Anger Management
ITV1 TONIGHT
3rd November 2008
00:02 V/O

And violent women can sometimes be those you least expect.
00:12 FLORENCE TERRY
00:07 Florence Terry

There’s a common conception that angry women equals girl gangs, or angry women equals women getting drunk on a Friday night and brawling in the streets. But angry women means far more than that.
00:23 V/O

Florence Terry is a solicitor in London. Fourteen years ago she realised her anger was a problem which was getting out of control.
00:31 Florence Terry

When I was first violent to my husband, it came out of nowhere and we were both shocked. And I was determined that it was never going to happen again. It never occurred to me that it would happen again. It was completely unacceptable.
00:48 After a couple of years I hit him again. It then became a pattern. It wasn’t a pattern happening all the time, but every few months I would lose my temper to the point of violence.
01:03 V/O

Florence realised that she needed to do something about her rages and discovered there was help available from the British Association of Anger Management. So she enrolled herself on a course.
01:14 Florence Terry

There were people from all walks of life, and there were young and old, men and women. I was actually surprised at how many other women there were on the course.
01:25 V/O

Florence found the programme extremely useful in overcoming her aggressive outbursts. She now helps others and teaches anger management classes herself.
01:34 Florence Terry

The people that I’ve had on groups, there’s a lot of women as well as being a lot of men. And they will be admitting to shouting and swearing at their loved ones, pulling hair, throwing things, and being violent to their children as well.
01:52 And I think that there’s a lot of violence in women that people don’t see, because it’s done behind closed doors and it’s done more subtly.
02:02 V/O

The National Centre for Domestic Violence says that the number of male victims of female abuse that they deal with has more than doubled since 2006.
02:11 Florence Terry

I think that it’s really good that anger is now being talked about more in the media and that therefore people dare to say, `Actually I’ve got a problem.’
02:22