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The Anger and Anxiety Link

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By Dr. Deb - FJN Family Columnist

What do anger and anxiety attacks have in common? The answer is: physiological arousal. Both the angry person and the one suffering from anxiety have heightened responses such as blood pressure, heart rate, shallow breathing, perhaps clammy palms or cold hands, all of which go along with difficulty thinking clearly and a sense of being out of control. Recently, we read the weekly Torah Portion of Matot in which Elazar the Kohen (Priest) had to inform the community about various laws instead of Moshe (Moses) because Moshe had just gotten angry causing him to forget the laws.

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In a conflict, in which one person is the yeller and the other person is being yelled at, both may suffer a similar and unpleasant form of arousal.

An incredibly potent tool to help both people is based on the 1975 research by Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard. In his groundbreaking book, The Relaxation Response, he described the physiology of stress—and its cure—by doing meditation-like exercises.

Recently, continued exploration in this area was conducted at the University of Wisconsin where researchers hooked up Tibetan monks to machines that would record their brain waves and then track these as the monks meditated. They found that "longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before" according to Richard Davidson, the neuroscientist at the Keck Lab for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior. What’s more, when comparing the monks, with between 15 to 40 years of practice in meditation, to students volunteering for the research, given the requirement to meditate on universal compassion, "the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organized and coordinated than in the students" (cited in the Miami Herald).

In simple English, the monks were calm and happy, and, I’d venture to guess, they remain so in the face of stressful situations. (They do, in fact, face stress because of their political situation vis-à-vis China.) How does this work? The process has two components that work together: deep breathing and focus. The deep breathing immediately slows down autonomic responses and practicing focusing on one thing—or nothing—removes the stressor from one’s view. After all, if you’re trying to think of a pleasant scene or of universal compassion, you aren’t thinking of the most recent exchange you had with your mother-in-law.

The beauty of this is that it works for an array of problems besides anger or anxiety, including shyness, public speaking, and test taking.

It is because of this powerful physiological outcome of intense and long-term practice in meditation—or a variant of it described by Benson—that I created and started giving away on my website a relaxation exercise that can be downloaded, only takes 10 minutes a day and can be done in the privacy of one’s home. It’s an audio file in which I walk a person through deep breathing, deep relaxation, and guided imagery, all set to soothing music. Over time, the feedback started coming in: "I found it very relaxing"; "It enabled me to calm down enough to get my thoughts clear"; "It bought me the time to take the time-out I needed to keep our fight from escalating"; "It’s helping me overcome my panic attacks"; "It’s a great de-stressor"; "I use it before I’m going to do public speaking—and it works!" and so on.

Since my work deals with marriage and family issues, I’ve often had couples come to me complaining about their arguments and when I give them the relaxation to practice daily as homework, they report that they not only listen to it and enjoy it, but their children do too! This makes sense because those children are living in a tense home due to their parents’ reactions, so they’d be happy to have a tool to reduce that stress in the house and within them.

The best part of getting into a routine of listening to the relaxation is that it brings one’s nervousness under one’s own control. By practicing the art of breathing deeply while focusing positively, a person can literally retrain his or her brain to make him a calmer, cooler person. Anger and anxiety may be "old friends," but perhaps they’ve overstayed their welcome.

Debby Schwartz Hirschorn, PhD. Is a Marriage & Family Therapist in Hollywood. Visit: DrDeb.com.

Posted by Dr. Deb - FJN Family Columnist on 07/27 at 03:39 PM • Hits: 155



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