Psychology of Anger : Pacer Integrated Behavioral Health

Welcome everybody to today's live show. We are going to continue talking about a variety of different integrated behavioral health topics. Now remember, on Mondays we talk about physical aspects. Today we're going to talk about emotional aspects. And I had had a request to talk about the psychology of anger and rage. So bada bing, here we go. Anger is part of the fight or flight response and we've talked about anger a bunch of times. Anger is a very helpful emotion that's designed to protect you from real and perceived threats that may cause you to that happen when you experience a loss of a sense of safety or a loss of personal power and control. Think about things that make you angry. Angry. And remember, anger exists on a continuum. You have mild irritation all the way to full blown rage and everything in between. So a lot of times our anger reaction is proportional to the amount of threat we perceive. But when you feel like a threat is continuing, your anger may escalate to rage. Think about arguments you've had with a significant other or situation that you have felt powerless in and you've tried to do something and you don't seem to be gaining any ground. What happens to your anger? A lot of times it doesn't just dissipate, it actually starts to snowball a little bit. And it's important to recognize again that anger is a feeling we experience when our HPA axis is activated and says, you know what, there might be a threat. I've talked before about how our HPA axis is the smoke alarm, if you will, of our body. It tells us just like a smoke alarm doesn't always mean that there is a fire when it goes off. It's telling you that, hey, there could be. So you need to take a look around in order to keep yourself safe. When people are already on edge, when you're already stressed out, when you're already a little bit irritable, then your HPA axis is already activated, it's already primed, if you will. And additional threats can result in an exaggerated anger response. Think about times you have experienced this. You know, you've got up late, somebody left the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste and it just oozed all over the counter. The cat missed the litter box. Whatever happened, you had a bad morning and you're driving to work. You get cut off in traffic or stuck in a traffic jam. You get to work and then something happens that normally would be irritating, but in this case you just kind of that was a straw that broke the camel's back and it's Important to recognize that, you know, our brain, believe it or not, is really not all that smart. So when it's already feeling or thinking that there is a threat, then additional threats are perceived as more overwhelming. 1. Individually, those threats may not be that big of a deal, but when you add them together, it's sort of like that new math where one plus one equals six. People with a history of direct or indirect trauma or victimization may be in a perpetual state of hyper awareness or hypervigilance, resulting in what I call the flat and the furious. And if you've watched my videos on HPA Axis Health and HPA Axis regulation, you're familiar with this term. Basically when somebody is exposed to chronic threat, the body becomes less responsive to mild to moderate threats, if you will, and just says, you know what, I ain't got the energy. I'm conserving my energy for when there's a big deal. But when there is something that the person perceives as a big deal, then they go from just flat and maybe exhausted, apathetic to enraged and that flat to furious. It's a protective mechanism. The body's going, okay, you know, I can just, I've got this one little squirt of cortisol and norepinephrine left. So I am just going to go full bore to try to make this threat go away. That's the very layman's version of what happens. Now let's think about indirect trauma or victimization. This can happen when people are our children. And think about the messages that a lot of our children get about powerlessness, about being victims, about not being able to change things. And there's a lot of victim messaging that I see in a lot of different situations. And it's important to pay attention to that. And it's important to also consider their experiences. Some people have had experiences, and that's where the Adverse Childhood Experiences survey came from. Some people have had experiences, actual threats, actual negative experiences that were traumatic to them. And what is traumatic to a 2 or a 3 year old may not be traumatic to a 12 or a 20 year old, but it was traumatic to that 2 or 3 year old. So we do want to consider that people who have a history of trauma, who have a history of feeling unsafe for some reason, have a history of feeling disempowered and victimized, may be in this perpetual state of hypervigilance, scanning for any sign microaggressions, micro signs of impending threat or danger. And that is exhausting. You know, it just really is. And it also sets them up to potentially be in a place where they are susceptible to that HPA axis over reaction, that HPA axis dysregulation, if you will, and, and go from the flat to the furious. Now, some of you are probably gonna seize on that word that I said, overreaction. And I'm not saying it's an emotional, personal overreaction. The person's feelings are very legit. What I'm saying is the HPA axis, instead of turning on a trickle of cortisol, just opens the floodgates. And we do see that in people who have a history of trauma, rage is an extremely intense neurological response, which may prompt people to react defensively and sometimes with violence. And we don't like this. You know, it's not something that I'm not excusing behaviors, but it's important to understand when people get to that point of feeling so disempowered and so invalidated that they reach that boiling point, they reach the rage, then more primitive aspects of their brain, their amygdala is all fired up, will kick in, and you're going to have a much more intense HPA axis response, and that person is going to try to defend themselves against the threat at all costs. In some cases, when people feel dismissed or invalidated, you know, bullying, for example, they may have learned through direct experience or observation that violence is rewarded. You know, they have learned by seeing what happens to bullies that bullying can be rewarded. So when they feel dismissed or invalidated, they may drop back to some of those reflexive behaviors that they've seen to work for other people. We need to help people develop alternate ways of dealing with distress. So let's talk about the consequences of anger and rage. And you can see there is a long list of them. HPA axis activation and dysregulation. When that HPA axis stays activated for too long, you develop the hypocortisolism, you develop the. The flat and the furious. So that's a problem. Sleep disruption. When you are angry, when that HPA axis is activated, you're not probably going to rest as well because your body is perceiving a threat. Changes in the gut microbiome. Now, remember, a lot of our hormones and neurochemicals are made in our gut. Our nutrition is processed in our gut. So when our gut is not healthy, when it is, you know, out of whack, it's going to have systemic effects on the person. Blood sugar disruption. When the HPA axis is activated, it starts telling your body dump that Blood glucose. We need the energy to fight or flee, then that's going to make it more difficult for people to manage their blood sugar. Immune system is suppressed. The one of the first things when the HPA axis is kicked off is, is suppression of that immune system because the body is diverting energy to fight or flee. Addiction is a risk. A lot of people who experience frequent bouts of anger or persistent anger may start self medicating that anger with addiction or addictive behaviors. They try to do something else to numb the pain, to stop the intense cortisol surges, to get more dopamine and you know, positive chemicals in there. As we talked about before, when people are angry and the angrier they are, the more they're acting in their emotional reactive, primitive sort of mind. And they tend to be more impulsive. And it's important. One of the best things that Linehan contributed, in my opinion, to the field of psychology is helping people understand the difference. When we are in that HPA axis flood of neurochemicals, when we're in that fight or flight state of mind, we were in what you might call an adrenaline haze. And it's hard to think logically and rationally about, okay, what is the actually the next best step? When you're in your emotional mind, if the emotion is unpleasant, you want to make it go away. You're not thinking about long term consequences. You're thinking about how can I make the pain stop right now? So it's important for people to recognize that when you're in your emotional mind, you tend to be more impulsive. And what we're going to talk about some strategies to deal with this in a minute. Long term consequences. If you're angry most of the time, most people are not angry, quote all the time. But if you're angry a lot of the time, if that HPA axis is regularly activated, it can lead to systemic inflammation, worsening of autoimmune conditions, worsening of depression related to inflammation can lead to exhaustion. It is exhausting. You know, not only do people start to feel, you know, potentially depressed when their cortisol levels are out of whack, but when you are revved up and you know, almost always at least idling, you're never turning your system off to rest. It uses a lot of energy. Rapid aging because of increases in oxidative stress. When we are stressed, our body develops what we call oxidative stress. And you can see this in just about any president. They're the best examples because you see them before they go into office. And you see them four years later and you're like, whoa, that dude aged like 20 years in the past four calendar years. And we know that this happens under stress. And anger is a form of stress hormone disruption happens when that HPA axis is activated. The body says now is not really the time to worry about your libido or procreation. So testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and even oxytocin become dysregulated. They become imbalanced. And long term exposure, long term stress, long term anger can also lead to hypothyroid. We know that, you know, extended stress, chronic stress and stress can also be considered. Anger does have an impact on the availability of thyroid hormones. So people may start experiencing hypothyroid affectively. When we are angry, we tend to be, guess what? Angry. Irritable. Even if we're not enraged. You may vacillate between low levels of irritability and higher levels of anger, but there's not near as much happy in there. You may experience apathy. You just really don't give a crap about much of anything. Because when your cortisol levels are low, when your HPA axis is dysregulated, those chemicals that help us fight or flee are also important for helping us feel pleasurable things. We need norepinephrine, we need dopamine for pleasure as well as distress. And we may engage in more emotional reasoning when we are angry. When we're in our emotional mind, we often tend to use more emotional reasoning, which means assuming that there is a threat because I feel anxious, because I feel angry, there must be some legitimacy to it. I'm not sure what's causing it, but since I'm feeling it, there must be a threat. Cognitively, we have negative, what they call emotional valence. When you're in a stress state, your body actually, your brain actually assigns more weight to threatening and unpleasant stimuli in the environment, and you notice more things. You tend to be scanning that hypervigilance again. You're scanning for those threats when you're angry. Most of the time, most people are not scanning for the things that make them happy. They're scanning for that other shoe that's they're waiting for to drop. Extreme thinking becomes very common when people are in that fight orf flight mode. They tend to think in all or nothing terms. They tend to think catastrophically instead of stepping back and saying, all right, let me think about this and cog which brings us to cognitive inflexibility. A people who have, who are, who are Angry a lot. Often have difficulty seeing other perspectives. They are entrenched in their way of thinking partly because they're still in that emotional adrenaline fueled state of mind. Environmentally, as I've mentioned, people become more hyper vigilant. They're constantly scanning for threats, they're looking for people to invalidate them. They're waiting for abandonment. They are waiting for the worst things that they could possibly expect. They often wait for those to happen. When we're in that stage of fight or flee, then our anxiety tends to go up and we tend to start fearing those things that we're afraid we can't control. Even if we have control of them right now. It's like, yeah, okay, I'm just waiting for something else to go bad. Relationally, when people are angry, a lot of times they withdraw from, from what I call opposing friends, friends who are happy, friends that don't disag, friends that don't agree with them. They may withdraw from those people because of their cognitive inflexibility. They have a hard time even accepting other people's perspectives. That's threatening to them. And immersion with like minds, finding people that, you know, misery loves company, as the saying goes. Finding people who are similarly angry and then, and that can be good sometimes, but it can also be dis, dysfunctional sometimes. When you immerse with like minds, when you join up with people who share perceive the similar threat, you can get together and figure out how to address it. That's great. Or you can get together and spend hours upon hours talking about how miserable you are and just feeding that feeling of anger without actually taking steps to address it. So what do you do? And obviously this is a shoot, super short, quick and dirty version of things that you can do. I have a lot of other videos on anger management, but some of the basics start by trying to regulate your HPA axis and breathe. Guess what? That is one of the first things. And even when you perceive a threat, one of the first things that can be helpful to do. Unless there's somebody like right in front of you that is, you know, an obvious threat that you need to run from, you can't just stop and take a breath and go, all right, should I run? Should I not? Okay, well most of the time when we perceive something that makes us angry, our HPA axis fires off. If we start breathing, breathe in for four or eight if you can, hold for four and exhale for four or eight if you can. When you slow your breathing down, it triggers that rest and digest. When you slow your breathing Consciously, your brain says, oh, there must not be as much of a threat right now. And it helps you sort of tamp down that emotional reaction. The next step, or maybe not the next step. Maybe this is your first step. Create physical safety. It's important that you are actually physically safe at this point in time. In this situation right now, if you're not safe, then, yeah, you have a reason to either fight or flee. So it's important to look around and go, all right, am I, at this point in time, safe? You know, I can't figure out what's going to happen a week from now, six months from now. But at this point in time, in this situation, am I safe? If the answer is yes. Great. Address pain and sleep issues that can contribute to HPA axis dysregulation. When you are not sleeping well or when you're in pain, a lot of times that causes the HPA axis to be on. That's perceived as a threat. The body's going, okay, there's something wrong. And that will set you up to be more vulnerable to intense emotional reactions. Minimize stimulants and alcohol. Stimulants, by their very nature, ramp up that HPA axis. Ramp up your adrenaline and your cortisol levels. So try to minimize those so you're not already priming yourself for an intense reaction. Alcohol is kind of interesting. You know, when you first drink alcohol, it is a disinhibitor, which can be a problem for, especially for violence, for saying things that you didn't intend to say. Alcohol can be one of those things that takes off your filter. Filter that part of your brain that says, yeah, probably ought not do that. But when we start when, when alcohol starts to leave the body, people actually often in experience an increase in anxiety and an increase in blood pressure. And guess what, an increase in that HPA axis. So, you know, as alcohol starts leaving the body, you actually become even more vulnerable to dysregulation. Meditation is something else that you can do to help regulate your HPA axis. Guided imagery. And there are lots of meditations online. There are some on this YouTube channel, but there are others. You know, if you just Google anger meditation or anxiety meditation, you will find some things and you will find one, hopefully, that can help you focus. I'm not one of those people when it comes to meditation that can sit still and clear my mind. That's just not something that works for me. I tend to do better with an open awareness meditation where I go outside or I go somewhere and I just notice everything that's around and I try to see as many things as I can see. The clouds, the animals, obviously I go outside. But whatever works for you affectively. Accept your feeling of anger non judgmentally. I sometimes tell people, thank your body for it. Thank your body for alerting you to the fact that there might be a threat. Anger has a purpose. However, feeding that anger and telling yourself all the reasons you should be angry doesn't make the anger, doesn't address the situation that's causing the anger. So accept your feelings non judgmentally, but then start taking steps and we'll get to that under cognitive. Even when you're angry, you know, I know a lot of people are angry about a lot of things right now. Okay, you can feel angry, you can be experiencing that anger. You can feel some things are unfair, all right, you have that. However, you can also experience happiness. You, you can also live in the. And you don't have to say, stay steeped in anger 24 7. You can do things. Play with your dog, hang out with your kids, call a friend, go on a run. Whatever it is that makes helps you feel happy. Give your brain a break from that influx of the intense dysphoria. Develop hardiness and an attitude of gratitude. Remember, hardiness is commitment, control and challenge. And this kind of goes along with increasing happiness. Hardiness means recognizing all of those things in your life that are important and meaningful, accepting that you know some of the things may not be going great, but also recognizing all of the things that are going, going well in your life and having an attitude of gratitude for that. Cognitively develop distress tolerance skills to help you get out of that emotional mind where you're reacting and into your wise mind where you're saying, okay, this is really unpleasant. I think this really sucks right now. What options do I have to deal with this? Which takes us to psychological flexibility. And, you know, that's one of my favorite topics ahead of time, if you can. But if you're already steeped in anger right now, all right, that's fine. Define your rich and meaningful life. What do you want your life to look like six months from now? What things are important for you to have a rich and meaningful life and be able to tolerate what's going on. You know, you can't control everything around you all the time. That's just not realistic. So what is it that you need to have in your little corner of the world to experience a rich and meaningful life? You may not like other things that are going on outside of your corner of the world, but what do you need process situations that are causing your feelings of anger with fcp? We've talked about this before. Facts. What are the facts in this context at this time? You may have been in similar situations before in which you felt unsafe, in which you felt disempowered. All right, let's look at. In this context at this time, are you unsafe? Do you have power? And I can't answer that for you because I don't know your situation. But the first thing is really to get to the logical facts. The next step. In this context at this time, what parts of this situation do I have control over? And what are some possible solutions, things I could do to address the things that I have control over? And if I take control, I do the things that are within my control to improve the situation. In this context at this time, what is the probability that this threat will continue, that it will keep me from having a rich and meaningful life? So facts, control and probability. A lot of times people get angry when they don't get their own way or when people disagree with them. And it's important for you to evaluate, ask yourself, what does it mean if to me, if I don't get my own way? You know, that obviously means you don't have control over certain things in a situation. And, you know, why is that so threatening? Explore that. What does it mean if people disagree with me? You know, why do I take that so personally? Why do I perceive that as a threat to my personal safety, my personal control? And you know, is it, Is it actually a threat? And sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. You're going to have to use the facts to figure out what's going on, to evaluate whether you need other people to approve of you in order to feel lovable, in order to feel acceptable, or whether you feel confident having your own thoughts, wants and needs. Once you've gone through and identified the facts in the con, in this context at this time, what things you have control over, use your energy purposefully to address the situation in a way that helps get you closer to your rich and meaningful life. Don't sit there and dwell and stew on all the reasons you're angry and all the things you can't change. Use that energy which you know your body's pumping out anyway, if you're keeping that HPA axis activated. Use that energy to take positive, proactive steps to address the things you can and work to develop a sense of personal control and empowerment, reflecting on the things, again, that you do have control over in your life. You Know, you may not have control over the weather, you may not have control over, you know, whether you have diabetes or not. But what do you have control over? You have control over the progression of the diabetes. You have control over whether you eat healthfully. So there are things in just about every situation that you do have control over. Environmentally, you know, this one is just try to eliminate as many of the anger triggers as possible and add in things that help you feel calm and relaxed. There are certain essential oils that are known to help reduce cortisol levels. They may or may not work for you. You know, not everybody buys into the whole essential oil thing, but having smells around that trigger positive memories. I have this air freshener right now. It's not an essential oil, but it's a pine air freshener. One of the few that I found that actually smells like pine. And it makes me happy. I smell it. It brings back positive memories from, you know, my past. Sites surround yourself with things that make you feel safe, that help you feel empowered and that help you feel happy. Same thing with the sounds. You know, sometimes you need to block out some of the stuff that causes you distress, like the dogs barking all the time. And, you know, whether that's through noise canceling headphones or music. Sounds can also help increase dopamine levels and increase serotonin levels if they're pleasant sounds interpersonally, or as we call it here, relationally, unplug whenever possible. If social media, mainstream media, you know, the Internet adds to your stress. If you notice that getting on the Internet adds to your stress, well, you don't have to. You've probably learned. Or if not, it's a cool thing to try to do an experiment on. Try to unplug for even four hours. For some people, that's a whole lot. And then when you come back, see if you really actually missed that much. You know, most of the time. And back in the day, I'm dating myself here. You know, before we had the Internet, we used to get our news twice a day at 5 o' clock in the morning and at 6 o' clock at night. And if you stayed up late, you could 11 o' clock too. But what they said at 5am, 6pm and 11pm were almost always pretty much the exact same thing. So this thing where we feel like if we're not constantly refreshing Twitter every 20 seconds, we're going to miss something, I think we've taken to an extreme, but that's just my opinion. Nurture your positive relationships. It is good to have positive relationships People, you know, you may be angry about something over here. Maybe you nurture a relationship with somebody who has nothing to do with that. You know, and that's just one of those topics that's completely off the table. Nurture positive relationships with your dog too. I mean, dogs can be even cats. My cat Mojo is super sensitive and you know, he knows when people are stressed and he will get up on their chest and make biscuits. The only cat I've ever met that actually could be a legit therapy cat. Stop mind reading and assuming that you know what people are thinking, feeling or going to do based on random data points. You know, because they are this gender, then they must think, feel or they're going to do this because they're this ethnicity, political affiliation, occupation, age. Humans are not that categorical. We are all unique, independently thinking people. And it's important to recognize that with every single one of those things, you are going to have people who don't fit your conceptualization of what they should do. They're not going to fit into that box really well, I would dare say most people anymore don't fit really nicely into any of those boxes. And assuming that because somebody's a cop or because somebody is, you know, a grown up, they're going to behave a certain way, you know, I think you're setting yourself up for surprises. It's important to step back and pay attention to the moment. Be mindful of what's going on right now and accept every moment as a learning opportunity. Recognize that other people's perceptions are based on their interpretations of the situation and, and their prior experiences and their feelings and their perceptions are just as valid as your, yours are. And that's hard for a lot of people to stomach right now. We've been told for so long that, you know, that's not necessarily true. And it is important to recognize that people, I mean, you interview four, five different witnesses at a crime scene, you're going to get slightly different versions of events based on people's interpretations of what's happening. You know, they're not trying to lie, they're not trying to be oppositional. They just see things differently. And that's the way life is about everything. Try when you're communicate, communicating, to use I statements, I believe, I feel, I think in order to avoid putting other people on the defensive and triggering rage. But it also gives you control because when you are using those I statements, you're asserting your thoughts, feelings, wants and needs. Try to surround yourself with people who respect you, your thoughts and feelings, even if they disagree. And I've talked before with y' all about my mother. My mother and I were vastly different in the way we perceived things. She grew up in the 60s and, you know, had very different opinions about a whole lot of things. And then I did. And, you know, we loved each other, we were able to spend holidays and stuff together, but we also recognized that we disagreed. We had different points of view on a whole lot of things. That was okay. And it's. I would love to see us get back to the point where we can actually respectfully respect one another, even with differences of opinion. Avoid emotional violence like name calling, gaslighting and threatening. Obviously, emotional violence is violence and that comes from a place of threat. That comes from a place of fear. When people start, you know, name calling, a lot of times they're trying to gain power because they feel disempowered somehow. Is that going to be an effective way to gain power? And most of the time the answer is no. Therefore, what is a more effective use of your energy in order to try to change the situation in a way that is important to you? Work on your own self esteem. A lot of times people feel angry and feel threatened when other people don't agree with them because they have been told, they have been taught that they need everybody's approval and it just ain't gonna happen. So working on your own self esteem enables you to validate for yourself your own thoughts, wants and feelings as valid and your own self as lovable without relying on other people to do it. Recognizing that, you know, you're probably going to have people that, you know, love you and respect you. But getting away from this notion that everybody needs to. And finally, when you're having a discussion with somebody, ask for specifics if they're angry at you or if they disagree with you. It's impossible to respond to because. Or because you're stupid or you're lazy or you're a slob or I don't know what that means. Encourage them to provide specific examples of what they're talking about so you can understand from their point of view. You know, it makes me angry. I feel angry when you leave your whiskers on the counter. My son does that all the time and it drives my daughter absolutely bonkers when he leaves whiskers on the counter. So that is something specific. Instead of saying, you're such a slob. Well, he doesn't know what to fix there. Giving him something specific is a much more effective way of getting her needs met because she's saying here is something that I would like you to change. And then he has the option. As I said, these are only some tips for dealing with rage. Dealing with anger. One of the first things, and probably one of the most important things, is to create a situation where most of the time you feel emotionally and physically safe and you are reflecting on your personal power instead of your personal disempowerment, so to speak. Are there any questions? I see a lot of people are here today. Welcome. Thank you for spending, you know, a little bit of time with me this morning. I know I went a little bit longer than usual, but there was a lot to cover for anger and rage and really understanding that anger and rage are protective now, whether they're protecting you from a real threat or one you just think is there based on prior experiences or you're assuming is there that we need to address. And when we feel angry, if we're not effective at communicating what our needs are in order to feel safe, or if we are not effective at evaluating the situation to figure out, okay, what parts do I have control over? Then that anger may intensify because we continue to feel invalidated, rejected, or disempowered. Alrighty, everybody, thank you for being here with me today and I will see you tomorrow, same time, same station.