Your out-of-control Angry Brain is making you stupid
You can change your angry thinking and be smarter
Remember the last time you were angry how you weren’t able to think clearly?
Maybe you said something or did something that later you thought to yourself, “What was I thinking?”
When you get angry, your ability to draw logical conclusions, have situational awareness, and realize the impact of your words and actions, greatly diminishes.
Your angry thinking actually makes you dumber in that moment.
Brain research shows that when the human brain is activated by an emotional rush or flooding, the cognitive processing part of the brain essentially shuts down, with tremendous diminished activation and capacity for logical processing.
If you looked at your brain scan when you get angry, you would see your brain states shift and chances are your stress response system (fight-flight-freeze) would be activated.
This happens when someone says something to you that makes you angry; or maybe you’re in a situation that is angering you; or even when you get angry at inanimate objects like when your smartphone freezes, your computer isn’t responding or your garage door gets stuck.
The part of your brain that triggers your brain and body during emotional dysregulation is called your amygdala. When you get angry, your amygdala will grow in size and can potentially “hijack” most of your brain activity at that angry moment.
Once your amygdala triggers your stress response system, your brain and body kick into higher gear to try and help you survive the moment and help you calm down.
As your brain states shift to more emotional and reactive thinking when you get angry, there is profound impact to your ability to problem solve and make important logical connections.
In these lower survival brain states, your sense of time shrinks, as your angry thinking will only allow you to think hours, or maybe only minutes, into the future.
And like a ball rolling off the edge of a table, your functional IQ in those angry moments can go into freefall.
Yes, the angrier you get, the dumber you get.
Brain scans of angry brains indicate your functional IQ while you’re angry can drop as many as 40 points. (For instance, if in a calm brain state your IQ is 110, when you’re angry, it can drop as low as 70).
That obviously causes you a huge cognitive disadvantage in terms of processing what’s happening to you in those angry moments and even more challenging - how to help yourself.
In triggering your stress response system, your amygdala will also cause your brain to release anti-stress neurochemicals like cortisol, adrenaline and epinephrine. These are your survival neurochemicals, which can be very helpful in the moment, but can also deplete your brain and body’s resources, sapping your energy and causing you health challenges over time.
And when you’re angry, your plunging brain states also cause a cascade of changing body sensations.
Your heart beats faster. Your blood pressure rises. Your breathing may become erratic and choppy. Your body begins to perspire.
It’s time to empower yourself to change your angry thinking. You can create and develop healthy anger tools, especially emergency in-the-heat-of-the-angry-moment strategies, to be able to change your angry thinking and change the impact on your mind and body.
Here’s something to think about - most of the time it’s your own thoughts that fuel your anger.
Once your amygdala begins to react and respond to any angry emotional charge that you experience, you can quickly attune to what’s happening to your brain and body and do something about it.
You can control of your angry thinking, rather than your angry thinking controlling you.
The best way to head off any potential amygdala hijacking and activation of your stress response system is to attune to your changing body sensations.
Once you feel the emotion begin to build up inside of you and your heart beats faster and you begin to perspire, you know your brain states are shifting and your ability to think clearly is about to go kablooey.
There are ways you can quickly change your angry brain habits and patterns, which will slow down your mind and body’s response to your anger. You can deny your amygdala’s urge to hijack your thinking.
This will allow you precious time to do something for yourself to help calm your angry brain states. The earlier you catch your angry thinking, the quicker you can change it.
Different emergency healthy anger tools have various levels of effectiveness for everyone.
You may want to try proven healthy anger tools like intentional breathing and positive mantras and other positive self talk. These are simple things to do in the heat of your angry moment to quickly regain control of your brain’s and body’s angry processing.
You can also develop more personalized ways to calm yourself when you feel yourself getting angry.
There are other long-term things you can do, as well, to train your brain to be ready for angry moments, especially unexpected ones. By calming your thinking and changing your emotional thinking habits and patterns overall, your brain can be better prepared to prevent an amygdala hijacking.
Mindfulness and meditation can create new brain wiring and emotional regulation that will help you when you get into the heat of an angry moment.
These mind-quieting strategies will release more healthy and connecting neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which will strengthen your ability to stay in calmer brain states when things begin to emotionally heat up around you.
And then there’s emotionally safe and healthy relationships to help strengthen your brain and be better prepared to prevent your stress response system being activated when you get angry.
Being able to share your emotions with someone who is understanding and accepting (not insensitive or judgemental) will release healthy neurochemicals, including oxytocin. Even the comfort of pets releases oxytocin as well. Healthy relationships are a primary healthy anger tool.
So what can you do for your angry brain? You can be in-control, rather than out-of-control, when you get angry.
Build yourself a Personal Stress Plan or Healthy Anger Plan, full of different short-term (emergency) healthy anger tools and long-term angry brain training tools, as well.
Your angry brain will be grateful - and you’ll feel better and closer to those around you after being angry.