Fight or Flight

Twenty percent of people have an anger-prone personality. If you choose to be around someone who easily gets frustrated and express anger freely, the quality of your life will be affected. It is best to find out how a person expresses anger before you become emotionally involved, hop into bed of have a child with them. Your life will be drastically changed by living with an habitually angry person. During the honeymoon period of new relationship, people put on their best behavior. Later the person’s true coping mechanisms come out. Check out a new partner’s coping patterns of dealing with conflict before things get serious between you. Observe his reactions to daily stressors to life, and how he does anger. See how he treats the significant others in his life when he is upset with them. If he treats others badly, chances are he will treat you badly when the bloom of new love fades. See how he acts when he is upset and threatened. Pick a fight if necessary to determine what type of fighter he is-mean or constructive. If the person drinks or uses drugs, see how he reacts when he is drunk-is he an angry drunk, a raging drunk, a melancholy drunk or a sleepy drunk? Do not be foolish enough to think you can change another person’s anger patterns. After all, he has had many years to practice them before meeting you. Anger coping patterns lie deep within the psyche and do not change unless the person makes a strong commitment to become a better person. They need a structured program of anger management or therapy to learn how to break into their destructive behavior. Anger is made up of increased physical arousal, emotions and accompanying behaviors that comes up when a person feels a threat or a loss or a perceived threat or loss. The threat may be to their self-esteem as they feel challenged or discounted by what happened. The person responds to the threat by producing adrenalin to “fight or flight.” How they respond is due to how they have been conditioned as a child or later in life if they are exposed to abuse. From “So You Love An Angry Person” by Lynne Namka, Ed. D. http://www.angriesout.com/family2.htm

Anger is an acid
that can do more
harm to the vessel
in which it is stored
than to anything
on which it is poured.
Mark Twain