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Show When you're angry, what do you do? Do you let an outburst of primitive rage? Or do you bottle up the emotion so deeply that you don't dare admit even to yourself that you feel anger at all? Both these extremes are dangerous. The first reaction, if frequent, may be so serious that it can be corrected only with the aid of a psychiatrist But if you have the second reaction, you may be headed for trouble, too. You can be the victim of unadmitted anger and yet appear to your n, family and. friends as the calm, collected type. When you do let out your anger, it is in the form of an explosion and out of all proportion to the provocation. Blowing your top, however, lets loose only a small fraction of the anger within you, so that you always have this potentially destructive reserve ready to jeopardize your relationships and your health. This unadmitted anger, held down or exploding, can be the cause of those seemingly inexplicable blues you feel what we psychiatrists call depressions. It also can lead to a number of physical illnesses, including migraine headache, ulcerative colitis, high blood pressure, and stroke. I know of one man whose right arm was suddenly paralyzed without apparent reason. Searching for a cause, I discovered that he had become so angry, at one of his employees that ne wanted to struce mm. Instead, he repressed the hostility, and the pent-u- p anger, in effect, paralyzed his arm. "It was only recently that doctors attending the annual meeting of the American Medical Association heard conclusive evidence, given by Drs. Eliot Corday; Sanford Rothenberg, and David W. Irving, that anger ffilEB (EM . iuu held-dow- -- ' Illustrating their findings with elaborate motion pictures of living monkey brains, these doctors proved that definite physiological changes take place when you get angry. Your adrenal glands pour out hormones which, in turn, make your heart-befaster, release the sugar from your liver, and make your blood pressure soar. Mounting blood pressure causes the vessels of your cerebral arteries to constrict, interfering with brain functioning and causing a stroke. Quite literally, therefore, the wrong kind of anger can be an open invitation to harm or kill yourself.' You can, however, withdraw the "invitation." You can do this by facing a few truths about the nature of unadmitted anger which distorts situations and persons in terms of your own unreasoned fury. First of all, remember that attempting to "control yourself' makes no sense if by "control" you mean you deny the existence of your anger. True control consists of admitting anger and recognizing it for what it isand accepting it even if you don't like it Not until you face your anger and know where and why it is directed can you learn to live with it. Try, too, to sublimate your anger through bowling, tennis, swimming, heavy housework, or anything else that releases you. A husband may blow, up at his wife ostensibly because, the eggs are not to his liking; or a wife may nag her husband because he works late too many By SAMUEL LIEBMAN, M.D. v Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Illinois College of Medicine as told to Flora Rheta Schreiber The wrong kind of rage, improperly controlled, may contribute to a fatal stroke; but, says a noted psychiatrist, there's a remedy: Under-standin- g " . . : i i anai wives aoni aiways Husbands A ii oiow ... i up wnen woman I treated had spasms and pains in her neck, although an orthopedist had ruled out any physical cause. As we talked, I noticed that at every mention of her husband, her head would twist into a painfully abnormal position. I learned that her husband was literally "a pain in the neck Unfaithful and over- -, demanding, he had angered the woman; but she had held the anger within her-- except for one unconscious habit she couldn't control, twisting her head and neck at the mention of his name. Perhaps, however, there is no apparent cause for middle-age- d ... cepting your ire COVER: portrait photographer, Bradford Bachrach7 Our profile on her launches a series on the women behind the candidates (page 4). s ..' . 1 i il. . i li r your anger at au. uan n De inai you are using anger as a child does to get attention or gain satisfaction? You may be taking unnecessary risks with your health when you explode for the sport of it. PerhaDS. too. vou are blowing off steam out of proportion to the provocation. When this happens, look for the causes of anger not in your immediate life but again in your childhood. A telephone operator, for instance, garbles your name. Trivial, isn't it? Yet you become angry. Perhaps the anger stems from the fact that the blurring of your name also blurs your Identity the very identity you had to fight for from parents you thought did not accept you. We can solve many Of our problems in dealing with anger, if we remember the axiom: we are not responsible for our feelings and thoughts, but we are accountable for our actions. It is far better to face angry thoughts and emotions for what they are than to run . away from them. . We must not act as though a thought or a feeling were an action. It is not wrong to have feelings of anger not wrong even to be so angry that you want to kill. To kill is wrong, of course; so is denying that we have the feeling at all. By denying it, we bottle it up to our own detriment. Such holding back can lead into blues that sabotage happiness, or even into a physical illness thai can sabotage our very life! Facing, recognizing, accepting, and handling your anger rests with you. and ac- at Mrs. Richard Nixon as seen by the famed where. Perhaps these people are angry because they really want their mate to give them a love or recognition that, their parents denied them. The best way to remove this kind of anger is simply to realize that the mates are not giving what is wanted Decause iney cannot ti v e u. yinx- - pet pum will free himself of unreal expectations and this, thus limit his anger. I recall, too, the case of a young executive who came to me, distraught because he had struck his wife on two recent occasions. Consulting with him, I learned he felt she was spending all her time and love on their two children and excluding him. Unknown even to him, his feeling of rejection built up until he could not prevent himself from lashing out. Once he knew what was driving him to violence, wife made it a point to spend more time he and-hialone with each other. With attention and demonstrated affection, he grew to realize that his wife loved him as well as the children, and the cause of his anger and violence was dispelled, September 11,1960 LEONARD S. DAVIDOW President and Publisher WALTER C. DREYFUS Vice President PATRICK E. OHOURKE Advertising Director . . Send all advertising communications to Family Weekly, 153 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 1, III. Address all communications about editorial features to Family Weekly, 60 E. 56th St., New York 22, N. Y I960, FAMILY WEEKLY MAGAZINE, Board of Editors I ERNEST V. HEYN Editor-in-Chi- ef BEN KARTMAN Executive Editor ROBERT FITZGIBBON Managing Editor MARGARET BELL Feature Editor PHILLIP DYKSTRA Art Director MELANIE DE PROFT Food Editor Bob Oriscoll, Irma Heldman, John Hochmann, Jerry Klein, Harold London, Jack Ryan; Peer Oppenheimer, Hollywood. INC, 153 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 1, III. All rights reserved. . |