Even though anger is an emotion which is a reaction to something that stimulates that feeling in us; it is also a physiological response.
There are physical things that happen to us when we feel anger. When we experience anger our blood pressure rises, our heart beats increase and we go through biochemical reactions stemming in our brains. From our brains, the hormones adrenaline and noradrenalin are released into our bloodstreams as a physical reaction to the emotion of anger.
We react to anger physically the same way we would to a perceived threat. Our bodies go into the automatic response of fight or flight. This is our body's way to react to something it perceives as a danger or threat to us. We then decide based on the physical reaction our body goes through whether to stay to fight the source of anger or withdraw as in flight. The physiological reaction of fight or flight is our body's preparation for us to defend our selves.
The fight or flight reaction is an old genetic code that is wired into our systems that goes back to the beginning of man in the caves. Cave men would have the same response in their bodies to a perceived threat as we do today. The part of our brains that respond in anger is the same part that responds to fear causing the fight or flight response. It is the hypothalamus region of the brain. When we get angry this part of the brain triggers a cellular response in the nerve cells which prepares us to defend ourselves. That defense can take the form of staying and fighting or running thus the term fight or flight is the reaction that is used to describe this response.
The part of the brain that directly deals with all of our emotions called the amygdala goes crazy when we feel anger. This is why we go into automatic pilot first when we become angry. After that initial response our control or lack of control of the angry emotion kicks in. The time between an anger trigger and that part of our brains is literally a quarter of a second. This eliminates at first all our thought processes. At the same time our frontal lobe increases with blood flow. It is this part of our brains that gives us reasoning. The frontal lobe part of the brain that will either allow us to beat someone to a pulp or control the urge to do so. These two regions of the brain have to balance each other; the auto response part of the brain and the logic part. Once they are in sink we can gain control after our fight and flight initial response in anger so we can control the direction of our emotions. Science has noted that the response time neurologically we have in an anger episode is approximately 2 seconds. This is why it is suggested that we count to ten before acting on anger because of these 2 seconds. After the two seconds we have the possibility to regain control of our angry emotions.
