The anger arousal cycle xi The arousal cycle of anger has five phases: trigger, escalation, crisis, recovery and depression. Understanding the cycle helps us to understand our own reactions and those of others.
As a part of Potter-Efron's book he talks about the 6 stages of an emotional or anger event which is what I want to talk about in this blog entry. In order from 1 to 6 they are: activation, modulation, preparation, action, feedback and deactivation.
In many cases, anger attacks may occur because a person feels trapped, overwhelmed, or unsure of how to process. When an individual feels unsure of how to get out of the situation, they may lash out in anger, feeling a loss of bodily and mental control as well. Another common cause of anger can be depression.
People often express their anger in different ways, but they usually share four common triggers. We organize them into buckets: frustrations, irritations, abuse, and unfairness.
The brain shunts blood away from the gut and towards the muscles, in preparation for physical exertion. Heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increase, the body temperature rises and the skin perspires. The mind is sharpened and focused.
Our lower backs store most of our unexpressed anger. Many people develop severe and debilitating pain in the lumbar region of the back. Chronic stress activates the sympathetic nervous system that puts pressure on the spinal cord.
A primary feeling is what is what is felt immediately before we feel anger. We almost always feel something else first before we get angry. We might first feel afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced, trapped, or pressured. If any of these feelings are intense enough, we think of the emotion as anger.
Anger is a secondary emotion
Typically, we experience a primary emotion like fear, loss, or sadness first. Because these emotions create feelings of vulnerability and loss of control, they make us uncomfortable. One way of attempting to deal with these feelings is by subconsciously shifting into anger.
Thoughts that can trigger anger include personal assessments, assumptions, evaluations, or interpretations of situations that makes people think that someone else is attempting (consciously or not) to hurt them.
Road rage, domestic abuse, throwing or breaking objects, or other temper tantrums may be signs of intermittent explosive disorder.
SSRIs that have been shown to help with anger include citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), among others. Sertraline seems to have the most supporting data. Other classes of antidepressants, like serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), aren't widely used for treating anger.
Enraged. This is the stage when you feel completely out of control. You may exhibit destructive behavior when your anger reaches this point, such lashing out physically, excessive swearing, or threatening violence.
Not only is the behavioral expression of anger learned, but it can become a routine, familiar, and predictable response to a variety of situations. In the short term, people expressing anger often get their way, so they may keep using anger.
A person in rage may also experience tunnel vision, muffled hearing, increased heart rate, and hyperventilation. Their vision may also become "rose-tinted" (hence "seeing red"). They often focus only on the source of their anger.
Anger Can Be a Necessary and Useful Emotion:
In doing so anger makes it clear to us who we are. It tells us for example if our space has been invaded, if our freedom has been squashed, if our pride has been injured, if the way we see the world has been invalidated, or if our feelings have been ignored.
Humans experience a range of emotions from happiness to fear and anger with its strong dopamine response, but love is more profound, more intense, affecting behaviors, and life-changing.
Anger is essentially a control tactic. Underlying anger is fear. The most common fear is not feeling in control of a person or event. Anger is an attempt to control one's own world by attempting to control the actions of others.
Anger is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Anger can be a good thing. It can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems. But excessive anger can cause problems.
Intermittent explosive disorder (IED) is an impulse-control disorder characterized by sudden episodes of unwarranted anger. The disorder is typified by hostility, impulsivity, and recurrent aggressive outbursts. People with IED essentially “explode” into a rage despite a lack of apparent provocation or reason.
What is intermittent explosive disorder? Intermittent explosive disorder (IED) is a mental health condition marked by frequent impulsive anger outbursts or aggression. The episodes are out of proportion to the situation that triggered them and cause significant distress.
03/6Anger - Liver
The emotion of anger is associated with the choleric humor and can cause resentment and irritability. It is believed that this emotion is stored in the liver and gall bladder, which contain bile. Anger can cause headaches and hypertension which can in turn affect the stomach and the spleen.