Mike Sandifer and Anger Management Mike Sandifer and Anger Management

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Mike Sandifer is a consultant offering anger management classes in Jacksonville, Florida. He currently owns and operates a consulting practice, where he offers one-on-one sessions.

His approach to anger management is unique and innovative, based on the idea that understanding what anger is will help prevent outbursts. This is counter to therapeutic approaches that teach redirecting strategies, depend on personal disclosure, and/or other unfocused attempts to address an ill-understood problem. The latter approach can last for months or even years.

Sandifer's approach is based on experimentally-informed models of learning and behavior. He teaches clients what anger is and how to apply what they learn to begin to lower the frequency of anger responses. Only six sessions are typically required.

He sees anger as following an outcome that is worse than expected. Learned and unlearned expectations drive behavioral investment. Hence, when expectations are not met, there is necessarily a loss in proportion to what was surrendered in the course of the unrewarded behavior. This obviously means that the expectatinos were unrealistic, as they went unmet.

The solution is to teach clients how to develop more realistic expectations to not only prevent future anger outbursts, but to direct behavior in more rewarding directions in the first place. This helps get needs met more consistently. Motivational variables are also addressed, to lessen the severity of anger responses when they do occur. This viw of anger is based on experiments began by Azrin, et al^[1].

To this end, Sandifer holds sessions on learning and motivation to teach clients how expectations develop, how motivational variables factor in, how each is dynamic, and how clients can change them to their benefit.

Biography

Mike Sandifer was born in Houston, Texas in 1976. He always possessed a keen interest in science, quoting some of Einstein's equations beginning in the fifth grade. He made good grades at school, but his family's constant moving made him feel rootless and restless. By the time he was in high school, he could hardly conceive of looking toward his long term future.

However, after mocing to Gainesville, Florida and some fits and starts, he entered the University of Florida in 2000 where he studied psychology. While much of the course material was helpful, it failed to satisfy his deepest curiosity about the workings of the mind. He wanted to understand how people learn, what mood and emotions were, and how they functioned together. While some of these early musings found expression in stints as a guest lecturer, intense research on these questions didn't begin until after graduation in May 2003.

It was then that he gradually started spending his nights and other free time delving into research in such disparate fields as behavioral, cognitive, social, evolutionary and neuro-psychology; along with artificial intelligence and microeconomics. What began to emerge was a sythesis of the above-mentioned disciplines into a mult-dimensional model of learning, mood, and emotions, and resulting behavior.

Increasingly intellectually satisfied, Sandifer began to notice that his new perpectives on behavior, especially on emotional behavior, were affording him more patience and calming him down. He was noticeably less anxious and compulsive, was happier, and far less frenquently angry. It would be a few years later that it occurred to him that he could help others enjoy the unanticipated benefits of his work.

Sandifer moved to Jacksonville, Florida in March of 2007 after which he started offering anger management courses for the first time. He was surprised by the warm reactions and decided to begin doing it professionally. He founded Metacognitive Solutions a little more than a year later and finally found his place in professional life. With he recent addition of services recently, he continues his practice there today.