Managing Anger – A Case Example

The following message was prepared for a man in his early 60’s who presented with a problem of sudden and aggressive outbursts which ‘appeared out of thin air.’ While never directed at other people and only at objects, those around him and he himself found the behaviour distressing and he wanted to rid himself of the problem 

• You are a sixty-one-year-old man, married, stable and happy, two adult children, originally from the Clare Valley who came to boarding school, studied for a practical degree at University which was followed by a long and successful and relatively unblemished corporate record born out of a good management and a good functioning brain and a genuine fondness for the bush. You are now two and half years out from a retirement, ready for your next incarnation. 
• You seek advice on sudden angry and aggressive outbursts directed at objects or thin air or other drivers, not directed at people and how to deal with these angry outbursts. 
• There are two primary sources of explanation available in relation to a problem of this nature, an inside (neurobiological) explanation and/or an outside (socio-relational) explanation. Ordinarily both explanations are in play and interact. 
• There was nothing in your account to suggest early childhood trauma or any other compelling negative life experience and no suggestion of inappropriate prescribed or illicit drug use. There is some suggestion of a link between aspects of this problem and alcohol. You do not appear to live in a deeply fractured or fragmented socio-relational world, and you are certainly not isolated. All of which would have gone some way to explaining your angry outbursts 

• This leaves us with a more straightforward neurobiological explanation, a back brain, front brain explanation, and identifying a problem in the recursive relationship between the front brain and the back brain 
• In neuro–biological terms, the triune brain is broadly identified by three evolutionary periods in human development, the back brain commonly referred to as the reptilian brain is the earliest in evolutionary terms and the front brain/pre-frontal cortex is the most recently evolved 
• The back brain is the location of the limbic system, hippocampus and in particular the amygdala, all have a role to play in the existence, configuration, and conformation of emotions, and in particular of anger.  
• The emotion ‘anger’ is said to be a point on the amygdala and is particularly susceptible to fluctuations in the brain biochemistry. The fact of such fluctuations is common to most humans and specific fluctuations are idiosyncratic to each individual person. 
• Broadly, the emotion ‘anger’ fluctuates against alterations in back brain biochemistry, especially in relation to fluctuations in particular hormones that are said to inflame the ‘anger’ point on the amygdala. 

• How quickly a person is to anger is idiosyncratic to that person and their own brain biochemistry and their amygdala, that is your lot in life effectively, something each individual person will need to come to grips with and manage. 
• Whilst the idiosyncrasies of anger inflammation are largely a back brain function, the management of these idiosyncrasies is in fact largely a front brain pre–frontal cortex function.  
• Some people have anger points on their amygdala that are more easily managed than the same anger points for other people. Life is like that. People are different. 
• The front brain is the focal point of thinking and reasoning and the ability to make meaning out of life’s everyday experience. One of the important tasks of the front brain is to manage the back brain – in particular to manage the downside characteristics of the back brain, one of which is its inclination to run away with itself and anger, in fact one of the tasks of the evolutionary advanced prefrontal cortex (front brain) is to manage and settle the reptilian fight or flight driven characteristics of the back brain down. 
• Sleep deprivation, alcohol, drugs, diet and stress, anything that disrupts the delicately balanced biochemistry of the brain, can have a negative impact upon how the back brain responds or is inflamed and how the front brain manages all of this.  

• Exercise, uninterrupted sleep, strict controls over alcohol and drug intake,  proper stress management, sex,  dietary management of blood sugar levels, all contribute to the management of the brain’s chemistry 
• Central to this is the chemical that is said to make you happy – Serotonin. How Serotonin is produced and balanced in your brain is idiosyncratic to you but common to all humans.  
• The hallmark of a mature individual adult human is the ability of that person to appropriately manage the production of serotonin in their brain. Some groups and cultures approach this question collectively and others approach it individually. In the West we approach this question as heroic individuals wandering around the planet, as distinct from a tribal group in the Upper Sepik (PNG) who may have traditionally approached the same question as a collective entity. The status of ‘I’ or ‘we’ is central to how serotonin is managed in the brain. 
• It is arguable that we in the West have a bet each way on the management of serotonin in the brain that is we start out in life doing this collectively and then degenerate and devolve this into a virtuous individual function as we go through the process of differentiation and maturity into an individual adult.  
• It is arguable that serotonin is the iconic and emblematic spatial proposition, that whilst serotonin appears to be produced on the inside of the human body (neuro biologically) it is in fact managed from the outside 

• It is arguable that humans have weakened themselves and their own social and moral structures by moving the brain and its management from a collective to the individual and as such the management of serotonin from the collective to the individual, so the virtues are transformed from the collective to the individual