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It won’t come as news to readers of this blog, but the
therapy culture nostrum of expressing your feelings is not a panacea. When
applied to anger it is a nostrum; that is, it can be harmful to your health..
Reuters reports on the latest research:
Bottling
up emotions is thought to harm both mind and body, but a new study suggests
that the opposite extreme may be no better.
In a
study of thousands of heart attack patients, those who recalled
having flown into a rage during the previous year were more than twice as
likely to have had their heart attack within two hours of that episode,
compared to other times during the year.
Of course, there are different ways to express anger. A cold
stare is not the same as a raging tantrum. And yet, when the culture tells
people that they should not bottle up their anger it is suggesting that it is
beneficial to fly into a rage.
In truth, expressing anger too strongly can be bad for your
health:
Although
the research cannot prove that the angry outbursts led to the heart
attacks, the results "make sense," according to Dr. James O'Keefe Jr,
a cardiologist at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City who wasn't involved in the
research.
Anger
is an emotion that releases the fight-or-flight-response chemicals epinephrine
and norepinephrine, he said.
Those
hormones raise our blood pressure, our pulse, constrict blood vessels, make
blood platelets stickier (increasing the risk of blood clots), which O'Keefe says
could be one way anger may be associated with increased heart risk.
"Contrary
to the urban myth that it's best to express anger and get it out there,
expressing anger takes a toll on your system and there's nothing really
cathartic about it," O'Keefe told Reuters Health.
"(Anger)
serves no purpose other than to corrode the short and long-term health of your
heart and blood vessels," he said.
Science has now shown that expressing anger is not
cathartic. The next time you are tempted to let loose at someone, take a deep
breath, go for a run and think again.
4 comments:
"Anger is an emotion..."
The problem with therapy is that it has made a business out of treating emotions,( commonly known as feelings). Expressing anger is not the problem; having anger is the problem. Our therapy culture acts as if 'feelings' exist in a vacumn, not connected to any reason. But think: if you see someone who is sad or fearful or angery your mind tells you that the ' someone' thinks/believes something that causes them to be sad or fearful or angery. Sometimes they have a valid reason, sometimes not. A person prone to 'fits' of anger needs to change their beliefs in order to not percieve that they are so abused/victimized/used, whatever by whomever/society. Resolving the reason for anger by getting rid of " stinking thinking" is the key.
There are better ways of expressing anger than 'fits of rage'.
I think N.W.A. said it best:
"I'm expressin' with my full capabilities, Now I'm livin' in correctional facilities."
touchy-feely libs make millions off of "therapy" for rage.
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