Understanding clinical anger and violence: the anger avoidance model.

Matson et al. (2008) wrote a theory paper. They asked why some people stay angry and turn violent.

They built the Anger Avoidance Model. Early bad experiences teach people to treat anger itself as dangerous.

To escape that inner anger they use two moves: hostile rumination and physical aggression.

The model says rumination is not the problem—it is the avoidance strategy.

Aggression is also an escape, not just a way to get stuff.

Both behaviors shrink the feeling of anger for a moment, so they keep happening.

Dymond et al. (2007) showed people can learn to avoid a stimulus it was never paired with—just by relating it through Same/Opposite frames. That lab finding gives a mechanic for how hostile rumination could be learned without direct hits.

Stevens et al. (2018) found the same pattern in trauma: rumination only worsens PTSD when people also avoid the inner experience. Anger and trauma both run through avoidance, not just repetitive thought.

Dawson et al. (2000) saw aggression stop when staff blocked escape from ritual interruption. Their escape function for aggression matches the paper’s claim that hitting can be escape from private anger, not only from outside tasks.

If rumination and aggression are escape, your functional assessment needs to test avoidance of anger cues, not only attention or tangible pay-offs.

Try brief exposure to anger words or body cues while withholding the usual aggressive response. If the client calms only after rumination or hitting, you have likely found an avoidance function. Then teach safe, approach-based coping—deep breath, label the feeling, stay in the task—instead of punishing the blow-up.