Anger and Anxiety share a lot more than just feeling words starting with the letter A. The connection to each other is so much more common than most people realize. First when you need to look closer at Anxiety. Anxiety is related to emotions like Worry, Apprehension, Concern, and Stress. All of these emotions are a form of Fear. Yes, so Fear is the root emotion for many of our more specific feelings. So what if Anxiety is a type of fear, how does that connect to Anger? Many people remember hearing in school that in times of Fear Humans and other animals will react to Fear with a Flight, Fight, or Freeze response. Well that middle emotion Fight is connected to Anger. Fight tells you to get worked up and do something to save you. Try to lift weights why you are laughing and watch as you don’t get anywhere. Then try when you are Angry. Your lifting results will be a whole lot more positive. The problem we have in the modern world is that the part of the brain that responds to Fear is not the part where any intelligent thought occurs. Sometimes we are lucky and are Fear response works for the situation and sometimes it does not. So in the United States our cultural response to Fear is Fight. This again as a country is a mixed blessing. The problem is that when Fear is caused by misunderstanding or exaggeration the Anger response we have will miss the spot. Since Fear and Stress are related it is easy to see how we might use Anger to try to respond to our emotions. We yell at our loved ones because we are feeling Stress. The primitive brain takes over and we do something that may somewhat help or Stress, but it hurts our relationship. So when you see Anger in someone you might want to ask yourself are they really feeling some sort of Fear.
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