Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life (9 page)

THE BRAIN IN ACTION: ANGER IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Anger and frustrations occur, and quite often the overt, in-your-face anger is what people key in on; that kind of anger is typically a brief, time-limited response. Very often, the anger that I see in my office arises in the context of an irritating, challenging situation, like when the person feels they are faced with a task that is not possible or reasonable. Or the anger may have arisen, as was the case with Mitch, because a mistake was made. Errors and poor decisions are often made by people who are disorganized at home or on the job. Because of this, we consider anger as one of the emotional “primary colors.”

You realize that you lost an important document, forgot to return an important call or made a real gaffe because you were too distracted by other things. You're angry! So what is the brain doing at that moment—and even more importantly, what does it do afterwards? Are we aware of these angry ruminations?

In one recent study on the subject, researchers analyzed the responses of healthy college students to anger provocation. First, by asking some background questions, they found subjects who tended to act with displaced aggression (taking out their anger later) as opposed to showing anger in the moment. What they found in the subsequent
brain scans was surprising. You could see patterns of brain activity showing persistent angry ruminations when provoked. Further, activity in the hippocampus—the memory area of brain—right after the anger provocation was associated with these subsequent ruminations. So while these students were not reacting with anger in the moment, their brains appeared to be dwelling on angry memories, like Mitch did.

So how can this below-the-surface anger be managed? A psychologist at Harvard University, Christine Hooker, has done interesting work in this area: she and her colleagues studied brain activity after arguments with partners, in order to assess brain activity in the days following a fight and, importantly, to link it to how we feel afterward. Those subjects with a greater level of PFC activity (remember, the PFC is part of the “thinking, rational” cortical brain) reported a greater ability to bounce back emotionally after a fight. These subjects demonstrated greater cognitive control in other tests in the lab as well.

Clearly, Mitch's wife was onto something when she steered him toward therapy. He
can
get “pretty ticked off,” as he says. But counter to what he thinks or tries to believe, he is not managing his anger well. His hippocampus—his brain's memory center—is packed with vivid memories of people at work and situations he's angry about, some of them going back years. Because Mitch is busy being angry at his boss for the mistakes that led the firm into bankruptcy, he doesn't pay attention to the work at hand. And then because he makes a mistake, he gets mad—and dwells on that mistake for days and weeks to come, making him even angrier. It's a vicious cycle.

“These forms are going to kill me,” he said during one of our sessions.

“Yes,” I respond, “that really is possible.” I was only half-joking. Clearly, Mitch needed to manage this anger, not only for the sake of getting his life better organized but for the sake of his health.

He nodded. “I know, it's not good. And I'm the first to admit that paperwork is not my strong point. But you see in the old firm, I had someone to do this stuff for me.”

“Maybe you can do it here, too,” I said. “Find someone who can help you part-time. A bookkeeper or someone who can come in and take care of the forms and paperwork.”

That way, I reasoned, Mitch could play to his strengths. He could make client calls, help broker deals, be the idea guy—and, of course, generating ideas takes cognitive work. I envisioned Mitch's PFC working away, cooling off his emotional centers and putting some healthy distance from those angry memories.

That's what Mitch did. He got down to business—or at least the kind of business he enjoyed doing best. In letting go of the parts he was flubbing and instead concentrating on the other aspects of his job, he was more able to move on, keep busy and be successful. He was able to let go of the angry memories because he started to see them as unhealthy.

The funny part is that once he had tamped down his anger, he probably could have taken care of all the paperwork himself. In the calmer, less-distracted state he's in now, he wouldn't be as likely to make mistakes.

FRENZIED CONCLUSION

Frenzy happens.

Anxiety, sadness, anger happen. These emotions are part of the human emotional palette. But the good news is that they can be checked and handled. The science has now revealed to us the brain mechanisms that both feed and tame the frenzy and has also showed us that the more we work at it—the more we work to control our negative emotions—the more effective our efforts can be. They are efforts worth making.
Because when you have calmed your frenzy, you will have the opportunity to be better focused, less distracted and more organized.

Let's find out now exactly how we do that.

COACH MEG'S TIPS

Frenzy is an emotional state, where we feel a little or a lot out of control, making us agitated and edgy. Dr. Hammerness has beautifully described the three root emotions that underpin this state that we call “frenzy”: anxiety, sadness, anger. The opposite of a frenzied state is feeling calm and peaceful, even when we're engaged in high-energy activities—and that's where we want to get you!

Unfortunately, for many of us, feeling frenzied isn't an occasional or fleeting state. It has become the prevailing weather, a cloud of emotional stress following us around for most of our waking hours. Even our dreams can feel frenzied. Some call this “hurry sickness”—we're always in a hurry, constantly rushing, fretting and rarely experiencing the opposite state of calm wellness.

This sickness is brought on by two sources: external, the frenzied world around us, and internal, the frenzy we create for ourselves. Some of this internal frenzy we are conscious of and can name and recognize. Some of it is subconscious, seeming to come from a source beyond reach.

External frenzy is everywhere. Perhaps outside our office is a noisy street with lots of traffic and activity, or we're surrounded by others in a high state of noise, like a high-stress financial trading floor or a room of hungry toddlers. Or we sit down at our desk to find that the Internet connection isn't working, we have 250 unanswered e-mails and four deadlines today.

Our inside frenzy is our internal noise level, partially driven by our response to the thoughts and feelings generated by the outside frenzy.

Whether externally or internally generated, frenzy is a thief. It steals away our sense of being calm, at peace, in charge, in control, the boss of our lives in the moment or overall. So how can we put the thief behind bars and get on with being our best? Here's how:

Awaken to your patterns of calm and frenzy

Dr. Hammerness talked about the importance of regulating one's emotions, processing and managing the negative emotions and harvesting and amplifying the positive emotions. In the case of frenzy, this means being like a firefighter, rescuing your calm out of the fires of frenzy. However, before you regulate, you need to become mindful—aware and awake to your calm and frenzy—noticing moments when you are calm and moments when you are frenzied. When does each state turn up? What triggers them? Are there different kinds or levels of calm or frenzy at work, home or when traveling?

Our experiences with and reactions to calm and frenzy are as distinct and individualized as our fingerprints. One person can feel calm in one chaotic situation, while another will feel anxious and lacking control in that same situation. We need to look to our inner Sherlock Holmes so we can discover which situations allow our negative emotions to take over and better understand our own mysteries along the way.

When calm or frenzy appear on your consciousness radar, what do they look like, feel like, sound like? Find metaphors that describe their essence. When you feel calm, it feels like gentle waves washing rhythmically onto shore. Your eyes relax, you smile and your shoulders drop. You feel grateful and alive. When you feel frenzy, it feels like you are driving in a blizzard, sitting inside a buzzing beehive or surrounded by road rage in a traffic jam.

Start to reflect on your experience of calm. Think about times when you don't notice the frenzy and you feel calm. Recall how you
are feeling and what is happening. What can you learn from the calm moments or episodes? Get the thirty-thousand-foot view of both your calm and frenzy patterns by keeping a stress graph.

If you want to get to the thirty-thousand-foot level to view both your calm and frenzy patterns, take a piece of paper and graph out your various life stages, major life events or weekly patterns. Assign a rating to your overall level of calm for each life stage, life event or daily life. Is there a lot of variation—high and low periods driven by life stages or events? Or is there a constant level of frenzy and you can't remember a calm and frenzy-free time?

Let's use a scale of 1–10. Think of 1 as you lying in bed or on a tropical beach: calm, relaxed, tranquil. Think of 10 as being how you feel when the Internet connection goes down in the middle of returning the important e-mail to your boss, and the phone's ringing, and you're supposed to be picking up your kids from soccer practice, and…well, need I go on?

Speaking of kids and soccer practice, keep in mind also—as we take our view from above—that the patterns of stress, which often seem so random and unpredictable in our daily lives, can be more clearly discerned depending on what stage of life you're in. This is part of the value of a stress graph—as you can see in these examples, in which we look at the undulations of our “frenzy” through different life stages and events, and on a weekly and daily basis.

a. Life Stage Stress Patterns

Age/marital-family status/residence/occupation

b. Life Events Stress Patterns

c. Weekly Stress Patterns

d. Daily Stress Patterns