Stress Mastery: The Art of Coping Gracefully

The Nature of Anger

Physiologically, anger is arousal. When you are angry, the fight-or-flight response has been activated. Something has stressed you, and your body has prepared you to either fight or flee. Clearly, anger helps you if you need to fight. The problem is that when we are stressed we tend to look around to see what is making us angry. That is, we tend to externalize the sources of our anger or stress. We assume that something out there is causing our arousal. This is true not just with humans, but with our animal cousins as well. For example, imagine a lab rat in a box whose floor is covered with an electric grid. If that rat is alone and we shock it, the rat will jump, look for an escape route, and manifest clear signs of arousal. ...