Men, Anger and Anxiety

When you think about what anxiety looks like what symptoms do you think of?   The American Psychological Association describes anxiety as:  “An emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.    People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or concerns. They may avoid certain situations out of worry. They may also have physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, dizziness or a rapid heartbeat”.

When we think about anxiety we think about these kinds of symptoms:

• Feeling nervous or fearful
• Feeling tense, restless, on edge
• Feeling an impending sense of doom or fear
• An increased heart rate/heart palpitations
• Breathing rapidly (hyperventilating)
• Trembling and excessive sweating
• Brain fog with trouble concentrating
• Concentrating or even obsessing about certain negative thoughts

Often people with anxiety feel a sense of being tense and on edge and for many people, often men, sometimes being tense and on edge can also evolve into irritation, frustration and anger.

Research has shown that anxiety is quite likely connected with anger.  In a nutshell, anxiety and fear act as a stimuli causing us to feel a sense of arousal and then some people may turn to anger as a defence mechanism of sorts; a defence mechanism intended to help them manage or lessen the anxious arousal feelings.   Anger in this way can be seen as a “tool” for an anxious individual to try and regain some personal control and lessen their anxious feelings.    Unfortunately if unchecked anger becomes the go to way to deal with anxiety… it can damage a person’s well being, their relationships, and even their mental and physical health.

Interestingly enough, some recent FMRI research even shows that anger and anxiety also activate and “light up” some of the same brain areas!   So there is certainly some kind of a brain connection between anger and anxiety.

The anger-anxiety relationship also appears to be a complicated one.   Recent research from Sonya Deschênes (2018) on Generalized Anxiety Disorder has found that unexpressed and internalized anger may be actually be one of the things that also underlies and fuels anxiety!    People who “boil inside without showing it” on the outside are much more likely to experience generalized anxiety.   According to Deschênes, a possible explanation for the anxiety-anger link is that:

when a situation is ambiguous, such that the outcome could be good or bad, anxious individuals tend to assume the worst. That often results in heightened anxiety. There is also evidence of that same thought process in individuals who are easily angered. Therefore, anger and GAD may be two manifestations of the same biased thought process.

Men, Anger and the Stigma of Emotions

In our current society, for men, emotions are still stigmatized.  Little boys in our society are still told to “man up” when they’re feeling anxious nervous or afraid.   When it comes to emotions like anger and anxiety, and most likely because of the patriarchal nature of our society and the concept of “toxic masculinity”;  men haven’t been allowed to show weakness or emotions in a visible, obvious way.   They’re told to not cry like a baby or to toughen up when they’re feeling anxious, upset and overwhelmed by their world.    This effectively teaches boys and young men to deny or stuff their emotions down inside of themselves.   Anyone that’s studied even a little bit of Psychology knows that stuffing emotions down probably isn’t a good thing; it can result in mental and even physical health problems.

Anxiety is not an emotion that takes well to being stuffed down and ignored.   If it is, it can come out in all kinds of different and even unexpected ways.  And one of those ways for men that has also been traditionally socially acceptable…  is to be irritated, frustrated and angry.

For men, especially those with more traditional value systems, having anxiety and worrying about things just isn’t a socially acceptable behaviour that they can show in front of other people.  Anxiety and worry are seen as weakness, and men are supposed to be strong, confident and sure of themselves!    Showing that you have strong feelings of worry and anxiety about anything other than a bear is really seen as being weak and lacking in manliness!   As a result, for some men, their anxiety “comes out” as what has traditionally been an acceptable emotion for men to display, and that’s anger.

When some men experience high amounts of anxiety and worry, their minds go into the fight-flight-response and the result is a readiness to “go to battle” and this results in feelings of anger and aggression.  Being angry often makes men feel like they are doing something about the anxiety arousal they are feeling deeply inside.   By getting angry and aggressive, they’re being a man and taking care of it.   But unfortunately, displaying anger and “blowing up” every time they’re anxious can really take a toll on their health and interpersonal relationships.

Neglecting our anger feelings can actually be very harmful to us.  Unresolved, internalized anger is damaging to our bodies, our interpersonal relationships and our own psychological well-being.   Unresolved anger can leave us in a steady-state of perpetual emotional arousal, which can then increase the anxiety level in a vicious cycle of anger and anxiety,  or can even make us feel chronically helpless and hopeless.

Anger, Anxiety and Health

The effects of consistently ignoring our emotions can really harm our physical and mental health as well.   And unfortunately research has shown that the combination of anger and anxiety can especially result in numerous serious health issues like heart disease/high blood pressure, increased incidence of  diabetes and autoimmune disease, compromised immune system, increased cholesterol, stomach/digestive problems, binge eating/obesity, and even sleep issues.  The deadly duo of anger and anxiety also significantly increases the chances of death from cardiovascular disease and other disease!    

High levels of anxiety and anger can also make us susceptible to mental health problems like “burn-out”, depression, and even schizophrenia.  Luckily though other research has found that using self calming/relaxation strategies, mindfulness/meditation, physical exercise, and other self care/ self soothing strategies can lower our anger and anxiety and improve our health.    

So if you think you may be someone or know someone that struggles with managing anger and anxiety what can you do?   Here are some good steps to start with:

 1. Challenge Your Anger Perspectives  

How do you feel about anger?  Although it’s not socially acceptable to display anger overtly and go “over the top”.   Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to feel and even express anger.  Anger is not necessarily always a negative emotion to be denied and avoided.  In fact it can even be an appropriate response to certain life situations.  

Anger is a sensible response when there is something like unfairness or injustice happening to us or someone else.  That’s great if there is truly a reason to feel such a strong emotion.   Unfortunately people who are prone to strong emotions like anger, may use it as their go to emotion.  One size fits all.   

Anger can also be a motivating force in our life that can be used to motivate us and help us  to change what might be wrong in our life.    So maybe it’s really okay to feel angry and frustrated once in a while?    

Feelings like anger and anxiety may just “show up” and hit us without warning.  Although we may not choose or ask to feel negative emotions, we can decide what we do with them.   We can take control of the situation and even though we may have a super strong negative feeling, we can still decide whether to act on those feelings.   And what we choose to do with those feelings is what’s most important.   Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl put it very aptly:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

It’s “normal” to have the “stimulus” of people, happenings and things in the world “make us” feel angry, but it’s not functional or productive for our “response” to be “acting out” with others in inappropriate angry ways that crosses their boundaries.   We can choose to be angry and aggressive or we can choose to be appropriately assertive and express ourselves without crossing boundaries and hurting others.  Self-help books or therapy can both be great ways to try and learn how to manage our anxiety and anger emotions in better, more productive ways. One of the best ways to start though, is to learn how to slow down.  

2. Learn to Slow it Down!

Feeling angry is really a crappy feeling.  So we need to try not to make it worse through rash or hotheaded behaviours (words/actions) towards others.    It’s really about learning how to “respond rather than react” whenever possible.  This means that you may have to pause or even take a step back and slow down. When we are in the grips of strong angry feelings our judgment is clouded and even our perceptions are somewhat distorted.   In the moment calming strategies like deep breathing, taking a time out, learning to count to ten, can be helpful.  Really any strategy that calms us and decreases our immediate emotional reactivity is helpful.   Our goal should be to calm and empower ourselves to not react immediately to the anger stimulus. If we’re not angry we can be more balanced and logical in solving the problem that’s made us emotionally aroused.   We need to learn and practice the skills that allow us to “respond” with calm, cool, logic and empathy rather than angry hotheaded “reactions.”

3. Learn to Feel All the Feelings  

Maybe as a child you weren’t you weren’t taught to handle anxiety and/or anger in inappropriate and effective ways and as a result you don’t know what to do with it when you feel it?   To start maybe it’ it’s important to allow yourself to learn how to feel all the feelings?  Learn to feel the good, the bad, and maybe even the ugly?  Many people try to fix their emotions as quickly and efficiently as they possibly can!  But maybe sometimes it’s okay to learn how to “sit with uncomfortable feelings”.     Here is a great link on how to do that with a Buddhist mindfulness strategy:    How to Deal with Uncomfortable Feelings 

This can be tough for many of us, but by learning to actually “listen to” our emotional thoughts and feelings, we can actually learn to manage them better and this can help us “feel better” and even improve the quality of our relationships at work and with our friends and family.    Be aware though that if you decide to start feeling all the feelings, it can feel very overwhelming and if it feels unmanageable? Maybe getting the assistance of a psychologist might be very helpful.

4. Learn Relaxation and Mindfulness Strategies

Deep, calming breathing, muscle relaxation exercises and meditation/mindfulness are a great ways to start to learn how to defuse and lessen the impact of negative emotions like anger and anxiety.   If you learn these kinds of strategies and start practicing them daily, you will gradually build skills that will help you manage difficult emotions in better was.   Here is a good place to start:  Mindfulness for Anxiety 

Increasing physical activity is also a great way to reduce anxiety and anger.  Even going for a brisk 2o minute walk every day may be enough to help improve our mood and help us manage negative emotions in better ways.     Humour is also super useful to managing negative emotions.   Seeing the irony or humour in negative situations can be invaluable.

5. Seek Professional Help

What if we have much childhood trauma,  or other kinds of trauma from our past?   What if that past trauma makes feeling feelings and dealing with the strong emotions of anxiety and anger very difficult and complicated?    Maybe then it might be best to find a professional like a psychologist to help you learn to feel, interpret and manage those complicated emotions?

References:

Deschênes, Sonya S. (2014) The Role of Anger in Symptoms and Processes of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. PhD thesis, Concordia University.

Kimbrell, Tim A et al.Regional brain activity during transient self-induced anxiety and anger in healthy adults Biological Psychiatry , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , 454 – 465

Novaco, R. W. (1976). The functions and regulation of the arousal of anger. American Journal of Psychiatry, 133(10), 1124-1128.

Salleh M. R. (2008). Life event, stress and illness. The Malaysian journal of medical sciences : MJMS, 15(4), 9-18.

Suinn, R. M. (2001). The terrible twos—anger and anxiety: Hazardous to your health. American Psychologist, 56(1), 27-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.1.2

Understanding Anger  PDF  https://uhs.berkeley.edu /sites/default/files/understanding_anger_0.pdf

Note: This blog is not intended as medical advice, treatment or diagnosis and should in no way replace consultation with a mental health or medical professional.

For many of us making a really good decision about a difficult or complicated situation can be a hard thing to do.  And if we’re dealing with anxiety on top, it can almost feel impossible.

Research published in The Journal of Neuroscience shows that being in a state of anxiety significantly disrupts how our prefrontal cortex operates.  The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the part in our brain that looks at the pros and cons of a decision and helps us plan and process our decision making thoughts in a logical and reasoned manner.   The prefrontal cortex helps us to step out of “emotional thinking” when faced with a major decision.  It helps with problem solving and decision-making, long-term planning, rule following, calculating risk and reward and in controlling our emotions.   It actually helps to calm our amygdala, the part of the brain that is very “emotional” and processes our emotions, instincts and impulses, especially those related to fear and protecting ourselves from the environment around us.  

The researchers in this study found that:

under anxiety, decision making may be skewed by salient and conflicting environmental stimuli at the expense of flexible top-down guided choices. We also find that anxiety suppresses spontaneous activity of PFC neurons, and weakens encoding of task rules by dorsomedial PFC neurons. These data provide a neuronal encoding scheme for how anxiety disengages PFC during decision making.

In other words, anxiety causes us to feel overwhelmed and unable to use logic and reason to make quick or flexible decisions.  With anxiety the prefrontal cortex is “inhibited” in it’s action, we aren’t able to calm our emotional thinking and as a result our decision making capabilities are significantly diminished.   This means when experiencing significant anxiety our decision making processes can be slowed and we may even be susceptible to making more errors and biased or illogical decisions.   

As I’ve been told by many clients, sometimes people who are experiencing strong anxiety will stand in one aisle of the grocery store for 10 minutes or longer to decide on exactly the right cereal to buy.

And for some people it can really be life complicating.   Reducing our anxiety levels is especially important during stressful times in our life, when we feel overwhelmed, or that life is spinning out of control.   Worse yet anxiety can cause us to make poor decisions which can then create more anxiety, which then can lead to even more bad decisions in a vicious cycle.

So how do we make an effort to reduce our anxiety and make better decisions?

General Anxiety Reduction

First of all, some of the best ways to work on this anxiety-decision problem is to learn how to reduce our overall anxiety and stress levels through regularly using tools like mindfulness, meditation, yoga, physical exercise, practicing deep breathing/muscle relaxation techniques and watch our sugar and caffeine intake.

Another option is to explore self help strategies like these:  https://adaa.org/tips-manage-anxiety-and-stress or trying a book like this one: https://www.guilford.com/books/The-Anxiety-and-Worry-Workbook/Clark-Beck/9781606239186.

If you’ve been battling with anxiety for a long time and you’re really struggling to find hope you also may want to try therapy with a qualified professional with a Psychologist like myself.   Psychologists can help people:

Psychologists are trained in diagnosing anxiety disorders and teaching patients healthier, more effective ways to cope. A form of psychotherapy known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is highly effective at treating anxiety disorders. Through CBT, psychologists help patients learn to identify and manage the factors that contribute to their anxiety.

Through the cognitive component of therapy, patients learn to understand how their thoughts contribute to their anxiety symptoms. By learning to change those thought patterns, they can reduce the likelihood and intensity of anxiety symptoms.

With the behavioral component, patients learn techniques to reduce undesired behaviors associated with anxiety disorders. Specifically, patients are encouraged to approach activities and situations that provoke anxiety (such as public speaking or being in an enclosed space) to learn that their feared outcomes (such as losing their train of thought or having a panic attack) are unlikely.

Here are a few links to more information about how a Psychologist can help you work on anxiety:

Beyond Worry: How Psychologists Help With Anxiety Disorders 

3 Ways Therapy Helps You Address Anxiety

Expectations and Choices

Remember that no one in the world is perfect and no one ever makes all of the right decisions all of the time.   So maybe one really good way to take some pressure off is to take the expectation off that you have to make the right decision every time.   What decision would you make if you knew there wasn’t actually a wrong one? Anxiety makes decision-making super hard by deceiving us into believing that there are is only right choice and anything else is a wrong one.    Anxiety can make you feel that there will be catastrophic consequences if you choose the Honeycombs and not the Lucky Charms, when in fact they are probably both terrible choices.   😀    It’s about using our self-talk to realize and “tell yourself” that there are usually no really wrong decisions and even if we make a wrong one we can probably work with it and the our world will not collapse. 

Ask yourself, how big of a decision is this?  Is it life and death or is it just a decision between Lucky Charms and Honeycomb?  Does it really matter if you make an imperfect choice?  You could also really push the boat out to, and just buy both cereals!  (But maybe also budget for the dentist bill?).

Taking the “Logical” Perspective      

When there is an important decision to make in our life, it’s really very normal to feel anxious, it’s just our brain telling us to be cautious and make a good decision. Anxiety makes us feel like we have to rush and make the decision ASAP!   But instead maybe try to be super brave and challenge the anxiety feelings by ‘acting as if’ there is really nothing to be worried about.   Fake it to make it.     Try to step into the calm cool of logic and away from the hot rushed feelings of anxiety.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself how important this decision truly is in the grand scheme of things?  Rate the situation on a scale of 1 to 10.   Even though it feels like an 11, we may logically and rationally know it’s only really a three.   By challenging our emotional thinking with a rating strategy we can learn to really step out of fear and into calmer and more balanced thinking.    This of course will feel difficult to try at first, but the more you do it, the easier it will become.    

Ask yourself:

• Is this worry realistic given the actual circumstances?
• Is this negative consequence really likely to happen?   5% 20% or is it 50% chance?
• Just what if the worst possible outcome happens?
• Could I handle that worst possible outcome anyways?  We often feel that the worst possible outcome is a huge toothy tiger, when in fact it might only be a cute wee, baby tiger.   (More about tigers later)

Why Am I Anxious?

We all experience all kinds of stress in our lives; work stress, family stress, relationship stress, or or even having an argument with a teenager or coworker or being stuck in traffic for an extra hour on the way home.     Stressors like these can trigger our anxiety levels and force us into negative feelings in what was otherwise a pretty good day.    Anxiety can also arise from past experiences in our lives.  Past anxiety experiences stay with us as memories, held in our mind and in our bodies.   A current anxiety situation may be small but if it’s similar enough to a “big” past anxiety situation, then our memory of the “big” past anxiety may be stoked by our current situation, making our current situation effectively feel like it’s twice as big!   The emotion and feelings from the “big” anxiety in our past may have been fully justified when it happened, but now, really it’s only a memory.  Anxiety we may carry from the past can lead us into a situation where it affects our decision making. Sometimes by looking for where our anxiety is coming from, we can help calm ourselves and make a better decision.  

Fearing Mistakes: The Good Enough Decision

Maybe it’s OK to make a good enough decision?  What if we choose the wrong thing?  Does it really matter in the scheme of things?   Sometimes a bad decision can even turn into a good thing!    History is chock full of examples where someone took the wrong door and things worked out even better for them.   For instance, Columbus was trying to find an easier way to China when he tripped on North America!

Or how about Penicillin?

As the story goes, Dr. Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist at St. Mary’s Hospital, went on summer vacation and made a decision to just leave a messy lab bench.  When he returned he examined some colonies of Staphylococcus aureus that he left to grow and to his shock, Dr. Fleming noted that a mold called Penicillium had contaminated his Petri dishes. After carefully placing the dishes under his microscope, he was amazed to find that the Penicillium mold prevented the normal growth of the staphylococci, creating the groundwork for his life saving invention.

Fear of making a mistake can be linked to many causes.  For some people having emotionally abusive, critical or unsupportive parents can create the groundwork for anxiety as adults.  Because these people were ignored, undermined or even humiliated in childhood, they often carry those negative feelings into adulthood, hampering the confidence needed to make a a good decision.

Experiencing a past traumatic event can also be a cause. For example, say that in junior high you made a really bad decision that resulted in being teased and mocked and maybe even bullied.   The experience might have been so terrible that you became afraid of failing in other things. And you carry that fear even now, years later.

Don’t Feed the Tiger!

When people are anxious, their brains start coming up with all sorts of flawed, outlandish and extreme ideas as a way to protect the individual from all possible threats.    An anxious brain, in trying to be thorough, wastes time on exploring possible outcomes and consequences  that are really pretty unlikely to occur.  And really, these flawed worry thoughts only heighten an already anxious state.   The anxious brain exaggerates possible consequences and this can make trying to make a decision an absolute nightmare.

When trying to relate to your sense of vulnerability or anxiety in a different way, it can be helpful to think of your desire to avoid it as someone living with a hungry baby tiger. Although the tiger is just a baby, he is scary enough, and you think he might bite you. So you go to the fridge to get some meat for him so he won’t eat you. And, sure enough, throwing him some meat shuts him up while he’s eating the meat, and he leaves you alone for a while. But he also grows just a little bigger.

So, the next time he’s hungry, he’s just a little bigger and a little more scary, and you go to the fridge to throw him some more meat. Again, you feed him to keep him at bay. The problem is that the more you feed him, the bigger he gets, and the more frightened you feel. Now eventually that little tiger is a big tiger, and he scares you more than ever. So you keep going back to the fridge to get more meat, feeding and feeding him, and hoping that one day he will leave you alone. Yet the tiger doesn’t leave — he just gets louder and more scary and hungry. And then one day you walk to the fridge, you open the door, and the fridge is empty. At this point, there is nothing left to feed the tiger . . . Nothing? . . . Except you!

from Eifert, G.H. & Forsyth J.P. (2005). Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders (pp. 138–139). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger

Even though anxiety can feel huge and sometimes even feel overwhelming, we can remind ourselves that the anxiety we are feeling isn’t a”real” thing to fear… it’s not a tiger coming to eat us.     It’s just a thought, just a feeling, there is no tiger unless we start to feed it!

Learn How to Trust Yourself

One great way to really bolster your decision making confidence is to look back at your life and all of the things you’ve accomplished and all of the decisions you’ve already made.   I would even bet that because you’re so careful with decision making  you may actually  have a long history of making good decisions!   Look to your past and all the decisions you’ve already made.   Did it work out?   Probably for the most part it did.   And even if you made the wrong decisions in the past?  You’re still here, you got through it and you survived!  So any decision you make now probably just isn’t as life altering as you feel it is.

So that wraps our anxiety and decision making blog.  I hope some of this stuff can help you get over your analysis paralysis and make easier and better decisions in your life!

References

Park J, Wood J, Bondi C, Del Arco A , Moghaddam B .Anxiety Evokes Hypofrontality and Disrupts Rule-Relevant Encoding by Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Neurons. J Neurosci. 2016 Mar 16;36(11):3322-35. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.

Eifert, G.H. & Forsyth J.P. (2005). Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders (pp. 138–139). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger

This blog is not intended as medical advice, treatment or diagnosis and should in no way replace consultation with a mental health or medical professional.