Emotions can be addictive
Although today’s topic is “anger management” it could also be “negative emotion management”. I say this because research now shows that all our emotions – negative or positive – can become addictive if repeated often enough over time.
As children we may hear something from our parents or school teacher that we take to heart. It may be a criticism or an injustice of any sort – it can be anything – that sets up a repetitive, reactive pattern in our bodies.
Emotions are our navigation system – Are we on track or way off?
Emotions are there for a reason. In themselves they are not a bad thing. Even anger, depression or anxiety come about to give us some valuable information about our life, how we are living it and/or managing it. Emotion may be generated from an internal trigger through our own thoughts or externally by an event that happens. It may be a car cutting in front of us or something someone says, either deliberately or unintentionally. An emotion is our body’s response to how our brain receives and interprets a stimulus – from either within or from without us.
Setting up the addiction
“The very beauty of the stimulus and response shortcut is the very thing that seems to trap us. Instead of evaluating a truly new experience from a fresh perspective, we tend to assume it’s an experience we’ve already had.
When the same chemical events repeat themselves over and over again, the result is a cumulative emotional history. This history comes with identifiable patterns and predictable responses, which become embedded or “hardwired” in our brains.
That means our patterns and responses repeat without our having to think about them: stimulus-response-stimulus-response-stimulus-response. The survival shortcut mechanism becomes a trap into the same thing over and over.” (William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente, in What the Bleep do we Know!?)
Biological effects of anger addiction
According to research conducted by neuroscientist Dr Candace Pert, “The constant overuse of the chemicals required to produce a emotion, like anger, in the body result in desensitized receptor sites being created to adapt to all those anger neuropeptides. The cells are no longer getting a “well-balanced” meal, as they receive whatever emotion they are addicted to more than others, so they are left with having to get a narrower supply of nutrition. The more anger the personality creates, the more satiated the cell will feel. (William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente, in What the Bleep do we Know!?)
The power of the unconscious – Why we keep doing the same old, same old…
The nature of addiction explains why we keep doing the same old things over and over in spite of our many resolutions to change. The resolutions made on New Year’s Eve are made with the best of intentions at the time. However, our unconscious minds are 1,000,000 times more powerful than our conscious will to make changes according to Dr Bruce Lipton in “Biology of Belief”.
This is why we need to address our addictions on more than the conscious level. It is the reason many people feel “weak” or lacking in willpower when they are unable to change self-defeating patterns of behaviour. It really helps to know that it isn’t a matter of being weak-willed rather than of tackling a firmly entrenched program that is far more powerful than any act of will-power on a conscious level. This means working with the unconscious mind directly through means such as hypnosis or energy psychology techniques.
I find EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to be most effective for this purpose and is also a technique that can be used by anyone outside the therapist’s office.
Awareness and making changes
So in simple terms to make changes in behaviour that are causing difficulties:
1. Become aware of what behaviour you would like to change – What happens in reaction to anger?
2. Recognize the triggers and develop awareness of what happens in your body – What signs does your body show when anger is rising?
3. Learn Emotional Freedom Techniques to release anger or other negative emotion as well as your addictive response.
Your comments on this post would be appreciated along with any suggestions for future topics that may be of interest to you. What type of situation ignites your anger? How do you go about expressing your anger? What do you think about road rage? What do you do if someone takes a car space you have been patiently waiting to become available?
Christine Bennett
http://www.psyche-care.com
http://www.caring4couples.com.au
0418 226 961
