If you wish to get a deeper insight into the damaging impact of anger on your body, you might like to consult Garry Chapman’s book, Anger. Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way. He explains that as the angry feeling emerges and intensifies, the heart pumps faster and drives adrenaline through your body. The adrenal glands produce two hormones that in turn affect your heart rate and blood pressure. Anger has similar physiological symptoms to panic attacks as adrenaline is released and courses through your body. Normally adrenaline in the system serves a useful purpose, but chronic (toxic) anger keeps the adrenaline activated and the body in high alert. What happens is that a neurotransmitter or hormone called acetylcholine ceases to be effective. This hormone is a mechanism with many functions in your nervous system, one of which is to ease the effects of adrenaline. If that is disabled your health is in danger, because the body’s major systems such as the heart, the nervous system and breathing functions are affected as ongoing anger keeps our bodies in constant arousal and disrupts its proper functioning. Toxic Anger can lead to liver and kidney damage and increased cholesterol, as well as mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Studies show that those with the highest level of anger have twice the risk of heart disease and three times the risk of heart attack. Anger arousal affects the sympathetic nervous system, which mobilises the flight or fight response and affects most of the body’s internal organs. Other illnesses that may arise from chronic anger are type 2 diabetes, lowering of the immune system, premenstrual syndrome, erectile dysfunction, lowered libido, headaches, backaches, allergies, asthma, arthritis, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, being prone to infection, slower wound healing, ulcers, migraine and high risk of a stroke.
Extract from Understanding and Healing the Hurts of Childhood. Publication 2018
THERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
PSYCHOTHERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
COUNSELLING TIPPERARY
DEATH OF A CHILD
ABUSE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
FEAR
ANGER
JEALOUSY
CHILDHOOD DISTRESS
