Beyond the Power of Your Subconscious Mind (23 page)

This kind of introspective questioning is healthy and can lead to a better sense of well being in addition to improved relationships.

Is being angry bad? I don’t know that I would use the word bad. But I would use the word
unhealthy
. Needless to say, anger has caused the demise of many relationships and there is a growing body of evidence that prolonged anger can result in ill health, including the onset of cancer.

Laura Huxley wrote a very helpful book entitled,
You Are Not the Target.*
The thrust of the book deals with the same suggestion: that most anger is self induced. When someone is acting in an angry manner toward you, it is often that you just happened to step in the cross-hairs of someone’s anger that was going to be expressed anyway.

Let me make up an example, which may cause a chuckle but, unfortunately, happens in reality far too often.

Mary has fixed a nice dinner for her husband, John, and she is looking forward to a quiet, romantic evening. John has had an unusually frustrating day at work and he is seething all the way home. When he walks in the front door, his wife greets him with a smile and says, “How was your day, darling?” John responds, “It was the worst! You ought to sit in my chair some day instead of sitting on your behind here watching television all day!”

As Laura Huxley would say, “You are not the target.” Mary was feeling, “I love you, John.” But John didn’t even “see” Mary because he was so enraged with his boss. Mary just got in the way. It could have been his dog (who he would have probably kicked), one of his kids, or God forbid, his mother-in-law. Whoever showed up first was going to get the brunt of John’s stored anger.

You may laugh at this example, but it is as undeniable as it is paradoxical that we often hurt worst those we love the most.

Consider road rage and the often insane behavior that some people express just driving their car.

A pressure cooker has a steam valve. When too much pressure builds up, the steam valve releases the pressure so the lid doesn’t blow off. We can create our own steam valves by engaging in vigorous exercise, meditating, or a host of other activities that help reduce stress.

Although I have never seen a study correlating lifestyles to anger, I would guess people who eat well, exercise daily, drink moderately and get a good night’s sleep have far fewer episodes of anger than people who are out of shape, overeat, and drink heavily.

Lifestyles do correlate to feelings of self esteem. Someone with a lower self image is more likely to go through life angry at the world and feeling victimized for all the bad things, relationships, etc., that have been part of their life.

Lastly, as suggested earlier, the medical field and other health practitioners are recommending to their patients the need to enhance their lifestyles and engage in activities that help alleviate stress. Exercise and diet have always been part of these recommendations, but today more and more health professions are realizing the benefits of yoga, tai chi, and meditation.

Look at the word disease. When we hyphenate it, we have dis-ease. Physical ailments and illnesses are often the effects of mental or emotional dis-easeness.

As a general guideline, it can be helpful to embrace the saying, “There are no stressful situations. There are only stressful
responses.”

When we accept responsibility for
our choice
to feel anger, we are more apt to quickly apologize and repair the damage we may have caused for our choice of how we responded to something.

So, what is the correlation between fear and anger?

Can you think of any angry response that does not contain an element of fear?

If it is road rage, is there not fear of a possible accident? If it is anger toward a spouse or loved one, may there also be a fear that she/he might leave you for another? If you are angry at your boss, might there also be a fear of losing your job?

The next time you are experiencing anger, simply say to yourself, “Time out! What is causing me to have these feelings? What am I afraid of? Do I want to continue to feel this way?” If the answer to this question is “no,” change the mental picture to one that is pleasant, think of who you love and all you have to be grateful for, and deliberately leave the vibrational field of fear and start moving back toward the boundless field of love.

As John Milton wrote in his classic,
Paradise Lost
:

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

23

Emotional Mastery: Common Sense Steps for Total Life Transformation

by Lee Pulos, Ph.D., ABPP

One of the greatest myths that still pervades mind/body medicine is that stress is the primary villain and cause of most of our problems. Stress provides a simple explanation for why we are sick, depressed, bored, alcoholic or burnt out. Stress as a possible precipitating factor in disease cannot be dismissed as unimportant, but neither can it be cited as the cause of all of our dysfunction.

There are countless examples where stress has been cited as the cause of death. There are numerous situations that have been documented of people being overwhelmed by stressful events and suddenly dying. For instance, King Phillip V of Spain dropped dead when he learned of a great Spanish defeat. The Roman Emperor Neva died in a fit of anger, evidently at a senator who offended him.

More recently, the wife of the owner of the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated suffered a stroke a few hours later and died soon thereafter. Lyndon Johnson, who had said that when the Great Society died he would die, succumbed to a heart attack the day after the Nixon administration announced a complete dismantling of the former president’s programs. And the list goes on.

In all of these examples, the stressful event, rather than how the person viewed it, came to be identified as the critical factor, leaving the erroneous impression that what happens to us is more important than how we perceive it. Which goes back to a quote from William Osler, the great 19th century physician said to be the father of modern medicine, “It is not the disease the patient has that is important—but more important the patient who has the disease.”

The stress-and-sickness legend has continued to grow to the point that stress has become the 21st century scapegoat for our problems. Yet, there is considerable evidence that shows many people stay healthy under both everyday stress and extreme stress-producing circumstances.

Hippocrates, the Greek physician stated, “Whatever happens in the mind influences the body and vice versa.” In other words, the body and mind are one and each is continuously influencing the other. Thoughts, beliefs and imagination are not just abstracting from the mind but electrochemical events with physiological consequences.

In his book
The New Brain
,* neurologist Dr. Richard Restak has pointed out that there has been an almost exponential increase in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children in the past ten to fifteen years. While there are several reasons for this alarming increase, a recurring theme is the significant escalation of multi-tasking of faxing, emails, texting, tweeting, music videos which flash eight to one hundred images a minute, cell phones, frequent exposure to graphic scenes of violence, laptop computers, the internet and the list goes on. The modern age is rewiring our brains. Some of the symptoms of ADD are chronic procrastination, a sense of underachievement, many projects going on simultaneously, trouble following through, easily distractible, impulsive and low tolerance for frustration, chronic problems with self-esteem–and there are at least eleven additional symptoms. There are now six different kinds of ADD which can be managed with medication, neurofeedback training or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) which I will describe in more detail later.

In a recent study, psychologist Dr. Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University reported that Google is altering our brain. When we know where to find information, we are less likely to remember it—an amnesia called “The Google Effect.” Her study was published in
Science
and suggests that human memory is reorganizing where it goes for information, adapting to new technologies rather than relying on pure memory. In other words, people are better at remembering where to find facts rather than the facts themselves.

In another study, workplace stress was described as an epidemic. In the same article, it was pointed out that one third of all heart attacks occur between 7am and 9 am on Monday mornings and 80 percent of strokes in men occur between 8 am and noon on Mondays. The study, of 600 American workers, was conducted by the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company. Additional findings included that one in seven workers quit their job because the stress was too great for them to handle and another one third will seriously consider quitting their jobs due to job stress. In addition, three of four workers “regularly” experience some sort of stress-caused illness such as exhaustion or burnout, anxiety, muscle pains and headaches.

Meanwhile, the American Institute of Stress estimates that between 75 percent and 90 percent of all doctors’ visits are caused by reactions to stress.

Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sa
m
polsky has researched and written extensively how sustained stress releases adrenaline and cortisone, stress hormones which can cause between 12% and 15% reduction in the hippocampi, which are the major memory relay stations in the emotional limbic system. This explains why persons with post-traumatic stress from accidents or combat have significant problems with short-term memory and recall. One of my clients, a Type A driven executive with very high stress levels described having a “Swiss cheese memory.”

I taught him how to do EFT, which works by stimulating key acupoints in the electrical or energetic anatomy of the body and he was very impressed in that we reduced his stress level on a ten point scale from a nine to a one by the end of the hour. He called me three days later to say that he is no longer “gasp” breathing, the tension’s “almost gone” in his body and he was able to sleep through the night.

The good news is that the brain is very malleable, and the neuroplasticity of the brain can regain normal functions once stress and anxiety levels are reduced along with a change in lifestyle.

Although many people use the term “stressed out” to describe how they feel, most are not aware of the circumstances that are actually causing the stress. They see their stress as the result of helplessness or powerlessness in controlling certain aspects of their lives. Sometimes it is related to a demanding job or as part of a family or relationship issue. Most people are too busy to think about why they feel the way they do—a stress symptom itself.

Of course, this leads to sleeplessness as one goes to bed trying to deal with challenges by obsessing over and over with negative self-talk. Another symptom is the inability to control anger, which can be related to unfulfilled perfectionism, which is driven by the fear of failure rather than a desire to succeed. People who lack assertiveness or are pleasers frequently give their power away to others rather than defining themselves and their needs. Of course uncertainty, fear, and self doubt all reinforce a lack of self-esteem which becomes a self-defeating downward spiral.

Psychologist Dr. Judith Rodin has spent much of her career researching the importance of control. She states that feelings of control and self-determination are of central importance in influencing psychological and physical health and perhaps even longevity in older adults.

Dr. Rodin and her colleagues measured stress-related hormones in several groups of nursing home residents and then taught the residents coping skills to help them deal better with day-to-day stresses. They were taught to say no when they didn’t want to do things without worrying that they were going to offend other people. The residents were also taught assertiveness training and time management skills.

After the training, these people had significantly reduced blood levels of cortisol, a hormone closely associated with stress that has been implicated in a variety of diseases. Moreover, cortisol levels among the “assertiveness trained” people remained lower even after 18 months. In addition, these people were much healthier and had a greatly reduced need for medication compared with those who had not been taught coping skills.

Control, or lack of it, is also related to our ability to fight off disease. Our immune system is the “defense” system of the body. However, when we feel “defenseless” with little sense of control, our defense system is compromised. Dr. Rodin established that people who experience the most uncontrollable events had suppressed immune systems and experienced more infections and other diseases.

While waking hypnosis or self-talk may explain how we empower or limit ourselves in our journey through life, what else can we do to strengthen our inner core and self-esteem?

One of the recurring themes I see in many of my clients is that they are conflict-phobic and will do almost anything to avoid expressing negative emotions or standing up for themselves. The problem is that whatever negative emotions one “stuffs” over and over will eventually end up “stuffing” them. That is, unexpressed emotions in the course of time will find a parking place somewhere in the body. This is one of the cornerstones of psychosomatic conditions and as one of my medical friends tells her patients, “The body is crystallized thought. What emotions are you avoiding that are now manifesting in that part of your body?”

One of my clients complained of harboring considerable anger toward her husband who was overbearing and controlling, but she didn’t know how to express herself or deal with him. After considerable discussion, I suggested she express herself in the following manner: “I have something to say to you that may be hurtful, but my intention is not to hurt you but to strengthen our relationship. Would this be a good time to let you know what I am feeling?” She said that for the first time he listened to her, acknowledged her feelings, and agreed to make some changes as their relationship was starting to fray at the edges.