Understanding Anger as Part of the Fight/Flight Response

If you are wanting to manage your anger better, you will probably find it helpful to think of anger as a response to threat and to think in terms of the fight/flight response when considering the changes that occur in your body when you get angry.

Years ago, when our ancestors hunted and killed animals for food, their survival depended upon being able to respond rapidly to threats of serious bodily harm by either fighting or fleeing dangerous predators. What we now call the "flight/flight response" provided exactly what they needed to escape the jaws of saber-toothed tigers and the like.

The process worked something like this: With the awareness of a potential threat, our ancestor's brain began to release specific neurochemcials into his blood stream. These chemicals then traveled through that individual's circulatory system, having an effect on various organs and systems in the body which prepared him for the FULL BODY response of fighting or fleeing. The table below summarizes some of the physiological changes that took place:

As he became more "on-guard," his ability to think through his actions declined (it would take too much time), his attention became more focused on the source of threat, and his behavior became quick and impulsive (hopefully, allowing him to survive). As the chemicals in his body prepared him for this full-body response, his awareness of pain also diminished (allowing him to continue to fight even if injured) and his subsequent ability to remember his actions declined (shielding him from recollections of the horrors of battle).

Today, we generally don't experience the same level of threat in our day-to-day activities as our Caveman ancestors did, but the Fight/Flight Response remains a built-in part of our physiological make-up. It gets activated anytime we feel angry or stressed. All that is needed is some threat to our lives, our livelihood, our possessions, our loved ones (our emotional support system), our sense of ourselves or even just our sense of safety. The stress of work deadlines can trigger it, as can fear of loosing one's job or worrying about how to make your next rent payment.

Being "stressed-out" makes us prone to unclear thinking, irritability, angry outbursts and a host of other effects (to be discussed on subsequent pages). Many different types of events, both happy and sad, contribute to how "stressed-out" we are at any given point in time. To get a better idea of just how stressful your life may have been in the past year, try taking the Social Readjustment Rating Scale developed by Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe (use the "BACK" button on your browser's toolbar to return to this page when you are done). Keep in mind, as you complete this inventory, that it tallies potentially stressful events and NOT your current stress level. How stressed you are right now will depend on how you perceived these events and how well you have coped with their stressful aspects.

Now that you've had an opportunity to rate your current stress level, answer the following questions:

1. Were you surprised to see some of the items on the Rating Scale? It's important to be aware of ALL the stressors in your life if you are going to effectively use stress management techniques to cope with them.
2. Do you typically maintain a lifestyle with a potentially high level of stress? If so, the chronic physiological arousal that goes with a stress-laden lifestyle may take its toll. Stress is a form of threat and its physiological effects are similar to the Fight/Flight response. The more stressed you are on a day-to-day basis, the more aroused (or "on edge") your body will be, and the more at risk you are for irritability, unclear thinking and outbursts of anger.