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By Roberta Beecroft |
Norman Cousins was a renowned author and communicator who spent 10 years recently at UCLA researching the effects of our emotions on our bodies and minds. He reached the conclusion that attitudes are not merely 'moods' , but actual biochemical realities!
To quote from the jacket of his last book, Head First: The Biology of Hope, "Medical research has demonstrated that panic, depression, hate, fear, and frustration can have negative effects on human health. This book presents the rapidly mounting scientific evidence that hope, faith, love, will to live, purpose, laughter and festivity can help combat serious disease."
What amazing information! The way we experience, express and deal with our emotions can actually affect our physical condition! Just think about all the ways we express this:
"That person is a real pain in the butt!"
"Thinking about that makes my skin crawl"
"As soon as I walk into the exam room my stomach starts to churn"
"Looking at her makes my heart stand still."
"What a pain in the neck!"
"I'm so mad I feel like I'm going to explode!"
Anger is an emotion that is often maligned and misunderstood. It is the feeling of being annoyed, irritated, ticked off, furious, enraged. We feel angry when we've been hurt, and since everyone gets hurt some time, everyone has been angry. If someone tells you that they have never felt angry, they are saying that they don't recognize their anger, or they're too afraid of feeling it or showing it to openly express it.
Whenever we say we're angry, we're acknowledging that we're hurt, that we're vulnerable enough to be hurt.
How do we recognize our anger? For many people it comes first as a physical sensation -- clenched fists, tight neck, fixed jaw, accelerated heart rate, a tightness in your stomach or intestine, furrowed brow, headache, tense shoulders raised up, backache, irritability, a sense of feeling lightheaded and confused. Anger can affect behavior as well.
You might feel tense, insecure, argumentative, close to tears, hostile, lonely, misunderstood. Anger is a normal, legitimate, helpful emotion that can serve you well when you recognize it, respond to it and express it in an appropriate way, to an appropriate person.
What's your own personal signal that you're feeling hurt and angry? Make note of it and try exploring your experience with anger by completing the following sentences.
* I feel angry when...(I'm criticized, excluded, feel stupid, and when I don't feel cared for)
* My usual response to my anger is...(withdraw, attack, get defensive, get revenge, give up, mouth off, make fun of someone else, laugh, cry)
* When I do this I feel ...
* What I would rather do instead is ...
* When I'm around someone else who is angry, I feel...
* And in that situation, I usually...
There are wide variations in the styles people use to manage their anger. They may stuff it, hide it, project it, deflect it, ignore it, deny it, mislabel, minimize it, sexualize it or sanitize it.
No matter what defence strategy we use to fool ourselves or others, we can never fool our bodies. Our body keeps score of all the feelings we disown or deny, and presents it to us in a more tangible form like perhaps a headache, backache, or ulcer. Anger is a valuable tool, a wake-up call that says, "Hey, pay attention in here! You've been wounded! Tend to it. Deal with it." Don't shove it aside and carry it around like excess baggage until one day you can't shoulder the load anymore.
What have you lost? What do you believe about this feeling? What can you learn about yourself here? What are your choices? How can you express your anger in a way that doesn't further hurt you or wound the other person in the process? Sometimes it's very hard to tell the person who caused the hurt how we feel directly, and so we try to find a safer target for our anger. If our boyfriend breaks up to date another girl, we may first be angry with the other girl for 'stealing' him, with our parents for not making us more beautiful, and with ourselves for not seeing it coming, and finally (maybe) with the boyfriend who left us.
As soon as we experience and express this anger appropriately, we're freed up to move on. Our energy comes back. We're no longer helpless or trapped by our unexpressed anger. We're aware, awake, and able to manage our lives, when we take our anger seriously and learn to treat ourselves lightly.
tgmag@tgmag.ca