Emotional Health / Keep Anger in Check
As I will demonstrate later in this article, anger is not just a social issue, but also one of long term health, both physical and mental.There are indeed many things at which to direct our anger these days, traffic, taxes, run away prices, bad service and so on. Then there are the more personal insults we suffer from time to time, rejection, embarrassment, annoyance, etc. How we respond to these things should depend really on the mutual consideration of two factors:
1. How best to reestablish equilibrium with the other person(s) involved.
2. Reduce our internal discomfort with the situation without doing damage or ourselves.
As you see, one is external (other persons) and the other is internal (ourselves). These components are complex and equally important, in fact, I might say the latter is more so, for no relationship is of greater significance to our physical and emotional health than the one we have with ourselves. But let’s analyze these elements one at a time using a fictional situation.
You live in an apartment, it becomes apparent that your neighbor is having a party on a week night. Not only is it loud, but it continues after 10:00pm, the accepted standard for quieting down. You can’t believe your other neighbors haven’t stormed over there and demanded they cut the volume. You become obsessed, viewing it as a personal insult, you can’t concentrate on anything else as your blood pressure builds. Finally, you remember a saying you read somewhere “evil persists because good men do nothing”. You realize that you have to take these idiots on, because everyone else seems to be afraid to make waves. So you emerge from your apartment and steam down the hallway like a locomotive, you stop where the party is still in full swing, muster your courage and pound on the door. Suddenly the noise stops, a lump builds in your throat as you think to yourself ‘there must be 50 people in there and in a minute their all going to be staring at me’.
Slowly the door opens and a little old man appears, he says “can I help you?” Well, it was so noisy in here, I thought there was a party going on, you sheepishly admit. ‘I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing and I guess I had the television up too loud, I've been meaning to call my doctor to see about getting some hearing aids. With your tail between your legs you slither back to your apartment, hoping no one saw the humiliating exchange. You drop into your lazy boy and realize you're exhausted from the emotional roller-coaster you just put yourself through. What was gained? What was lost? How could this have been handled differently?
What was gained is a relatively inexpensive lesson in your own impulsiveness. It takes insight into our own patterns of response to see that they are counterproductive. The easiest thing is to do is what our emotions tell us, or to act on our more primitive notions of territorialism and revenge. What takes more discipline and contemplation is to postulate the cost benefit ratio of a particular action and allow that conclusion to be the final arbiter. Once we decide that this is not worth going to war over, the power behind our emotions dissipates and we find we can move onto other things and be less distracted by the behavior of others.
What was lost is less simple to quantify, but of equal importance and that is the impact upon our physical health. Now it has been debated back and forth whether expressing our anger is better than holding it in, in terms of the impact of stress upon us. That cannot be resolved here, but it seems to me that the discussion should instead be focused on how to diffuse the emotional response before it whips us into a frenzy driven by a powerful but destructive combination of stress hormones. In primordial times, these hormones provided the necessary energy to run from danger or overcome fear. But in today’s world of sensory overload, that primitive brain, which still exists below our cerebral cortex, produces these ‘fight or flight’ hormones in response to a multitude of ubiquitous stimuli, whether it be in traffic, at work our in our homes, keeping our systems at a heightened level of alertness throughout the day. The downside is that these chemicals can become toxic to our cardiovascular system, breaking them down and making us more susceptible to strokes or heart disease later in life. High blood pressure, erratic sleep patterns and malabsorption of nutrients are other side effects resulting from a long term pattern of overreacting to stress. So, as you can see, our lives are not only better when we keep anger in check, but very likely longer as well. Save your ire for the rare situations that really call for an increased physical and emotional fortitude. It doesn’t require practice, anger will be there when you need it, your mind is hard wired for it.
1. How best to reestablish equilibrium with the other person(s) involved.
2. Reduce our internal discomfort with the situation without doing damage or ourselves.
As you see, one is external (other persons) and the other is internal (ourselves). These components are complex and equally important, in fact, I might say the latter is more so, for no relationship is of greater significance to our physical and emotional health than the one we have with ourselves. But let’s analyze these elements one at a time using a fictional situation.
You live in an apartment, it becomes apparent that your neighbor is having a party on a week night. Not only is it loud, but it continues after 10:00pm, the accepted standard for quieting down. You can’t believe your other neighbors haven’t stormed over there and demanded they cut the volume. You become obsessed, viewing it as a personal insult, you can’t concentrate on anything else as your blood pressure builds. Finally, you remember a saying you read somewhere “evil persists because good men do nothing”. You realize that you have to take these idiots on, because everyone else seems to be afraid to make waves. So you emerge from your apartment and steam down the hallway like a locomotive, you stop where the party is still in full swing, muster your courage and pound on the door. Suddenly the noise stops, a lump builds in your throat as you think to yourself ‘there must be 50 people in there and in a minute their all going to be staring at me’.
Slowly the door opens and a little old man appears, he says “can I help you?” Well, it was so noisy in here, I thought there was a party going on, you sheepishly admit. ‘I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing and I guess I had the television up too loud, I've been meaning to call my doctor to see about getting some hearing aids. With your tail between your legs you slither back to your apartment, hoping no one saw the humiliating exchange. You drop into your lazy boy and realize you're exhausted from the emotional roller-coaster you just put yourself through. What was gained? What was lost? How could this have been handled differently?
What was gained is a relatively inexpensive lesson in your own impulsiveness. It takes insight into our own patterns of response to see that they are counterproductive. The easiest thing is to do is what our emotions tell us, or to act on our more primitive notions of territorialism and revenge. What takes more discipline and contemplation is to postulate the cost benefit ratio of a particular action and allow that conclusion to be the final arbiter. Once we decide that this is not worth going to war over, the power behind our emotions dissipates and we find we can move onto other things and be less distracted by the behavior of others.
What was lost is less simple to quantify, but of equal importance and that is the impact upon our physical health. Now it has been debated back and forth whether expressing our anger is better than holding it in, in terms of the impact of stress upon us. That cannot be resolved here, but it seems to me that the discussion should instead be focused on how to diffuse the emotional response before it whips us into a frenzy driven by a powerful but destructive combination of stress hormones. In primordial times, these hormones provided the necessary energy to run from danger or overcome fear. But in today’s world of sensory overload, that primitive brain, which still exists below our cerebral cortex, produces these ‘fight or flight’ hormones in response to a multitude of ubiquitous stimuli, whether it be in traffic, at work our in our homes, keeping our systems at a heightened level of alertness throughout the day. The downside is that these chemicals can become toxic to our cardiovascular system, breaking them down and making us more susceptible to strokes or heart disease later in life. High blood pressure, erratic sleep patterns and malabsorption of nutrients are other side effects resulting from a long term pattern of overreacting to stress. So, as you can see, our lives are not only better when we keep anger in check, but very likely longer as well. Save your ire for the rare situations that really call for an increased physical and emotional fortitude. It doesn’t require practice, anger will be there when you need it, your mind is hard wired for it.
posted by Mark Reynolds at 7:30 AM
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