It wasn't like Wendy to lose it. Her mother was in the hospital, and for weeks she'd been hearing rumours that relatives were saying that she wasn't visiting her mother often enough. In fact, Wendy had been going to the hospital nearly every day, so when an aunt called and ordered her to make daily trips, it was too much. The conversation only lasted a couple of minutes, but in that time Wendy's voice became firmer and louder and her body began shaking as she told her aunt to mind her own business.
"I was upset for about 24 hours," she says. "I felt terrible. I was disappointed in my reaction. I wished that I had been more mature about it."
What is anger?
Like Wendy, everyone gets angry sometimes, and that is a perfectly normal reaction in our emotional repertoire. "Anger is only a signal," says Sandy Livingstone, an author and owner of SL Discovery Consulting Services Inc., an anger-management company in Edmonton. "It's not good or bad. It's a chemical reaction in the brain that lets us know that we need to pay attention to something, that a boundary has been crossed or there's an emotional or personal threat. It's just a red flag."
However, Raymond DiGiuseppe, chair of the department of psychology at St. John's University in New York, says it's a problem if you're getting angry more than once a week or if your anger is lasting three or four days. That reaction may damage your body, whether you shout at someone or keep the emotion inside. But there are healthy ways to handle the anger response.
Physical signs of anger
Like any emotion, anger manifests itself physically as well. As Robert Allan describes in Getting Control of Your Anger (McGraw-Hill, 2005), adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, preparing your body to react - the fight-or-flight response. You breathe faster. Your digestive tract slows down because processing food isn't a priority, leading to problems such as stomachaches. Your heart rushes blood to your muscles, arms and legs, preparing you to move quickly, but causing tension that leads to aches and pains. Your senses are sharper, so you react faster and are more conscious of what's going on around you. Your ability to feel pain is limited.
"When we're fuelled by adrenaline," writes Allan, "we are focused on survival, not long-term consequences. Making well-thought-out choices with an awareness of how those choices might impact our lives - or the lives of those we love - is not the priority. We may hurl stinging, abusive accusations at a loved one without giving a thought to how hurtful our words sound - or what effect they might have."
In the long run, anger can become chronic, leading to problems with your heart, stomach, lower intestines, back and shoulders, among other ailments. For example, although researchers are still debating the link, studies have found that the stress hormones released when you're angry may cause blood platelets to stick together and clog arteries, and these blockages are the thing most likely to cause heart disease. One study done at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina also found that people who were angry, hostile and depressed had higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). CRP is released when our immune system is under stress; too much of it can cause narrowing of the arteries.
Anger triggers
A first step to dealing with your anger in a healthy way is to look at what makes you upset - your "triggers." You have to recognize a trigger to keep your anger from building up. Women, says DiGiuseppe, tend to get angry over social hurts and feeling let down, unappreciated or unconsidered. And all people can get frustrated at situations they can't control. Looking at those sensitivities will help you make sense of your anger. "Fundamentally getting to the point of feeling angry and expressing anger is a choice," says Dr. Karen Cohen, associate executive director of the Canadian Psychological Association. "I think the most effective thing is to stop a minute and ask yourself, ‘What's going on here? What was the first feeling I felt? What's the frustration about? What's the stress? How else can I deal with this?'"
Let's say you're stuck in traffic. You could be frustrated by the delay, worried about being late and obsessed about what horrible scenarios will be waiting for you when you get to work. Instead, says Cohen, you could accept that traffic jams are a fact of urban living and make a plan for what you'll do when you get to the office. "Then you kind of let it go. Feelings of frustration get short circuited - they don't end up escalating." If traffic - or another situation or person - always gets you hot under the collar, perhaps some changes are in order. If you really hate driving downtown, would public transit be a better option? If you don't understand and deal with your triggers, says Jane Middelton-Moz, coauthor of The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger: Dynamic Tools for Healthy Relationships (Health Communications, 2005), you'll keep getting angry when you experience them, no matter what the circumstance. In their book, Middelton-Moz and her coauthors explain how to uncock your triggers. One activity is to list your trigger and your emotional, behavioural and physical response. Then write down how you felt and what you think makes this trigger upsetting for you. Spelling out the problem can help you find a solution. Middelton-Moz also suggests writing in a journal or calling a friend to work through your feelings and come up with constructive ways to deal with them.
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