Anger Management, Hormones and Your Body

Anger is a normal response to some types of stress, and people have different types of responses to feeling anger. Some of those responses can be destructive, others can just "let off some steam" while you formulate a better response to the situation. Either way, anger releases stress hormones, including cortisol, which are necessary for survival but can be harmful in high levels for extended periods of time.

In this episode I'll talk about anger, how I deal with it, and some of the ways high cortisol can damage your body.

For personalized help managing your stress hormones, contact me at wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au for a consultation.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:42

Welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Barclay, and today I wanna talk to you about anger management. Now, someone I know suggested that I do this topic for you, so shout out to you. You know who you. Let's talk about what anger is. Anger is part of the fight flight, freeze fade response, which is generated by our adrenal glands to flood the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. When we experience effects of anger, it also has impacts on our body. So apart from saving us from what the original. Irritation, I guess, is it has a flow on effect. Now, anger can make you feel safe for a very split instance. It can make you feel alarmed. This is part of this response So that you can get out of there and recognize that the situation isn't great for you. It can help you blow some steam, so you know, instantly you feel angry, you have your anger response, and I'll get into that in a minute and, and it's over. So, okay. Anger responses. What are they? A lot of people think anger is just screaming, shouting, blowing up, throwing things, hitting something, whatever it is. But people have different anger responses. So for myself, my anger response used to be retaliation. So back in the day, someone made me angry. I was going to do whatever they did tenfold, made me feel better, instantly. Not a healthy response. I knew that, but it was my go-to anger response. These days, my anger response is crying, and it sounds weird, but it doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't hurt me. your anger response is like taking the lid off. The pressure cooker or like a bottle of fizzy drink when you shake it up, you know, you take the the lid off at once and it's going to explode everywhere and shoot up everywhere, right? But if you undo the lid just a little bit, let some of that air escape, that pressurized air, it's going to dissipate. So your anger response is hopefully. Doing the lid slowly just to let a bit of pressure out, but for some people it's taking the lid off instantly and exploding. So I used to be an exploder. So for me now crying is taking that lid off just a little bit to lit a little bit of pressure out. Now, however your anger response is facilitated is up to you. So like I said, mine used to be explosive and you know, very much do unto others, kind of in a really bad way. Now it's crying. And so for me, when I feel that anger welling up and there's nothing else I can do, and I have to release a little bit of pressure, I'll cry. It's not full on sobbing. It's just letting some pressure out. Anger can get worse with our hormone fluctuations. So for me, going into menopause, I realized I had to change my anger response because every time my estrogen dipped really low, I got more angry. So, you know, we need to know that. Times of our life, our anger will be reflected very differently within our body and it will be encouraged or exacerbated by our hormone fluctuations. So back to what anger does to the body. Well, first of all, anger stresses out the heart. So it does trigger a release of stress hormones, and over a long time, they can take a toll on your heart. High blood pressure can come from increased long-term stress, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, metabolic syndrome. So something that makes me angry, I'll tell you this right now, is when someone says, oh, you are fat, especially to someone under a lot of stress or to someone that's been through menopause and their hormones are going, oh, hooey, right? Do not ever label someone as fat. I'm just going to say that because you don't know what's going on in their body, and if they're under long-term chronic stress, the cortisol levels will be super high. Cortisol is one of those stress hormones triggered by anger, triggered by stress. And guess what? It makes you hold on. Too fat in your cells and cortisol is not only a hormone, it's also a sugar. So it can elevate your blood sugars to the point where you're going to find it hard to come back from. So, you know, something that makes me angry is when someone says to me, oh, you're still fat. Okay. But I know what mine's coming from. You know, my response used to be, well, I may be fat, but you are still an idiot. That's an anger response right now. My response is, yes, I know my cortisol's very high and you are not helping me. So you need to find a way to make things not keep impacting you. Because guess what? Every time something impacts you that someone says or does. Assumes about you, you're going to get angry and that is going to keep the cycle going. Now, anger also, as I said, increases the risk of heart attacks. It's specifically linked here through that cortisol hormone, anger can disrupt your digestion. So when you are in a fight flight, freeze, fade response, you are not going to digest things properly. And when you don't digest things properly, you're not getting those nutrients you can get. Things like irritable bowel syndrome. You can get good long-term stress if you are not digesting things or long-term anger. If you are not digesting, things will affect your skin, your hair, your eyesight. Your brain, your thinking, too much anger hinders your mental health. So you cannot think clearly in an angry state. It will cause anxiety and depression. It will change your relationships. It will change your responses to people. Anger can mess up your sleep. So when you have higher stress hormones. Are going to struggle to have the correct sleep hormones, so your whole balance will be out of whack. Anger lives in our liver. So people who are chronically angry will have liver issues, so you will not be able to release toxins from your body. You will not be able to process nutrients properly because your liver is required to do that. Okay? Science lesson over, what do we do to manage our anger? You need to find something that is your go-to that works for you. Now, I talk with a lot of my clients about PNEI. What is it? Psycho neuro endo, immunology. The psycho is all of our thoughts and emotions. And guess what? Anger is one of those. And if you don't address what's going on in your limbic brain where the P is, you are going to have a flow on effect. So if you cannot address your anger properly, it will affect your nervous system, which will affect your endocrine system, which those stress hormones are from. So you can see the continual loop happening here, and that will also affect your immune system. So you'll start getting sick with everything. Anger can make you sick. Colds, flus. All those good things that we really love not Right. Where are they coming from? They can be coming from your anger. Okay, so what do we do about anger? Find a release. So talk to my clients, as I said about the PNEI, one way to short circuit that is by scent. What is your favorite scent? What is your go-to? For me, it's dill. And I always tell this story because it just puts a smile on my face and a smile on my heart, and that is the happiest time in my childhood. That I can ever remember is in my Nana's kitchen, standing on a stool next to her at the bench, learning to make dill pickled cucumbers. So the smell of dill takes me back to my Nana's kitchen where everything was safe and I was calm, and I was happy, and I was enjoying everything. So when I feel angry, I have a bottle of dill oil with me. And so I can put a drop on my hands, rub it together, warm it up, cup it over my face, and I'm not angry anymore. I cannot be angry with the smell of dill. So for me, that's a very healthy way to manage my anger. Now if something like a scent doesn't work. As I said, my next go-to is to cry. You've got to release some of the pressure, okay? If you cannot take yourself out of the situation to calm down, and we'll talk about that in a minute, you need to release some pressure. So for me, it can be crying. The crying doesn't mean I'm sad. The crying doesn't mean I'm hurt. The crying doesn't mean anything other than I'm releasing pressure so that I don't explode at the person making me angry, or I don't explode at the situation making me angry. It's just releasing pressure. Okay. The best way to manage your anger, however, is get the heck out of the situation. This may mean something like, you know, you're in the office, something makes you angry. You just politely say, excuse me, I need to step out, go outside, walk around. Take 10, 20, 30 minutes, whatever it is, walk around, dissipate the situation by taking yourself out of there. If you cannot do that, excuse yourself to the bathroom and just go and sit in there and wait and breathe and tell yourself this is okay. You are still safe. You are still okay. If the situation is making you angry. Say you're on public transport and there's something really weird going on and it's kind of making you angry on the spot, find a way to dissipate it. It may be playing with the hymn on your shirt. It may be, you know, turning your fingers around each other just to wiggle them around and get out of the situation. Whatever it is that you are doing to manage your anger in the instant, it is something just to reroute your brain so that anger doesn't go any further Now. Anger that we hold onto. Now, this is a little bit different, so this is something you haven't dealt with in the instant that it happened. It may be, you know, something that was said, something that happened, it's playing around in your mind, or it may be something from the past and you're still angry about it. Rewrite what happened. Go home and say, this happened. Yes, it made me angry. But this is what I've learnt about the situation, or this is what I've learnt about myself. So I'll give you an example here. I had a very good friend that was part, almost part of my family, lived in my home for a while, and she changed. Things she was doing made me instantly angry, and then when she moved out of my home, things she did made me extremely angry and it built up 12 months on. I could still be angry about that, but I'm not. Because I did the work, and so now what I see had happened was she felt lost in herself. Things changed. Her response to me was an anger response. My response now is, nah, whatever. Move on. You're not in my life. You don't affect me. What happened then doesn't affect me. It's okay. I'm okay. And this is what we need to get to with anger. We need to get to the I'm okay because your body has one job and that is to keep you safe. And if you are angry and constantly angry and persistently angry, you are not safe, and your body will reflect that and things will start happening that you do not want to happen with your health. So some takeaways here. Anger management is up to you. This is an inside job. Things are going to keep happening in your life happening around you, and it is your response that matters. Your response doesn't matter to anyone else. I'm sure people don't wanna get punched in the face. I'd rather that you cry or walk away and go for a walk. That's not what I'm saying. Your response, your anger response, what's happening internally to you does not matter to anyone else, but it will matter to you today. Tomorrow, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, because you are going to create the perfect storm for internal damage. These hormones, these stress hormones are extremely powerful and you need to manage your anger in a way that doesn't continually harm you. Now. We've kind of just touched on the topic here, and what I'm going to ask you to do is if you wanna know more about healthy anger management or what anger can do to your body, jump onto our website, www.holisticnaturalhealth.com au. We are based in Australia and now. Holistic starts with a W because we treat with holism, and I want you to send us a contact and just say in the topic, anger management, and we can jump onto a Zoom call anywhere around the world or we can jump on onto a phone call in Australia and we can help you. Learn more about healthy ways of anger management. Now, to the person that asked me to do this, we've had our moments. I know we have, but hopefully my take on anger management has answered your, solved your issues, and if not. You know where I am. Let's talk further for now. Listeners, please like review, subscribe, and share our podcast everywhere, and go forth and create your magical life.

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