Page 23 - How Changing Your Anger Can Help You Be a Better Parent book

Your Brain on Anger

What's happening inside your head when you get to the end of the heat of that angry moment?

What's happening neurobiologically for you?

It can be beneficial to understand what's happening in your brain when you get angry, as you can
then attune to your needs and be able to empower yourself with tools to meet the needs of your
angry brain.

Being able to meet the needs of your brain when you get angry, certainly your brain and your
body will help you stay in a much more regulated and complex, clear-thinking place in your brain.

So, hopefully, you're able to respond and express your anger in a much healthier way. When we
talk neurobiologically, there's a lot going on inside of the human brain in the heat of an angry
moment. So, we're going to try to simplify this for this conversation.

Consider last time you were perhaps in an angry exchange with your kids or another family
member.

It can be helpful to realize that at that moment, chances are, you're functioning in the lower part
of your brain, the sensory part of your brain, the feeling part of your brain and that's the part of
your brain that connects your brain with your body.

Perhaps when you get angry your heart starts to beat faster, or you start to feel your body
perspiring or there may be body aches or tension somewhere else in your muscles.

That's your body’s sensations changing in response to your perception and your angry feelings in
terms of how you're interacting with your children.

So, knowing that you’re operating in the lower part of your brain, which is actually the survival part
of your brain as well. This is where your stress response system, your fight, flight or freeze
response can be activated.

In this time of emotional dysregulation, when you're feeling angry, there are things that you can
actually do to regulate that part of your brain that’s overactivated to get you to a calmer place.
Another part of the brain that’s valuable to consider is the Limbic System which is the part of the
brain that's responsible for behavioral and emotional responses.

If we had a brain scan on your head at a time, when you are becoming angry or feeling angry, we
would see the emotional part of your brain lit up. Perhaps even inflamed, with a lot of activity going
on there.
The Limbic System can become, what's called, dysregulated, and even perhaps, emotionally
hijacked - where your emotional thinking, your emotional processing in the heat of that angry
moment, takes over or hijacks the rest of your brain, including the logical cognitive thinking part
of your brain.

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