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CRUSH YOUR ANGER
 CALM POSE Getting angry usually doesn't help matters. In fact, it can
hurt— your body.
Healthy men who frequently exhibit anger and hostility are 19% more
likely to
develop coronary heart disease, according to a recent
report
published in the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology In an
unrelated study, Yale
researchers found that frequently
being angry
can also significantly increase
the risk of sudden death.
Here's how
to redirect those emotions toward
something positive.
DIVIDE AND
CONQUER Figure out what your
'hot buttons" are, recommends
James Messina, author of Tools for Anger Work-Out.
Write them down to get a sense of what riles you the most. Once you see
them listed,
you may realize that some of your triggers aren't
worth
getting worked up over. 0 BOOZE IN MODERATION Excessive alcohol can
intensify bad feelings (two words: bar fight).
SHOUT Get into your car,
roll up the windows, and scream at the top of your lungs. Verbally
expressing your anger — in a private way
— lets you get it out of your system, says Messina. Good places to
belt; empty bedrooms and open fields. Bad: libraries and baby
nurseries. o KNOCK OUT YOUR 'TUDE Boxing and heavy bag work
can produce a great calming effect, says trainer Jim Smith. If you
already have a good level of conditioning, try adding pushups, jump rope, burpees, or even body-weight squats between bouts with
the bag to further squelch your hostility. 0 SWEAT IT OUT Hit the courts. Sports such as tennis and squash can help you settle
unresolved anger. Besides working muscles, high-intensity training helps the body release endorphins, giving you a natural, calming
high.
WORRY CORNER
Do heart palpitations indicate hypertension? Unless your blood pressure
is very high, you're not likely to experience any
symptoms.
It's estimated that about one third of people with high blood
pressure don't know it. Extremely high blood pressure can
lead to warning signs such as difficulty breathing, severe headache,
chest pain or a feeling of pounding in the chest, an irregular
heartbeat and even blood in your urine. If you experience any of
these symptoms you should seek medical attention, as you could be
experiencing a "hypertensive crisis," which can lead to a cardiac event such as a heart attack or stroke. Heart palpitations or a racing
heart are not related to hypertension, though it's certainly possible to have both conditions. Heart palpitations can be caused by
exercise, an abnormal heart valve, an imbalance of certain hormones, anemia, and such things as nicotine, caffeine and alcohol.
Heart palpitations also can indicate the presence of heart disease, so if you experience
a racing heart or a fluttering feeling in your
chest, seek prompt medical attention.
Six dimensions of anger expression
Of course, anger expression can take on many more styles than passive or
aggressive. Ephrem Fernandez has identified six bipolar
dimensions of anger expression. They relate to the direction of anger, its
locus, reaction, modality, impulsivity, and objective.
Coordinates on each of these dimensions can be connected to generate
a profile of a person's anger expression style. Among the
many profiles that are theoretically possible in this system, are the familiar profile of the person with explosive anger, profile of the
person with repressive anger, profile of the passive aggressive person, and the profile of constructive anger expression.
People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature
and cause of the angering event, when they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the
situation or cope with it. For instance, if a person's car is damaged, they will feel angry if someone else did it (e.g. another driver rear-
ended it), but will feel sadness instead if it was caused by situational forces (e.g. a hailstorm) or guilt and shame if they were
personally responsible (e.g. he crashed into a wall out of momentary carelessness).Usually, those who experience anger explain its
arousal as a result of "what has happened to them" and in most cases the described
provocations occur immediately before the
anger experience. Such explanations confirm the illusion that anger has a discrete external cause. The angry person usually finds the
cause of their anger in an intentional, personal, and controllable aspect of another
person's behavior. This explanation, however, is
based on the intuitions of the angry person who experiences a loss in self-
monitoring capacity and objective observability as a result
of their emotion. Anger can be of multicausal origin, some of which may be
remote events, but people rarely find more than one
cause for their anger.According to Novaco, "Anger experiences are embedded or
nested within an environmental-temporal context.
Disturbances that may not have involved anger at the outset leave residues that are
not readily recognized but that operate as a
lingering backdrop for focal provocations (of anger). |
