Anger is an important and sometimes necessary emotion.
But all too often, anger can quickly escalate and become destructive once it’s been triggered.
Uncontrollable anger can often create problems in relationships both at home and in the workplace. But beyond that, it can have devastating physical consequences.
So just how and where does anger impact the body?
That’s what we’re highlighting in the infographic below. It’s the final segment in our 3-part series: How Anger Affects Your Brain and Body.
You can find the first two parts here:
Part 1: How Anger Moves Through Your Brain and Into Your Body
Part 2: How Stress Hormones Can Change Your Brain
Please feel free to make copies to share.
Click the image to enlarge
– To find out where these stress hormones come from, check out Part 1
– And for more on what they are up to in your brain, check out Part 2
Anger causes the release of stress hormones like:
– Cortisol
– Adrenaline
– Nor-Adrenaline
These hormones give your body bursts of energy so you can cope with negative situations accordingly. However too much of these hormones or repeated exposure to these hormones can begin to negatively impact important parts of your body.
- Increased Pressure inside your eyes
- Vision Issues like tunnel vision, sensitivity to light, or blurry vision.
- More frequent headaches and migraines
- Feelings of dry mouth
- Decreased thyroid function
- Increased:
– Heart rate
– Blood pressure
– Blood glucose level
– Blood fatty acid level - Increased likelihood of stroke and heart attack
- Decreased blood flow in digestive system
- Slow metabolism
- Lowered bone density
Even after the feeling of anger passes, its impact lingers in your body much longer. And the more often you get angry, the more these hormones can get to work in your body. That’s why it is important to recognize when you’re angry and take steps to calm this powerful emotion.
If you’d like to print a copy to share, just click here: Color or Print-friendly
(We put a lot of work into creating these resources, so please include the copyright information and attribute to NICABM if sharing. Thanks!)
For more practical tools and strategies to help clients manage anger, have a look at this short course featuring Stephen Porges, PhD; Marsha Linehan, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Ron Siegel, PsyD; Pat Ogden, PhD; and other top experts.
Now we’d like to hear from you. How have these ideas helped you better understand anger – either in yourself or others? Please leave a comment.
I wonder how much of this is applicable to someone who experienced a change after suffering a TBI. The client went from happy and joking to what friends refer to as “The Hulk”.
The client is desperate for help.
This chart is missing the relationship to inflammation and the damage it can cause to blood vessels, kidneys, etc. as well as to autoimmune and other diseases….
Absolutely love you Ruth and Team!
So grateful for all the learning and resources over the years.
I like the third infographic as it is very clear, but the earlier two I feel are too complicated with too much technical information, which detracts from ease of communication, in my view. I think they could lead to further confusion rather than clarity.
Hi Nicola!!!!
Exactly what I was thinking. The language is too complex. I make things much simpler when explaining to clients.
How funny to ‘meet’ you here!
Do you also have infographics depicting the body mechanisms for how the body combats the negative effects of these hormones?
First and foremost, thank you for the information and printouts. The science behind an emotional response is so pertinent to the understanding of “why we do what we do”. These printout are valuable and will most assuredly be an asset to a client’s ability to reason.
As a survivor and retired psychotherapist of multiple abuse – physical, emotional, sexual and racial – I’m glad to see that unresolved anger can cause higher incidents of cancer, as well as other diseases. I really believe that my unresolved anger, which was so suppressed into depression, that I didn’t start therapy till I was in my mid to late 30’s. We’re talking 3+ decades of stuffing in anger. And, even w/ongoing therapy – weekly, then monthly, now as needed – I obviously didn’t start soon enough to prevent cancer. I want other survivors to get help as soon as possible so that they don’t put themselves at risk for autoimmune and/or life threatening disease later on in life. Sending healing thoughts to all!
Healing thoughts back to you, Gayook. It is hard to live with trauma!
Hi Freddy! You can use the search function on our blog to search for “Anger”. All three parts will pop up as a result. If you need further assistance, feel free to reach out to our staff at respond@nicabm.com. Hope this helps!
Great way to get the right symptoms and names to correspond. These are great visuals and the makes sense
Thank You for these wonderful infographics. To be honest i am a little shocked by some of the rather negative comments as i feel these are such a great way to help simplify a topic most people feel the need to complicate. These simplify it so we all get a better understanding. Well Done to the person/people that spent their valuable time in creating these ?
Its wonderful!! Thank you for all your efforts in writing this and making this infographic!!
Thanks !!
Great resources. Thanks!
While I appreciate the intent, I think the cartoon characters took away from the seriousness of the subject. I also found it one dimensional and far too simplistic for such a powerful emotion as anger.
I think this would be useful for some people by allowing them to see that , although anger can be useful, reliving angry situations and replaying them in our minds can lead to increased pain and maybe even illness. Even if it is justified anger it helps to see we can learn from it and develop new pathways of expression so that it does not embody. I think this graphic is helpful.
These two infographics are perhaps a useful way to explain the effects of too much cortisol in the body. However, all info graphics, by design, risk being reductionistic. Important info can get left out or obfuscated. Unfortunately, I think this happened here.
The cartoon-cutesy aspect is a bit patronizing. Presenting the “facts” without anthropomorphizing the cortisol, etc. would have been more balanced and respectful. Hypervigilant, traumatized children who are now adults coping with “triggers” have been groomed to detect all kinds of facial expressions for their survival. Many learned to survive the insanity of their environments with simplistic understandings of “good” vs. “bad” when it came to feeling or expressing anger. All too often, due to their natural powerlessness as children, they were conditioned (through shame by their caregivers) to deny their feelings and true internal experience, and took on the false notion that “I am bad” because “anger is bad”. I know that NICABM knows this. Sadly, this series risks or even implies this anger is “bad” by extension – “cortisol is bad”, anger fuels cortisol, so anger is …. all with the help of a smile.
The power of a smile and the power of a happy face speaks directly to my inner child who I am championing by letting her know she has the right to her anger, to express her anger. She and her body were violated – physically, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally. My adult Self is showing up for her, with the help of IFS and the ACA fellowship. For those in need of FREE resources, check out ADult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. For paid therapy, IFS, EMDR, Sensorimotor, Somatic Experiencing are all worth paying for. Talk therapy is not helpful. Drugs may help, but are not enough for true healing.
I am able to calmly but firmly express my anger at this info graphic because it violates my truth, my inner child’s truth, and insults my intellectual capacity. It manipulates or prevents a cognitive, neutral understanding of facts by employing limited cartoon expressions of human emotion to sum up the complex sensation of feeling “angry” – as though all anger is about is cortisol.
It is intellectually and spiritually careless to risk using the facts of cortisol’s biological pathways in such a reductionist info graphic under the “good” intention of education. This is how “experts” fail those they intend to serve. I will be recreating these info graphics without “facial” expressions.
Perhaps whomever drew this is not in the process of struggling to heal C-PTSD; has no direct experience with anger as a natural reaction to being violated. Perhaps they are in denial, stuffing their anger and people pleasing to kid themselves about the smiling hormones.
Gratefully I know now that I don’t have to figure this out (to survive in relationship to NICABM) or to learn about cortisol (as I had to figure out so many things to survive my childhood in relationship to my family of origin).
I am also grateful to have found my voice to be able to say that these graphics present a non-holistic view of anger. Anger is a natural, healthy response to having one’s boundaries violated.
I am disappointed in NICABM.
I am grateful to be able to say all this whether or not I am heard. I hear myself – I felt my anger, expressed it here – and quickly got to my deeper feeling of disappointment and loss of esteem for the “experts” at NACIBM. I can now remember that NACIBM is just an institution, made up of imperfect humans like me. Because I allow myself to feel anger and to know anger is a path to inner wisdom, not something “good” or “bad”, I now know how to honor my truth, and forgive. Thank you IFS and ACA.
Heidi, Wow, good job expressing yourself! I’m so sorry for all the ways you’ve been hurt, and good job for showing up! Many blessings to you on your healing Journey!?
Hello Heidi..
I felt everything you said…
I do have anger in me that sometimes need to come out..and it does come out..
I wish you the best of luck on your healing path?
Bravo 👏 absolutely then I would suggest increasing moving your body to improve back , shoulder …pain, use massage tips like warming hands and belly, brisk walk with a partner, BFF, give yourself scalp massage, use breathing techniques, it doesn’t have to be religiously , as needed
they deleted my ccommment when i agreed with everything you said, and i wrote two comments, im also in ACA and have been for 4 years thank God. And gentleness and healthy boundaries have been so helpful to let my inner child come out, as a former “fawn” type, i needed to recconect to my healthy fight energy to protect myself and protect my space, and be the loving parent that has gentleness and boundaries to keep my inner children safe….. HEIDI thank you so much for your comment, would you be willing to give me your email adress? send me an email id like to talk more, this is my email : franciscoguevaradutari@gmail.com
heidi im with you, healthy anger marks the needs for boudnaries and thats just the truth for me, and i dont want anyone to impose what its like for them on me, specially as a survivor who needs to have safety and agency and the boundaries to keep me and my inner family safe. and choose safe enough people, we are worth it….
I am careful with trauma theory that is gaslighty, and that doenst acknowledge the need to be seen and believed as survivors, and attuned with untill we pick up the gentleness and healthy boudnaries as survivors to be gentle on ourselves and the boundaries to keep ourselves safe and therefore see who is safe enough… We are worth it and can keep finding safe enough people,
thanks for expressing this Heidi so boldly, and its absolutely OK to disagree with anyway we know ourselves better, and no experts should be trying to “generalize” for everybody, and they can be disagreed with and challenged in their notions… I love gabor mate, or pete walker for instance, and i know some spcially body workers, are too quick to generalize things as “stories” modalities that dont highlight the need for a therapuetic link that has empathy, are too extremist, We need to keep finding safe enough fellow travelers, and therapist to work with… let the jiberrish talkers that dont even understand themselves work with each other. I know when someone is moving the goal post, or being manipuilative,or being fishy, or even unethical now thank God , and my recovery and having gentleness and having healthy boundaries too., and communicating and being able to ask questions….. There are many survival responses to trauma and some became perpetrators , and this isnt everbody’s survival response so people shouldnt’ generalize with it, and unfortunately it happens to often thankfully theres also a growing awareness of narc abuse because when we are treating trauma, its important to keep ethics, many of us had to pass diferent stages of not being believed and now championing our recovery with gentleness humor love and respect and healthy boundaries, to have people try to be invalidating with their jibberish and “trauma theory” that only acknowledges certain things, ive had issues with somatic therapists, already because they’re too extremist, and they dismiss the theraputic link with empathy, and they use the jibberish from their modalities to dismiss important things like the therapeutic link with empathy etc…… Thank fully i found ACA (but it isnt proof of manipuative people as well) and some one believed me as a survivor and sat with me enough until i developed my own gentleness and my own healthy boundaries to keep my inner children safe and keep finding safe enough others to get our needs met. We are worth it , thanks again heidi. Gentleness humor love and respect 😉 ….franciscoguevaradutari@gmail.com email me if youd like to chat more or discuss any of this or what you commented on!
Thank you so much for sharing. This is great. I will be definitely using and sharing with my clients when needed.
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, experience and time creating these informative infographics.
Thankyou this is a really helpful visual aid to use with clients
Karen
just love these infographics thanks Ruth. I’ll enjoy sharing them with relevant clients
And of course if we have been brought up to believe that anger is a bad emotion or that we are a bad person to express anger, we can then feel shame, which you have covered off in a course.
Each emotion affects our condition and therefore it is necessary to control our emotions in order not to harm their health.
Love what you’ve done w/ this!! 🙂
Thank you for kind sharing and permission to use w/ respect!!