The effects of anger on health have more to do with length than frequency and intensity. The normal experience of overt anger lasts only a couple of minutes. But the subtle forms of anger, such as bitterness, impatience, irritability, grouchiness, etc., can go on for hours and hours at a time. Consistent, prolonged levels of anger provide a person a five times greater probability of dying before age 50.

Anger

Anger increases blood pressure, raises threat of stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancer, depression, anxiety disorders, and, generally speaking, depresses the immune system (mad individuals have plenty of little aches and pains or get a whole lot of colds and bouts of influenza or headaches or upset stomach ). To make things worse, angry folks tend to find relief from the ill-moods brought on by anger through other health-endangering habits, such as drinking and smoking, or via compulsive behavior like workaholism and perfectionism.

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that even subtle forms of anger impair problem-solving skills and basic performance competence. Besides increasing error rates, anger narrows and creates stiff mental attention, tending to obscure alternative viewpoints. The angry person has one “right way” of doing things, which, if chosen in anger, is rarely the best way. There’s nothing you can do mad (resentful, irritable, grouchy, impatient, cold ) that you can not do better not mad. Because it acts on the whole central nervous system as an amphetamine, anger consistently produces a physiological “crash,” often experienced as depression once the problems causing the anger stay unresolved.

Consider It

The last time you got really mad, you got really depressed afterwards. The angrier you get, the more depressed you get. And that’s merely the physiological reaction, even in case you keep from doing something while mad that you are ashamed of, like hurting the feelings of someone you love. What is an Anger Problem? A dangerous myth about an “anger-problem” limits its definition to aggression, abuse, hurting people, or destroying property. But this describes just one of a great many kinds of anger.

You have an anger problem if some subtle kind of anger – which you might not even know – enables you to do what isn’t in your best interest or prevents you from performing at your highest potential. This may mean something subtle, such as placing a cold wall between you and a continual impatience or low frustration tolerance which interferes with problem solving and performance proficiency. Whatever the kind of anger, in persistence you run the risk of being a reactaholic, along with your ideas, feelings, and behaviour totally controlled by individuals or whatever you are reacting to.

Remember

The more reactive you’re, the more helpless you feel; anger is finally a shout of powerlessness. Mastery of the 3 measures of self-compassion and empathy for others makes us virtually immune to the ill-effects of anger.

• Step one of self-compassion is visiting beneath the symptom or defense (anger, anxiety, manipulation, uncontrollable behaviour ) into the cause, which is some kind of heart hurt (feeling insignificant, disregarded, accused, devalued, guilty, untrustworthy, rejected, helpless, unlovable).
• Second, the core hurt has to be validated (this is how I feel at this moment)
• Third, altered (this behaviour or event or disappointment or error doesn’t mean that I’m immaterial, not valuable or adorable.)

Compassion for others is recognizing their symptoms, defenses, and uncontrollable behaviour come from a heart hurt, validating it, and encouraging them while they alter it. Compassion doesn’t excuse obnoxious behavior. Rather, it prevents us from attacking the wounded person, allowing focus on altering the undesired behavior. Regulation of anger means healing the harm which causes it by restoring the core personal worth that appears diminished by the behaviour of another.

By comparison

Anger management requires enduring the damage that causes the anger but redirecting its consequences to prevent aggression and trouble. Anger regulation employs the principles of emotional intelligence: consciousness of inner expertise, the ability to control the significance of a person’s emotional experience, and compassion for the emotional experience of others. An superb regulation technique, known as HEALSTM, obviates the powerlessness of anger by offering the feeling of inner power, well-being, self-compassion, and empathy for others necessary for optimum health and problem-solving.

HEALSTM is a technology which, with practice, automatically invokes a response of self-compassion and empathy for others whenever anger and other guards and symptoms are stimulated, keeping the focus on solutions to the issue, as opposed to attacking the person. More than 90% effective in lowering anger into problem-solving and performance-efficient degrees, HEALSTM can be learned in less or three sessions of instruction.