Consider a situation where you are forced to hold your hand next to the hot burner of a stove.  What would happen to your anxiety?  What would be your next response?  In chronic pain, you “cannot get your hand away from the stove.” I talk about this in depth in “Your Hand Over the Stove.”

BF

Anxiety/Anger

There is an intense relationship between anxiety and anger.  Understanding this interaction is perhaps one of the most important concepts that will have a major impact in calming down your nervous system.

• Anxiety and Anger are universal.  Few human beings have seemed to rise above them.  They are both survival emotions.
• Anxiety represents a feeling of vulnerability and helplessness.  We are hard-wired to avoid this emotion at all costs.
• Anger represents the opposite feeling of power.  It is a fast effective response that masks anxiety. It also gives you the extra boost to assist you in solving the problem that is causing your anxiety.

The Disconnect of Anger

But what happens to your thinking when you are angry?  Not only are the anxiety-producing pathways reinforced, but there is the barrage of angry, irrational thoughts that follow.

• Anger both masks the feeling of anxiety and turbocharges the negative circuits that produce anxiety.
• Anytime you feel angry, you have already experienced some level of anxiety and blamed someone or something for your grief. You are now a victim and the anger kicks in.
• Anger effectively masks the feeling of anxiety while dramatically reinforcing it.  It is a deadly axis.

Give Up Your Anger?

Not only is it deadly for your quality of life, but the interaction between anger and anxiety makes treatment very difficult.  In essence, you are being asked to give up your anger so you can experience anxiety.  Raw anxiety is an unpleasant feeling.  It is this interaction that may be the root cause of why it is commonly thought that you cannot really be open for change until you “hit bottom.”  In other words, the anxiety is so out of control that it can no longer be contained by either functional or dysfunctional means.

Video: Anger Fueled Anxiety – “The Highway to Hell.”

BF