Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Dr. David Stoop

Author:Dr. David Stoop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help;SEL031000;REL012070
ISBN: 9781493414901
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

Where Anger Takes Us

When we repress, suppress, or express our anger, it doesn’t get resolved. It won’t just go away, even though we may think that it does. But anger can take us to places we really don’t want to go. Anger that festers at any level eventually turns into bitterness and resentment. And when this happens, we are in danger not just spiritually, but our health will be compromised as well.

Early studies attempted to differentiate anger from fear. Initially, researchers thought they had found a difference. The experiments couldn’t create intense fear, but they could create intense anger. Eventually researchers discovered that the difference was based on the intensity of the two emotions. When they were able to create fear at an intensity equal to the intensity of the anger, there was no longer any difference between the two emotions. The truth is our brain reacts the same whether we feel fear or anger.

When the amygdala sends its messages, blood is taken from our organs and sent to our extremities in order to prepare us. If we are angry, we are being prepared to fight, not to take flight. Cortisol, adrenaline, histamines, and other hormones are released into the blood to prepare us to attack what appears to be threatening to us.

Here’s an example of why the reactions are the same physiologically. Imagine that you are visiting a friend who has a ministry in the inner city. She lives in a neighborhood that, unless God called you to live there, would not be a place you would choose to live. As you finish dinner, your friend remembers she has a board meeting that night, so she suggests you go sightseeing downtown. “Just be back before 11:00 and you’ll be safe,” she says. “Nothing bad happens around here until after midnight.”

You get back to her place a little after 11:00 and have to park your rental car several blocks away from your friend’s apartment. You say goodbye to the car, assuming it will be stolen by morning. As you begin to walk the two long blocks to your friend’s apartment, you suddenly hear footsteps behind you. You speed up; they speed up. You’re too afraid to look behind you, so you start running. The footsteps start running as well, and now you’re really afraid, but at this point you’re close to the apartment.

Just as you get the key into the lock, the footsteps stop behind you and your friend says, “It’s just me!” Now what do you feel? What had been intense fear just seconds earlier suddenly turns into intense anger at the “joke” that your now former friend has played on you. How long did it take for the fear to become anger? A microsecond. What changed? Nothing in your body. What changed was your perception of the threat. What had been extremely frightening for you was no longer a dangerous threat. So whether you feel anger or fear in a given situation will be mitigated by your perception of the threat.

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