Where you see depression, you can assume anger lies buried beneath the despair, though it may not be obvious. Anger is always a companion to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

Some survivors experience more depression and others more anger.

When one is depressed, all seems hopeless and nothing seems worth doing. One sees oneself as valueless, doomed to failure. One asks,"Why continue living?"

Depression is a way of "numbing out." It shuts down all systems to the minimum levels for maintenance and tunes out as much "noise" or stimulus from the world as possible. Any further shutdown would result in catatonia.

What makes you angry?

Your anger is your response to the world, not going as you wish. You feel anger when :-

     You hit your thumb with a hammer.

      Your car breaks down a week after the warranty expired.

      Your parents don't come through with a loan.

      Your son leaves shaving cream on the mirror.

      Your unmarried daughter gets pregnant.

      Someone cuts you off on the highway.

      The referee makes a bad call.

      The price of gasoline jumps ten cents.

      A colleague in your office gets mugged.

      An air-traffic controller's mistake causes a crash.

      Kids keep starting to smoke.

The world makes you furious, it's so wrong. Unjust. Stupid. Unfair. The world is full of things to be angry at, always has been, always will be. (And one day we, and everyone we care about, will die. That strikes you as exasperating, to put it mildly.) We get angry to protest the unfairness of life and the shabby way we're treated.

Occasionally and very rarely anger produces results. As infants, we are awakened at night and howled, and our fury may have brought a parent (if we had good parents) from the dark to pick us up, hold us, warm us, dry us, give us food. If no parent came, we continued to cry, but in twenty minute eternity to an infant your tears would turn from rage and anger to hurt and grief at the way the world was And then to helplessness and hopelessness. We had been exposed to the lesson life endlessly teaches: protest may do no good; the only recourse may be mourning.

Anger is caused by frustration over the fact that the world is not made to satisfy our desires. Anger is thus inescapable, with us in the cradle and with us as we face our death. If we are human, we get angry.

Isn't Anger unhealthy?

No. And yes

Anger expressed-pushed out from the body-is as healthy as any other emotion. Anger repressed, anger suppressed, anger inhibited, anger kept in the body is toxic. Doctors are just beginning to understand how dangerous internalized anger is. Medical researchers have found that people who suppress their anger, people given to suspiciousness, fuming, and recurrent hostile rages, are putting their lives at risk as much as people who smoke and people who are grossly overweight.

The crucial difference among the women in Dr. Julius's experiment was not that some of them felt anger and the others didn't. All of them felt anger, but some expressed the anger, and others suppressed it. Many of the suppressers paid with their lives.

A study found that when people with heart disease reconstruct incidents that still make them angry, the pumping efficiency of their heart drops by five percentage points. This is a temporary, but significant, impairment and demonstrates a direct link to anger and heart function. Earlier studies have shown that people who are by nature more hostile and irritable are as much as five times more likely to die at an early age from heart disease.

Suppressing our anger

Repressing it, internalizing it, turning it back on ourselves, swallowing it, storing it within us, inhibiting it, burying it, ''eating it,'' "stuffing it," can have catastrophic results for our health.

Furthermore, the very act of holding anger in itself takes energy-which is unhealthy because it leaves us less energy for everything positive in our lives. So when we hold in anger, we're tired most of the time. We fall prey to infection. We have problems performing sexually.

Finally, to numb the anger that is chained inside us, we are likely to be driven to addiction: to alcohol, drugs, food, work, TV, sex, sleep, or compulsive behavior.

Suppressed anger is harmful.

Over two, ten, thirty years, it can kill.

Anger expressed appropriately, on the other hand, can actually keep us healthy. If you follow my suggestions for getting anger out of your body, I believe you will find your physical health improves. You'll sleep better. You'll have fewer stomach problems and migraines, reduced chance of heart disease, a stronger immune system and thus less likelihood of cancer and infection, more energy, and more intense sexual release because you're more in touch with your body.

Healthier yourself, you'll also have healthier relations with other people. You'll stand up for your rights and appropriate boundaries, and you'll defend yourself against other people's efforts to control you. At the same time, you won't be expecting them to fix the defects in your life. You'll give up trying to control them with rages or manipulation.

The bottom line' is that feeling anger and expressing it properly makes a person happier. When you begin getting the anger out of your body, your darkness and brooding start to lift. Your brow unfurrows. Your voice loses its edge of pleading and harshness. Your medical problems diminish. Your body gets looser, more supple. You laugh more often and more deeply. Your body, your personality, your whole being is lighter. Your spirit is freer.

You become, quite simply, more authentic, more actualized, more yourself. And more content being yourself.

But it takes us a while and some work to get there

A ten point summary

1. Anger is a normal feeling.

2. Anger is an energy in your body that needs to come out.

3. You will feel better-' 'Ahhh!"-when you've expressed your anger (literally, pushed it out)from your body. You do this by safely losing control.
4. Running away from your anger-burying, suppressing, drugging it-is unhealthy.

5. Directing your anger at yourself is also unhealthy.

6. Your anger is yours, and you need to find appropriate, safe, and healthy ways to get it out.

7. Some appropriate ways to express your anger by yourself and with other people are suggested in this book.

8. Other people will not always welcome your expression of your anger or other feelings, but you will often need to tell them your feelings anyhow.

9. You may be able to help people you care about, especially your children, deal with their anger.

10. If you express your anger appropriately, it will increase your energy, your intimacy with those you care about, and your serenity.

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