Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:
Chapter 24: The William James zone
All the clear communication you’ve been learning can be completely muddied if you don’t communicate clearly with yourself. Part of self-communication is paying attention to your emotions and your body when you get angry. This helps stop your anger from getting out of control and muddying everything up.
When you get angry, your brain sends out signals to your body. Your adrenaline pumps and your body releases hormones. Anger prods your body, saying, “Get ready to act!” Anger is an emotion, but it’s also a physical state. Once that adrenaline starts pumping, your body becomes angry. Even if the cause of the emotional anger goes away, the physical anger is still there, and it starts a feedback loop. Your brain asks your body, “How are we doing?” Your body replies, “We’re really angry!” Your brain reacts by becoming emotionally angry in response to the physical anger, causing your brain to send out anger signals to your body again, and the feedback loop continues.
…and here’s the rest:
 Have you read our book, The Usual Error? It teaches you how to solve communication issues with compassion and understanding, how to get rid of needless conflict from your life, how to make your relationships smoother, and how to generally be happier. Also, the illustrations are super cool. (:You can buy it on Amazon or read it for free online. |
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I’ve observed the same effect when dealing with depression. I went through a lot of “I feel bad, what’s wrong?” and then brooding about whatever answer my brain came up with for a long time before I was diagnosed. These days, when the black dog shows back up on my doorstep, I try to remember that I run the risk of feeling sad for absolutely no good reason, and the only thing I can go is take whatever steps I need to take to combat the problem on a physical level and avoid glomming on to things to worry about.
Sheila’s last blog post..Oh, crap, what have I DONE?