Combating anger | Page 2 | Sunday Observer

Combating anger

12 June, 2022

Hannah Devlin, a research essayist remarked, “Men are, on average, more outwardly aggressive than women and so it might be assumed that they are also angrier”.

However, you may understand that it is not the case. A considerable research conducted on the matter of losing temper have often found that women feel anger as intensely and as often as men.

Compared with women, men who lose temper are more likely to show their aggression. Simultaneously, it should also be noted that women may also get into frequent rage.

Based on a study conducted by some scientists attached to Southwest Missouri State University which interviewed about 200 men and women, it was revealed that women were as angry and acted on their rage as often as men.

The essayist Devlin outlined, “The main difference they identified was that men felt less effective when forced to contain their anger, while women seemed better able to control immediate impulsive responses to anger”.

‘Flash of fire’

“It has also been suggested that the gender differences of this particular calibre are rooted in underlying differences in brain biology. Devlin briefed “Anger is the flash of fire that sparks in your brain when you feel you have been short-changed,” he said.

Anger could also be considered as one of the most primitive emotions that people may experience. The outburst of anger may cause harm not only to you but also to the people around you. As anger intensifies, the body tends to get very excited. You can notice that your heart rate, breathing speed, blood pressure, and body temperature increase as and when you lose your temper.

Combating anger is a matter of major concern in every religion and they preach their own strategies that can help their devotees to calm down anger. Anger management exercises are popular around the world that help the people disturbed with anger to combat its negative repercussions. The way in which we are used to process the feelings associated with anger also could contribute to our mental wellbeing. According to Luca Passamonti, a consultant neurologist and researcher at Cambridge University, in some people, high levels of inhibition, which is an unusually active frontal cortex, are able to prevent the expression of anger but result in people feeling depressed.

Part of our instinct

Devlin stated, “Scientists believe that the capacity for anger has been hardwired into the brain over millions of years of evolution. It forms part of our instinct to fight off threats, to compete for resources, and to enforce social norms. Anger is rooted in the brain’s reward circuit. We are constantly - often subconsciously - weighing up what we expect to happen in any situation”.

You need to pay attention to your body as you feel that you have lost your temper. You should also learn the anger warning signs of your body. The next time that you feel these warning signs, you have to make sure that at least you either try to step away from the relevant situation or use a relaxation technique.

A person with constant anger may even end up with violence. Recent research that dealt with uncovering how exposure to violence changes people’s cognitive processes has found that those who have had traumatised violent childhoods were able to discriminate between “good” and “bad” strangers in an experiment. Citing a comment made by a researcher, Devlin noted, “But they were less likely to trust people, even if they had behaved generously.”

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