usually skipped.
  • Build a trigger ladder with concrete antecedents ranked from low to high, not abstract "stress," so rehearsal moves from the bottom rung upward instead of front-loading the hardest cue.
  • Rehearse replacement behaviors drawn from DBT distress tolerance — TIPP, IMPROVE, ACCEPTS — as skills the teen pulls from the bench, not as a protocol completed in a single session, so the language survives outside the room.
  • Open a parent or caregiver co-regulation window before close, because the household response to the spike determines whether the spike gets reward or extinction, and the wire-up has to land today to change tomorrow.
Materials at a glance
What you'll have on the table.
  • Arousal-curve sheet (one per teen, half-letter, 110 lb stock — cue / body read / move rows)
  • Trigger-ladder card deck (4×6, 12 ranked cues; one deck per group, reusable)
  • Distress-tolerance skills pick card (TIPP / IMPROVE / ACCEPTS, half-letter, single card per teen)
  • Parent co-regulation handout (one sheet, take-home; covers what to do and what not to do in the 90 seconds after the spike)
Approaches
Evidence frames used in this topic's kits.
DBT
CBT
Mindfulness

Kits

Kits authored under Anger Regulation

Each kit is a full 90-minute session plan — clinical structure preserved, language tailored to your group's tone, scenario difficulty, and cultural context. Printable end to end.

In production
Anger Regulation kit · Kit 01
DBT/CBT/Mindfulness — adolescent group, ages 14–18

90-minute group session · adolescent group · printable.

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