Tolerance & Anger

"I don't need anger management. I need people to stop pissing me off. My people skills are just fine - It's my tolerance of idiots that needs work". From a Facebook post which made me laugh because I could easily apply it to myself.

The Physiology of Anger.

1. Fight or flight - Muscles become very tight, causing an “uptight” feeling.
2. Chemicals, (catecholamines). are released causing us a burst of energy, which causes a sugar deficiency, so an angry person may “shake from anger”.
3. Heart rate accelerates: The average of 80 climbs to 180 beats per minute.
4. Blood pressure rises: The average of 120 over 80 suddenly soars to 220 over 130.
5. The body prepares for survival. It safeguards itself against injury and bleeding, releasing chemicals to clot the blood, (potentially dangerous - the clot can travel through the blood vessels to the brain or heart).
6. Rate of breathing increases to get more oxygen into the body.
7. Increased blood flow enters our limbs and extremities.
8. Attention narrows.
9. Hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) are released.

All of this happens automatically with no effort on our part. Therefore we are not in control of our body, or, it could be argued, our mind. We beome a dangerous mutant of ourselves, capable of things we could never have dreamed of.

Is this a description of what is happening, daily, all around the world? Does this explain the fundamentalist beliefs, which I do not dignify with the word religious, & which drive people to think that atrocities are justifiable in any way?

Anger is a useful tool in some circumstances. Tolerance is vital to the continuance of human life in societies with different cultures. We all need both.

What we don't need is emotional thinking driving important decisions and out of control behaviour.