Coping with Anger in a Healthy Way

Anger rallies people. It creates energy and motivation to rebel against dysfunctional political or social systems. It also motivates groups to go on strike say, for higher, well-deserved wages or to defend human rights. On a personal level, anger can be good if it's expressed in a focused, healthy way rather than using it to punish or harm others.

Anger is one of the hardest impulses to control because of its evolutionary value in defending against danger.

What factors make us susceptible to anger? One is an accumulation of built-up stresses. That's why your temper can flare more easily after a frustrating day. The second is letting anger and resentments smolder. When anger becomes chronic, cortisol, the stress hormone, contributes to its slow burn. Remaining in this condition makes you edgy, quick to snap. Research has proven that anger feeds on itself. The effect is cumulative: each angry episode builds on the hormonal momentum of the time before. For example, even the most devoted, loving mothers may be horrified to find themselves screaming at their kids if they haven't learned to constructively diffuse a backlog of irritations. Therefore, the powerful lesson our biology teaches us is the necessity of breaking the hostility cycle early on, and that brooding on the past is hazardous to your well-being.

For optimal health, you must address your anger. But the point isn't to keep blowing up when you're upset rather--it's to develop strategies to express anger that are body-friendly. Otherwise, you'll be set up for illnesses such as migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic pain, which can be exacerbated by tension. Or you'll keep jacking up your blood pressure and constricting your blood vessels, which compromises flow to the heart. A Johns Hopkins study reports that young men who habitually react to stress with anger are more likely than their calmer counterparts to have an early heart attack, even without a family history of heart disease. Further, other studies have shown that hostile couples who hurl insults and roll their eyes when arguing physically heal more slowly than less antagonistic partners who have a "we're in this together" attitude.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-freedom/201102/four-strategies-cope-anger-in-healthy-way