Do you get angry? Anger is a completely normal human emotion that everyone will experience in their lives, right from being tiny children. If your parents are being unfair, your doctor’s bedside manner is something to be desired or your promotion was given to the office junior instead of you, then who can blame you for feeling irritated? In its proper place, anger is a healthy outlet for negative emotion. Anger that is constantly suppressed may turn inward and cause depression or even physical illnesses like high blood pressure or stress related headaches. If you feel that you’re very frequently or always angry and you feel irritation or rage more than any other emotion you may have an anger management problem.
Signs and Symptoms of an Anger Problem
Some signs that you are overly angry are:
- Feeling constantly anxious
- Feeling constantly irritated or even enraged by other people
- Feeling as if you cannot control your angry thoughts
- Feeling overwhelmed by your circumstances
- Thinking about self-harming
- Thinking about harming others
- Very frequent stress related headaches
- Heart palpitations and tight feelings in your chest.
A prolonged state of anger and anxiety can have a devastating impact on your health and can put you at risk of memory loss, stroke and heart attacks. It may interfere with your ability to sleep at night. Having an anger problem can also damage your relationship with your partner and children and could spoil your life at work.
Unresolved Life Issues
Anger issues arise for a variety of reasons. It can occur due to an inflammatory illness (inflammation can cause anxiety) or it can manifest after a head trauma or brain bleed. Sometimes it develops for psychological reasons like childhood bullying or being raised by very critical parents. Issues that affect self-esteem can have long term consequences on how the person views themselves. Some people put others down or act angry to cover up feelings of self-loathing or to take back power they feel they have lost. Sometimes repeated hurts and disappointments are the cause.
If your relationships are already strained it may be time to take action to heal your life and your interactions with others. You can control your anger rather than letting it control you.
How Emotional Freedom Technique Can Help You
Emotional Freedom Technique is one of the ways you can help yourself. Emotional Freedom Technique is a form of acupressure that is based on meridian energy points used in acupuncture for more than five thousand years. However, instead of using fine needles, acupressure uses a less invasive external pressure. Acupressure is a popular way of preventing motion sickness, with some pharmacies and online stores selling acupressure wrist bands to bring relief to travelers. Acupressure can also be used to address emotional problems such as depression, fear of public speaking and anger. Tapping on the specific meridian sites on the head and chest channels energy into them to clear ‘emotional blocks’. Positive affirmations are used in conjunction with the tapping to raise your self – worth and balance your mind. It is known that the mind and the body are connected – for instance, people with depression can have lower immune systems – so saying affirmations not only enhances the action of the acupressure but as a longer term intervention it can help you change the way you think.
What the Science Says
If you’re not convinced that some tapping exercises could change your life, just take a look at what is in the scientific literature.
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease reported that emotional freedom techniques reduced cortisol (stress hormone) levels and eased anxiety and psychological distress. These decreases in distress were much more significant when compared with a group of people who had psychotherapy.
In a separate study in Greece, EFT was trialled on people with stress and tension type headache and was found to increase quality of life by reducing the number of headaches they had as well as lessening their severity.
Staffordshire University in the UK studied the use of EFT for people in high pressure environments and gave EFT training to 50 students. All 50 students achieved better marks in their tests and were notably calmer than students who hadn’t done EFT. This has led to some doctors calling for it to be introduced into the UK healthcare system as a treatment for psychological problems like anger, depression and anxiety.
EFT can be self-administered, it’s easy to learn and it doesn’t have the side-effects that anti-anxiety pills can have so if anger is making your life a misery, why not give it a try?
Sources:
Rosenkrantz MA et al, A comparison of mindfulness-based stress reduction and an active control in modulation of neurogenic inflammation, Brain Behav Immun. 2013 Jan;27(1):174-84, accessed November 20, 2014, doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2012.10.013 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23092711
Bougea AM et al, Effect of the emotional freedom technique on perceived stress, quality of life, and cortisol salivary levels in tension-type headache sufferers: a randomized controlled trial, Explore (NY). 2013 Mar-Apr;9(2):91-9, accessed November 20, 2014, doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2012.12.005, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23452711
Church D et al, The effect of emotional freedom techniques on stress biochemistry: a randomized controlled trial, J Nerv Ment Dis. 2012 Oct;200(10):891-6, accessed November 20, 2014, doi: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e31826b9fc1, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22986277
Emma Innes, Alternative Tapping Therapy Could be Used by NHS to Treat Anxiety and Depression, The Daily Mail, 16 January 2014, accessed November 22, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2540469/Alternative-tapping-therapy-favoured-Lily-Allen-used-NHS-treat-anxiety-depression.html
An Introduction to Emotional Freedom Technique, The Dr. Oz Show, accessed November 22, 2014, http://www.doctoroz.com/article/introduction-emotional-freedom-technique
Anger Symptoms, Causes and Effects, Psych Guides, accessed November 22, 2014, http://www.psychguides.com/guides/anger-symptoms-causes-and-effects/
Controlling Anger Before it Controls You, American Psychological Association, accessed November 22, 2014, http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx
Emotional Freedom Techniques, EFT Edmonton’s Blog, accessed November 22, 2014, https://eftedmonton.wordpress.com/
This is a freelance article from Gemma Bays.
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