My Anger

Lewis Miller wrote:I feel angry all the time, I try to hide it because I can't contain it when I snap. I end up getting the urge to punch things, it sounds stupid and I feel stupid for it but I can't control it, I have damaged my hand multiple time, with the most recent being the worst. I am asking for advice to control my anger.

Good Morning M. Miller

Recently a Lady wrote in, Ms. Daisyclose, and she also had uncontrollable anger bordering on Rage. I have been writing more and more about Adrenaline and have gotten more and more insights about it, as it regards anger. What I wrote to her seemed the best expo so far. Please let me cut and paste what I told her:

*****
Daisy, your problem is with Adrenaline. That is the Fight Flight hormone. You see, back in Caveman Times if a sabretooth tiger were to walk into your camp, the perceived danger and threat would cause a surge release of Adrenaline in not just you but everybody else. Those who could run away would run away like gazelles, much faster than they could ever ordinarily run because the adrenaline maximizes the nerve signals to the muscles and increases the rate of energy Metabolization. Those who are cornered and have to fight would be Wild and Berserk and their strength and agility would seem multiplied. People don’t usually ‘roar’ but people who experience a full blown Adrenaline rush can ‘roar’ and roar quite loud. And so these Primitives could respond effectively to a sabretooth tiger attack. To them Adrenaline was a kind of Magic Elixir in times of danger.

Now, of course, when you experience such full blown Adrenaline Rushes, you realize that it is way too much. Indeed, the way you described the glass candle, that you do not even remember picking it up. Well that is consistent to Adrenaline Rush Black Outs. At least you remember most of what went on. There are Stories about seemingly mild mannered office workers who have flipped out and gone on 3 or 4 minute complete office rampages – throwing office chairs through the plate glass windows, tossing telephones through the plasterboard walls, flipping over desks and pulling down filing cabinets. Coworkers running for their lives. Even Security People holding back out of fear. But then, suddenly they just stop, with a blank look on their face. After about 10 or 20 seconds the expression comes back to their eyes and they look around and say “What the ____ happened here?”. The Adrenaline was SO intense that their Response dropped totally all the way down from the Higher Cognitive Parts of the Brain down to where the Brain is just Pure Animal. And you can see how effective the Adrenaline Rush actually is, in the Purely Animal kind of way. The Big Burly Security Goons afraid to approach a little bespeckled office worker because of the sheer animal intensity being displayed.

Oh, it isn’t always bad. You have heard stories about how mothers, when a car would roll over and trap their baby, how they would roar in alarm and then just reach down and a pick up the car and throw it aside. Yes, it has happened more than once. The Mothers never remember doing it. The Adrenaline pulled them out of the Highly Evolved Human Part of their Brain and brought them down to where they could find the most purely instinctive and primal Animal Strength. Way below the Level of Cognitive Consciousness.

Anyway, you want to KNOW what you can do to STOP an Adrenaline Rush because most the time you aren’t meeting up sabretooth tigers and cars aren’t rolling up and over your babies. The Trick is to catch the Very First Physiological Hint that Adrenaline is being released. Yes, EVERYBODY describes these Anger Attacks as having been Instantaneously Sudden, but not really. The way it works is that for around 3 Seconds Adrenaline is being released on the orders of Subconscious Centers in the Brain. After those 3 Seconds you begin to Consciously understand that you are Enraged, and then people typically take another second or two to before they launch into their attacks – the time it takes to get poised before striking. Now, yes, if you let the First 3 Seconds go by, where you are not even Conscious that you are Angry, then you have little chance of being able to Control what happens. Most of the Adrenaline is already circulating and doing its Animal Energy thing. So you need to learn to Recognize the First FEELING you get from Adrenaline. Its NOT what you are Thinking. It is a Feeling you get in your Body.

THE FIRST SIGN OF AN ADRENALINE RUSH IS THAT YOU WILL CLENCH YOU TEETH… YOUR JAW MUSCLES TIGHTEN… YOU WILL CLOSE YOUR MOUTH TIGHT AND START BREATHING THROUGH YOUR NOSE. You see, the Jaw Muscles are situated between the Brain and the Adrenal Glands right next to the Artery that carries the Blood. So the Jaw Muscle is at an important crossroads and is the first body part to get the Adrenaline.

The Rest is so Easy you won’t believe it until you see it… experience it. As soon as you sense that your Jaw Muscles clench up, SIMPLY RELAX THEM. Open your mouth and take a deep breath. One lady on this Forum says that once she understood about Adrenaline she found that she CANNOT get Angry if she just keeps her mouth open. As long as she keeps breathing through her mouth she can stay calm.

I believe what is happening and that Evolution has given us an Adrenaline On/Off Switch. You know, sometimes the mangy Dog walking outside the Hut at first LOOKS LIKE a sabretooth tiger and so we began to get fired up, but just as quickly we recognize it as a Dog, and so these Primitive People probably knew from experience that all they had to do was open their mouths, breath, relax and shake it off. “It was only that stupid Dog”. But for some unexplainable reason it seems that in this Modern Day and Age that Nobody, except for a few of us here at Anger Management, know about Shutting Down an Adrenaline Rush with the Jaw Relaxation Reflex Response.

But you have to Respond to your jaws tightening Instantaneously. You can’t think about for a second because in that second a great deal of Adrenaline can be released by the Adrenal Glands. So you might have to Practice, so you know what your Jaw Tightening feels like, and so you are practiced at the Relaxation Response. When I first decided to Practice with Adrenaline I got a Pin and was going to stab it into my hand but it turns out that All You Have To Do is INTEND to stab a pin into your hand. As soon as your Body thinks that you are serious about stabbing yourself with a pin, it will release some Adrenaline and you can feel those jaw muscles clench, and THEN you need to relax. You should only take the smallest of a fraction of a second to go from Tighten to Relax. With Practice it is like you only let your jaw muscle twitch for an instant.

Oh, with continual awareness and observation you will find that your Jaw Muscles often tighten up at others times. Sometimes when I bend over to thump and kiss one of my Kitty Cats, my jaw muscles will tighten. I guess that is because my Subconscious Mind still sees Kitty Cats as potentially dangerous little Wild Animals. But that is why Evolution gave us the Turn Off Switch for Adrenaline. The Jaw Tightening is Only a Warning and we can chose to dismiss it. Also, Human Affection may be accompanied by Jaw Tightening. Again, deep down subconsciously we are aware that Affection can be accepted or rejected. In evolutionary terms, expressing your affection in a seriously evolutionary way always carried some risks, both for the male and the female. Again, we can see the Jaw Tightening as a warning and dismiss it.
****

anger most of times its because it has been encouraged by parents unconsciously on the young age

When a kid asks parents for something and say no, Kids may start to cry and parents feel sorry and reward you, so that cry has been rewarded , and what the kid learn is that in life you have to cry, you have to panic so you can be rewarded , and that becomes a habit, becomes a way you know how to respond when your not happy about something

The problem is that when one becomes an adult: panic or cry doesnt help to make better deals, better agreements, better results or whatsoever : you may cry about it but it doesnt work, it doesnt become rewarded, and you start to become frustrated with the situation , because what you have learned is not helping to bring better results

If cry doesnt help: you want to take it to the higher level, frustration and aggression, in a hope that can solve your problems: but again that doesnt work because people outside dont feel sorry for your cry neither care about your frustration and panic

The final level you reach is to understand: that you have to surrender the emotional reactions but simply think of life intellectually and solve the problems: with relaxation, and at the end it becomes rewarded because that is what others expect from you

your intellect starts to become rewarded, and you start to learn a new way of thinking a new way of reacting :

laureate <edited by leo>, wrote:anger happens most of time because parents had unconsciously encouraged it in the early development of their children.

For instance, when a kid asks parents for something and they say no, Kids may start to cry and parents feel sorry and reward him or her, so that the cry gets rewarded , so what the kid learns is that in life you have to cry, you have to panic so you can be rewarded , and that becomes a habit, It becomes a way you know how to respond when you’re not happy about something

The problem is that when one becomes an adult: panicking or crying doesn’t help to make better deals, better agreements, better results or whatsoever : you may cry about it but it doesn’t work, it doesn’t become rewarded, and you start to become frustrated with the situation , because what you have learned is not helping to bring better results

If cry doesn’t help: you want to take it to the higher level, frustration and aggression, in a hope that can solve your problems: but again that doesn’t work because people outside don’t feel sorry for your cry neither care about your frustration and panic.

The final level you reach is to understand that you have to surrender those old conditioned emotional reactions and simply think of life intellectually in order to solve your problems. If you are still stressed, you need to learn to relax. At the end it this new smarter, calmer behavior will be rewarded because that is what others expect from you.

Hi Laureate,

You have an interesting hypothesis, that parental positive reinforcement of their children’s crying is the cause for habitual anger that continues into adulthood. However, you should consider that you should be more specific about what you call “crying”. Much of infantile crying is the Pre-language way of communicating NEED and that they require Help. For instance, a baby will cry when it is hungry or needs ‘changed’, or cry when it is sleepy and needs assurance before it can securely let its guard down to fall asleep. Of course, crying can continue on even beyond the age where children become verbal and could use dispassionate language to express their needs. If this post-verbal crying is continually rewarded, then it may develop the Behavioral Habit of ‘Pouting’. Now, Pouting is NOT Anger. Pouting is a form of Emotional Manipulation, and while many people are uncomfortable with people who make a habit of pouting, it definitely is not as nasty as outright Anger.

But, going back to Infantile Behaviors, there is also a form of Extreme Crying that we call ‘Tantrums’. Tantrums don’t begin to appear until about 12 months. They are characterized by whining, crying, kicking, screaming, hitting and breath holding. THESE are what I believe you could consider the True Precursors to Severe Adult Anger Problems, if, as you suggest, they are consistently Rewarded by the Parents.

However, I think there is another Very Strong Contributor to Adult Anger and that is the Modelling Behavior of the Parents. Parents do not have to REWARD early manifestations of Anger, i.e. Tantrums, they only have to BE Angry and therefore exemplify Angry Behavior. For instance, if a Father is chronically angry then a child will think that Men in general Should Be characteristically Angry, and the same goes if the Mother is chronically angry. If BOTH parents are chronically angry then I would suggest that it is developmentally IMPOSSIBLE that the child will not grow up with Angry Behavior also being his Behavioral Norm. For instance, Most of the people in New York City’s five Bureaus are Chronically Angry People because their Parents were Chronically Angry People. Crying might not have been encouraged at all! Imagine how a Chronically Angry Mother and Father would deal with their darling little pest of a Baby who would cry “too much” and even dare to throw a Temper Tantrum. Well, the Child would learn in a big hurry that such behavior is entirely and emphatically Not Acceptable. AND the child would learn, from the overly emotionally wrought and physically aggressive Correctives from the Parents, how one ‘is supposed to’ object to unwanted behaviors in others – through cussing, swearing, yelling and even violent degrees of Anger. The Primary Rule in Childhood Development seems to be “Monkey See, Monkey Do”.

So after a bit more thinking about it, I believe the Primary Developmental Cause for Anger is through Parental Modeling, not Parental Permissiveness with Crying or even with Temper Tantrums.

Our mental health and our physical health are intimately related. With that in mind may I ask you some questions?

Are you eating the right amount of healthy food? (no junk)

Are you drinking the right amount of healthy drinks? (no sugared, sweetened, caffeinated, dairy, alcoholic)

Are you taking the right amount of healthy exercise?

Are you getting a good balance between work, rest and play?

How easy do you find it to forgive people?

Do you contribute to your local community?

How flexible are you? Are you willing to change?

JuliusFawcett wrote:Our mental health and our physical health are intimately related. With that in mind may I ask you some questions?

Are you eating the right amount of healthy food? (no junk)

Are you drinking the right amount of healthy drinks? (no sugared, sweetened, caffeinated, dairy, alcoholic)

Are you taking the right amount of healthy exercise?

Are you getting a good balance between work, rest and play?

How easy do you find it to forgive people?

Do you contribute to your local community?

How flexible are you? Are you willing to change?

Hi Julius,

Good List.

But, you know, I have been finding that it takes a lot of work to "eat healthy". There is a lot about what constitutes a Healthy Diet that is not Common Knowledge for a lot of people. For instance, with myself, for quite a long time I had a chronically itchy back and occasionally my arms would break out in slight rashes. It turns out the Soy and vinegars were a large contributor to that, but also I had been taking Flax Seed Oil for its Omega 3 content, BUT I had been cooking with it and you are supposed to keep it away from heat, and even refrigerated. You see the Flax Seed Oil breaks down into peroxides when heated or even just left out on the counter, and peroxides are Terrible! I am lucky I didn't kill myself! I was also eating canned fish for Omega 3s but it turns out that the canning process also uses heat and destroys much of the Omega 3s. Same as canned spinach. It turns out to be a Well Informed Eater you have to commit a little bit of time each day to researching Nutritional Fact questions. At least you should search up what seem to be your daily staple food items. Oh, and then their are the Internet Paid Liars to watch out for. Even Medical Doctors will lie if you pay them enough money. There are even Organizations sponsored by Unhealthy Foods to put out Positive Health Blurbs on their poisons (Island Products Org sponsoring Coconut Oil "Studies", or the "American Egg Counsel" declaring Eggs the New Miracle Food). So you have to keep up your searching until you find Results from Prestigious and None-Interested Sources.

Oh, and exercise can be tough for older people. For instance, I just got a new left hip, which is great, and so I can start doing MORE cardiovascular exercising, but I am still held back by my bad right hip (which should be replaced in the next several months or so). But, yes, if anybody CAN exercise, then they really SHOULD exercise.

Sleep and Rest are difficult for a lot of Working People in Relationships who also feel compelled to Clean House and take Exercise. Between Commuting to Work, Working, Cleaning House, Exercising, taking Quality Times with Significant Others and Pets, as well as some important Alone Time to read the paper, watch the news, or keep up with a Hobby, well, it often leaves only 5 or 6 hours for sleep, or even less. The problem is that Capitalism is using people as virtual slaves. When you look at Full Time Hours that they expect, well, it is the better part of every day. The Slave Drivers don't give us enough Time to enjoy a Full Life. So we try to Make the Time by stealing back Time from Sleep. but that creates a spiral of declining health and increasing stress.

But, yes, your List is an Ideal List. But for many people it would only be realistic in an Ideal World.

I take responsibility for my mental and physical health. Blaming for it others isn't healthy.

JuliusFawcett wrote:I take responsibility for my mental and physical health. Blaming for it others isn't healthy.

and suffering in silence IS healthy? Human Beings are Social Animals. Complaining is a big part of Social Communication. How else can a person know whether there is a Social Consensus to take some Collective Action unless he or she complains and gets to monitor the feedback?

by setting an example of how we would like to be treated we create our own social convention.

We can complain, and it is important to recognise whether that complaining is actually part of the solution or part of the problem

JuliusFawcett wrote:by setting an example of how we would like to be treated we create our own social convention.

We can complain, and it is important to recognise whether that complaining is actually part of the solution or part of the problem

Hi Julius,

Again, it is good to hear from you. You were missed during your long absence.

But, back to topic: as to setting an example, well, only Leaders, that is, Alpha Individuals can actually set examples that anybody else would pay attention to. None-Alphas who don't comply with the social norms, or even just do tasks a bit differently from normal, even if they have found a better way, are substantially ignored and considered eccentric.

As for Complaining being more of a problem then it is worth, well, that is where Attention to Feedback comes in. If you bring up a problem to Everybody and the Alphas remain unmoved or even tell you to shut up, well, then it is good to back off. Nobody is listening, and if you persist, you will only bring problems on yourself. Like you say "you have to know when to walk away".

clowninsauce wrote:hi when I get angry like you do and have many times punched and smashed and finally ended up actually strangling someone on a bus with a dog lead > I was at a loss and ended up going to prison which made me angrier and everything much worse. I ended up getting to a point where I couldn't get any more angry and just stopped it just kind of happened in my early 30s and I just keep getting more and more relaxed I think its testosterone or something but please just try and chill don't end up in clink

Hi Clowninsause,

Good Point. Statistics do show that instances of male perpetrated Crime drops precipitously as men hit their mid-thirties. Some studies go so far as to suggest that when male criminals hit the age of 35 it becomes unreasonable to hold them any longer since by that time they have become virtually harmless.

Yes, testosterone has much to do with it, but one cannot discount the influence of Life Experience. After making the same mistakes over and over again even complete idiots would eventually learn to stop "playing with fire" or "poking the snakes" or waking up "sleeping junkyard dogs", etc.

In other words Life Itself does slowly what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy does systematically and a bit more quickly -- that Bad Habits in thought and behavior are Discouraged, while Better habits of thought and Behavior are Encouraged.

But, yes, M. Clowninsause, it is good to know that you have a great deal of insight into Anger. I hope you become a regular here on the Forum. the Voices of People who actually have a strong background in Being Angry is often missing from the Anger Management Discussion. You can understand that most of the Anger Management Literature -- both the Bad (the Stupid New Age Stuff written by opportunistic money grubbing know-nothing parasites) and the Good, written by trained Health Professionals, well you can understand that MOST of these people are Socially Well Adjusted and Well Behaved. they were able to go all the way through the Educational System to get advanced degrees and were able to keep their heads and schmooze well with the Publishing House crowd. Chronically Angry People usually screw up their lives before they are able to accomplish that much. So, as insightful as the Best Anger Management Books can be, still there is the sense that the Authors are continuously Outside Looking In..... like some White Anthropologist with a Pith Helmet doing research on Aborigines in some deep dense Jungle somewhere. We need to wonder how much they could ever really KNOW.