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HOW TO CONTROL YOUR ANGER

How to Control Your Anger?: – 8 Tips On Anger Management

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We all experience anger and know how it feels like to be in an angry mood. It is a natural response to the threats, attacks, injustice, and disappointment that we encounter in our daily life. Anger is one of the fundamental emotions. It is one of the most powerful emotions that you experience when dealing with stress in your life.

However, anger may affect your daily life, relationships, mental health, and achievements when it is out of control, extreme, or persistent.

In other words, anger is equally valuable and significant an emotion as other emotions you experience. You are angry whenever you’re wronged or mistreated or experience something that is not up to your standard.

The feeling of ‘I am angry’ is not a point of concern. Rather, it’s how you deal with it. Anger becomes a challenge when it causes harm to you and the person you direct it to.

When in its grip, you feel as if things are out of your control. You feel there is nothing you can do to get in charge of the feeling. However, you should know that you can do a lot in controlling anger. You can learn how to express your feelings in an assertive way without causing any harm to other people. This will not only make you feel accepted but would also allow you to get your expectations met.

However, the ability to control your anger comes with a lot of practice. There are numerous ways of controlling anger. These include:

  • Challenging angry thoughts early
  • Relaxing and calming down

To help you with the feelings of anger, we have come up with an anger management guide. This guide explains what anger is, how anger works, and how to control anger when it grips you.

What is Anger?

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anger in the following manner.

“Anger is an emotion marked by antagonism towards someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. It is one of the most primary human emotions. Furthermore, anger is a physical and mental response to a threat or any harm done to you in the past.

Thus, anger is a behavioral or emotional response to an expectation or demand that has not been fulfilled, unachieved goals, threats, feelings of hurt resulting from another person’s actions or words.

Generally, we consider anger as a negative emotion. However, anger as an emotion is necessary for a man’s survival. This is because it is a way through which you can:

  • express negative feelings
  • defend or protect yourself when attacked, given it is an autonomic response to threats
  • come up with solutions for problems

It is absolutely normal to feel angry, and in its appropriate degree, anger is necessary for a man’s survival. However, the challenge with anger is that it can easily get out of control.

It becomes unhealthy when you make risky choices or take actions based on anger. Anger is not a condition but rather a symptom that something is going off-balance in your life.

For instance, if you do not get sufficient sleep or work even during weekends and rarely exercise, you are susceptible to extreme anger and irritation.

Anger Symptoms

In its extreme form, anger can become pathological, resulting in anxiety, depression, insomnia, or agitation. When it comes to that level, it has serious implications on personal and professional relationships and one’s health.

So, people who have a short temper also suffer from a number of other symptoms. These include anxiety, mood swings, and an inclination towards impulsive behavior such as drug or alcohol abuse, and conflicting behavior towards those who are close to them.

According to Charles Spiel Berger, a psychologist who studies anger, anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage.

Physiological and biological changes accompany such an emotional state. The physiological changes include an increase in heart rate, muscle tension, restlessness, faster breathing, sweating, and trembling.

The biological changes include the release of fight-or-flight hormones – adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones lead to an increase in energy levels that help in fighting or escaping the situation.

Furthermore, the cause of anger can be either internal or external. The internal factors include illogical and irrational thoughts, inappropriate expectations, feelings of frustration, etc., while the external factors include being disappointed, insulted, threatened, neglected, breach of confidence, etc.

How Does Anger Work?

Anger is the most fundamental of all negative emotions, and it can be quite challenging to control your anger. The very foundation of anger is the initial thought that provoked it the moment you feel threatened.

The thought is powerful in that it engulfs your entire brain in its grip. Your rational brain does not get the chance to respond in a calculated way. Simultaneously, it releases hormones that increase energy levels, enabling you to fight or escape such an endangerment.

HOW TO CONTROL ANGER

Besides this, when you are angry, you convince yourself with arguments in support of expressing anger at a given event or person. This is because the emotion can be so powerful that you quite often believe that “my anger is out of control’ and hence must be vented out.

Essentially, a sequence of angry thoughts is what potentially makes you feel angry. The more convincing arguments or self-justifications you find in support of the initial angry thought, the longer the anger persists.

These provocations increase the level of energy at every successive anger-provoking thought. Such an immense level of energy leads to physiological arousal, which builds more anger and can even lead to violence if not controlled. When in its grip, you become ruthless, do not make an attempt to reason out, and hence focus your attention only on the angry thoughts.

Such a high level of excitation gives you power that facilitates aggression, aborts cognitive thinking, and forces your brain to respond in the traditional way.

Ways to Control Your Anger

There are many ways of controlling anger, such as taking time out, deep breathing, changing the environment, etc.

At times, such ways to control anger work quite well. But there are times when these anger management strategies do not work at all.

If these ways of controlling anger do not work, you might have to consult a therapist to discuss anger management. Now, there are some people who use the energy released during the anger cycle in a constructive way. They either take action to solve the problems or talk to other people. Such actions help them in controlling anger effectively. However, there are others who prefer leaving the problem at hand altogether.

As mentioned above, the first step in controlling anger is being aware of the external factors, events, or circumstances that make you feel angry or initiate the first set of negative thoughts.

The next step in how to stop anger is to acknowledge the feelings that indicate anger quite early in the anger cycle. These feelings include symptoms of irritation, disappointment, threat, disrespect, etc.

It is important to become aware of these anger symptoms quite early in the anger cycle because it helps us in taking the right steps to reduce anger and prevent it from getting worse.

In other words, it will be challenging for you to control your anger if you fail to recognize the triggers. As a result, the initial set of negative thoughts could soon turn into rage. This could compel you to perform actions that may hurt other people.

The following are the tips on how to control anger:

1. Find Real Reason Behind Anger

The anger issues often originate from the experiences you had during your childhood. Say you grew up watching your family members behaving aggressively. As a result, you believe that this is the ideal way of expressing anger.

Besides childhood experiences, traumatic events and increased stress levels can also lead to feeling angry.

Furthermore, you need to ask yourself whether this anger is due to feelings or any kind of vulnerability.

You must remember that anger is just a cover-up for other feelings you are feeling deep inside. These are the feelings that you are not conscious or aware of. That is why you have to become aware of your inner feelings. In other words, you have to recognize the underlying reason that makes you feel angry. And you can do this by expressing anger in a constructive way.

You also need to ask yourself whether this anger is due to feelings or any kind of vulnerability.

In case you get angry easily in many situations, it is quite likely that you are masking your true feelings.

This usually happens when you are discouraged from expressing your feelings, so it becomes quite challenging for you to recognize feelings other than anger when you grow up.

Besides this, anger can result from health problems, such as depression, persistent stress for a long period of time, or any trauma.

So, anger often comes when you have challenges in recognizing different emotions, and it becomes the only response you have to different situations.

The first step to managing your anger in these situations is therefore connecting with your inner feelings.

2. Become Aware of Emotional Triggers

The next step in controlling anger is identifying the emotional triggers that make you feel angry.

For instance, worry is an emotion that helps you to come up with solutions for life’s challenges. When feeling worried, you anticipate dangerous events or situations before they actually arise, which was essential for people’s survival over the course of evolution.

However, it does not bring positive solutions when you are under its grip. In other words, when worry as a response comes in repeated cycles, it leads to chronic worry.

Repeated worries typically fixate your attention on a series of other concerns. Such a fixation leads you to experience an infinite loop of low-grade emotions like anger.

This low-grade emotional hijacking is uncontrollable and makes your mind completely inflexible. It also triggers a fight-or-flight system in your body due to the amygdala hijack.

So, the more you get angry, the more your body responds physically. The first step to control this infinite loop of low-grade emotions is to become aware of the triggers. These are triggers that make you feel angry quite early in the anger cycle.

You also need to identify events or thoughts that begin the cycle of worry. In addition to this, you need to recognize the physiological changes your body goes through the moment you start feeling angry.

Anger Symptoms

Anger can lead to the following anger symptoms:

  • Trembling
  • Sweating
  • Headaches
  • Knots in your stomach
  • Increasing heart rate
  • Tension in muscles
  • Breathlessness
  • Clutching your hands
  • Drawing your jaws together
  • Heat being released from the face
  • Inability to focus
  • Challenging your negative thoughts

Once you’re aware of such physiological changes and anger-provoking thoughts, you would be better equipped to deal with anger. Then you can adopt any of the relaxation methods to calm down and think constructively.

Besides these physical factors, there are some external forces like people, situations, events, or places that make you angry. You cannot justify your anger by giving an excuse for the stressful events, circumstances, situations, or people who provoke you.

If you are able to understand how these external forces affect you emotionally, you will be able to control your environment and avoid unnecessary irritation.

You should try to determine which people, circumstances, situations, or activities trigger anger. Then, try to visualize the situation in a different way to be able to avoid anger.

3. Challenging Angry Thoughts Early

The next step in how to reduce anger is challenging the initial bad thoughts that make you angry. It is these initial foul thoughts that initiate anger and lead to another set of anger-provoking thoughts.

Thus, when you are angry you believe that either some external event or indifferent actions of the other people is the cause of anger.

But you should remember that your anger has less to do with what happens to you. Rather, it relates to how you perceive the things that happened to you.

There are some common negative thinking patterns that further provoke anger or make you feel angry. These include:

1. Being Rigid About Things

This means that you have an inflexible viewpoint about the way things should be and in case the reality does not match with your expectations, you feel angry.

2. Reaching Conclusions

This is another negative thinking pattern where you assume that you already know what the other person is thinking or feeling and that he or she has intentionally put you in a bad mood has disrespected you or has ignored your feelings.

3. Blame Game

Another common pattern you must have seen when you are angry is that you always consider that someone else is at fault when anything goes wrong or something bad happens to you. This means that you start blaming other people for things that happen to you instead of taking the responsibility for your life on your own.

4. Ignoring the Positive Past

When you are angry, you usually tend to forget the positive experiences that you had with the other person. Instead, your brain looks for things to upset you all the more. Thus, the moment you allow these little irritations or frustrations to build up, there comes a time when your anger builds up and you explode over things that are quite petty in nature.

5. Forming Judgements

Anger makes you form judgments within no time as it overpowers your thinking brain and takes you miles away from reasoning things out. There are some generalizations that you often make when you are angry. For instance, you never give importance to my feelings, everyone is against me, you always have the intention of insulting me, etc.

Thus, one of the important steps in how to control temper is to challenge the initial thoughts. If the initial negative thought is challenged at an early stage in the vicious cycle of anger, it will help in controlling anger effectively.

In other words, you can control your anger if you are able to somehow defy the initial set of foul thoughts.

Example

Say, for instance, your manager asks you and your colleague to present an idea for a book cover soon to be launched a few months from now. During the presentation, your manager challenges the design put forth by you and accepts the idea presented by your colleague.

Such a gesture seems like a personal attack on you and makes you ruminate about such an attack all the more, based on your past memories of the manager. As typically is the case, if you keep on ruminating, you become angrier and start sweating or trembling as a consequence of such a rage.

However, if you would have taken your manager’s suggestion in a constructive way the moment it was presented, you would have dealt with the discomforting feelings in a more effective way.

Such a constructive thought process quite early in the vicious cycle of anger allows you to analyze the anger-provoking events. However, you should remember that such constructive thinking works only when you experience a moderate amount of anger. When you experience uncontrollable anger, it engulfs your rational mind and seizes the opportunity to think cognitively of the underlying event.

Tip #4: Relax and Calm Down

When you are angry, your body releases a set of fight or flight hormones like adrenaline that increase the level of energy inside the body. This surge in the level of energy allows you to give a fight or flight response to the underlying event that is the very cause of your anger.

To subdue this energy level, you need to relax, calm down, and take yourself away from the person or event that triggered anger.

Thus, another significant tip on how to reduce temper is to calm yourself down. By changing the setup or environment, you are trying to hold back the anger-provoking thoughts and consequently prohibiting the further release of fight or flight hormones.

Another way to relax is to seek out distractions of your own interest as these would become powerful tools to moderate your foul mood. This is because it is quite challenging to remain in that same foul mood when you are engaged in an activity that gives you pleasure.

Example

For instance, an argument in a board meeting has put you in a bad mood. This has now started to impact you physiologically and has taken your mindset to continue working for the rest of the day. You love playing video games in your free time, your favorite being FIFA. Cut off from the stressful environment by resuming the FIFA game that you left playing last night for a while.

Besides this, there are other ways to relax and calm down. You can spend some time alone, with yourself either:

  • Exercising
  • Deep breathing
  • Taking long walks
  • Relaxing muscles
  • Meditating

These relaxation methods allow you to take your body from a high arousal state to a lower one and distract your mind, thus helping you to control your anger. Exercise also brings about the same effect on your body. However, these relaxation methods would not work if you keep on focusing your attention on anger-provoking thoughts. This is because each of such successive bad thoughts helps in building anger all the more. Thus, the best way to control your anger is to distract yourself.

Tip #5: Better Communication

The next tactic for how to stop anger is to indulge in self-talk. When you are angry, it is quite natural for you to reach conclusions that might not be necessarily accurate. For instance, if someone criticizes your work, you become defensive and hence try to fight back by raising your voices, bringing arguments supporting your thought process, and becoming physically aggressive.

In such a situation, you need to calm down and think about how you are going to respond to such emotional triggers. Do not fixate your attention on thoughts that come to your mind at the time you are angry. Instead, think about the underlying event and be mindful of the words that you intend to use to respond to the given situation or the concerned person.

Ask yourself:

  • How important is anger in the bigger picture?
  • Does the given situation deserve your anger?
  • Is it worth spoiling the rest of the day?
  • Does my response favor the situation?
  • Is there anything I can do about it?
  • Is taking action worth my time?

Furthermore, you must try to understand the underlying message that the other person wants to convey. This can only happen if you calm yourself down and think before you give any sort of an answer. Also, you need to be patient to implement this each time you are angry.

Tip #6: Express Anger in a Better Way

In case a situation makes you feel angry, you should always try to make things better by channelizing your feelings in a healthy way. This is another important tip on how to manage anger. When anger is channelized and communicated in an effective way, it can turn out to be a great source of energy and would bring about change.

Always try to identify the root cause of frustration as it will help you to communicate anger effectively, take constructive action, and work towards problem-solving

Leave the situation for a small period of time to give yourself an opportunity to calm down. For example, you can undertake any activity like going for a walk, hitting a gym, listening to music, etc

Always try to understand the underlying message the other person wants to communicate. Simply do not impose your thought process on the other person.

Your priority should always be to strengthen a relationship rather than winning the argument. So, give respect to the viewpoints or opinions of other people.

  • Do not bring the past into the picture. Always focus on the present to solve the problem.
  • Do not fight on petty issues. Rather, choose your battles that are really worthy of your time and energy.
  • Always have the attitude of forgiving as this would help solve the conflict.
  • When the argument does not reach a conclusion, it is always better to disengage.

Tip #7: Using Humour

Using humor is another effective tip for how to reduce anger. It will help you to keep your emotional balance intact. One of the ways in which you can use humor is to imagine a humorous picture of the words that you might use for the other person when you are angry.

For instance, if you use the word “weirdo’ for the other person, imagine how a weirdo riding a tricycle and coming to the office, with a Santa cap on his head and balloons in one of the hands and is doing funny things to make people laugh, much like Mr. Bean. Do this whenever you intend to use bad words or phrases for the other person when you are angry. This will help you release anger and reduce tension. There are two caveats to using humor.

Firstly, you should use humor constructively to solve your problems rather than just overlooking them. Secondly, you should not use humor to give harsh sarcastic comments as this is another form of anger.

Tip #8: Therapy

The last thing about how to manage anger is to take therapy. In cases of uncontrollable anger, despite practicing the above-mentioned anger management techniques, or before your anger starts impacting your relationships and other important areas of your life, you need to understand that it is the right time to consult a psychologist or any other licensed professional. These professionals would help you in controlling anger by using various techniques.

The therapists undertake therapy which is an excellent way to determine the underlying cause of anger. In case you are unaware of the reasons that make you feel angry, then it becomes quite challenging to control your anger.

Therefore, therapy offers a safe environment where you can become aware of the reasons as well as the triggers that make you feel angry.

Besides undertaking therapy, there are many professionals who conduct anger management classes that give you an opportunity to learn anger management skills in a group.

Since such classes are conducted in a group, you observe other people coping up with similar challenges, learn techniques and tips on how to control anger, and also get a chance to hear stories of different people.

So, if you undergo any of the following feelings or experiences, its time that you should seek professional help:

  • Constant frustration and anger despite trying various anger management techniques
  • Challenges at work or relationships due to excessive anger
  • Avoiding social gatherings as you cannot control your anger
  • Engage in physical violence due to excessive anger
  • Legally reprimanded due to excessive anger

How To Control Anger and Stress?

Numerous studies showcase an association between anger and stress. Stress plays a significant role in making you feel angry. Chronic stress may lead to irritability and increase your anger behaviors.

Stress in a controlled form is healthy as it motivates you to achieve your goals and makes you focus on important tasks both at home and at work. In addition, this type of stress does not lead to irritability or anger.

However, chronic stress also referred to as distress, is the one that can make you feel angry. This is because the intensity of the stress or the stress level is too high to inspire you to get out of your bed and get going.

In other words, when you experience stress for an extended period of time, or numerous things overwhelm you at the same time spiking the stress levels above a certain threshold, you are not able to handle the stress anymore. Hence, you get angry.

Your anger means that there is some other feeling that stresses you out. These feelings may include disrespect, fearfulness, shame, helplessness, trauma, etc. It is very important to understand these underlying feelings to uncover why you get stressed, leading you to feel angry.

Apart from finding out WHY we get stressed and angry, we also need to practice HOW to manage these feelings of anger and stress to be able to cope with them.

But before jumping to how to control anger and stress, let’s understand what might be the reasons for your anger and stress.

So What Causes Anger and Stress?

  • Interpretation of Experiences

    Certain situations can trigger anger or stress. Now, the extent to which you experience anger or stress depends on how you interpret the things that happen to you.

    For instance, if your manager loses his self-control and takes out his anger on you, his response may make you feel angry. You might react by either shouting back at him or leaving the room, banging the door behind.

    But, some people may perceive this event in a more constructive way. They challenge the negative thought about the manager and engage in effective self-talk. They may try to find a reasonable cause for the manager’s anger.

    For example, it could have been too much stress, a bad phone call five minutes back, or the anxiety to meet the deadline that overwhelmed the manager and made him feel angry as a result.

  • Family History

    Some people grow in an environment where family members turn to physical violence or react aggressively when the situation does not go according to what they expect.

    Such aggressive behavior patterns have a significant impact on the children. They might believe that being physically violent or aggressive is the ideal (or only) way of venting out anger.

    When children with such a model of reaction to negative emotions experience stress, they often find difficulty controlling their anger and stress levels.

  • Past Events

    When people experience traumatic, painful, or frightening events, they may start to experience chronic stress or intense feelings related to those events, also known as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Such increased levels of stress may lead to anger outbursts that may significantly impact an individual’s day-to-day life.

  • Current Circumstances

    If you are experiencing a lot of stress at present, either in your personal or professional life, it is quite likely that you are experiencing anger constantly.

    Having problems in marriage, dealing with a difficult manager, having many fast-approaching deadlines, or serious medical issues are just a few of the situations which might put you under immense stress. They may also lead you to feelings of anger, which is quite challenging to control.

  • Alcohol and Drug Problems

    Sometimes, in order to get temporary relief from the immense stress, people consume drugs and alcohol. However, they are unaware that when you are already anxious or stressed, these feelings can worsen in your brain when exposed to substances like drugs or alcohol, making people more aggressive.

  • Individual Attitude

    Some people have a habit of perceiving things negatively. Such people take one negative event as an indication of a trail of negative events that are yet to follow. They might take a genuine mistake made by someone else as a deliberate and intentional action made with bad intent. People with such negative thinking patterns often face challenges in controlling anger and stress.

  • Type of Personality

    The personality traits of an individual also expose them to anger or stress differently. There are some people who have the tendency to get stressed or angry quite easily.

    For instance, some people are quite inflexible to new things, events, people, circumstances, situations, etc., and as a result, get stressed or angry quite often and quite easily.

    Then there are others who have a very low tolerance for irritation or any kind of disappointment. Such people get angry quite easily and hence find it difficult to control anger.

How to Manage Anger and Stress?

You need to understand that anger and stress are natural and human feelings.

They have an evolutionary basis and cannot be prevented completely, as they are a cue for you to realize that something is happening in your life that you should pay attention to.

However, they can become overwhelming or come as a disproportionate reaction, in which case you should definitely work on them.

  • Maintaining anger diary
  • Journaling
  • Exercising
  • Taking time out
  • Talking to friends and family
  • Getting enough sleep
  • Thinking before speaking
  • Keeping your cool
  • Do not take things personally
  • Do not surrender to fear
  • Communicate decisively
  • Identifying anger symptoms
  • Recognizing triggers both external and internal
  • Practicing meditation or Yoga
  • Undertaking deep breathing exercises

Ways To Control Anger In Kids

Anger tantrums in kids usually occur at the age of 2 or 3 when children are trying to understand themselves.

For instance, a toddler may understand “me” or “my wants” but is too young to understand how to satisfy those wants. With the lack of ability to use words and having a high amount of energy, toddlers make use of tantrums to express and get their wants met.

These anger tantrums reach their peak between 2 and 3 years of age, and they begin to decline when a child turns 4.

Such tantrums are often showcased in public when the children are asked not to engage in something they wish or desire to do.

Once the child’s wants get fulfilled, they typically stop the tantrum.

If such aggressive behaviors occur in children younger than one year and older than four years of age, last for more than 15 minutes, or occur three or more times in a day, it is a matter that parents must take seriously.

In such cases, parents should seek the help of a psychologist, family therapist, a family physician or go to a child anger management therapy.

These anger fits in preschoolers might be the early symptoms of children becoming gradually aggressive, undisciplined, and unmanageable when they get older.

Why are certain children not able to control their temper tantrums with age? There might be many different reasons.

Why Are Some Kids Not Able To Control Anger?

A study examining this topic found the following patterns observed in kids getting angry:

  • Parents of an angry kid were undergoing some kind of stressful event, such as chronic illness, divorce or unhappy marriage, financial crisis, etc.
  • It is quite difficult for parents to control the disobedience of such an angry child.
  • Parents do not stop their kids or engage in helping kids deal with anger tantrums, i.e., they surrender.
  • Since parents do not question their kids getting angry or displaying tantrums publicly, such children become disobedient and aggressive.
  • Parents as well as peers do not accept the angry child.

So what exactly happens that there is anger in children’s behavior when they grow up. Three things happen step-by-step.

Steps Leading To Child Anger

  • An angry or frustrated parent/sibling yells or shouts at the child
  • In return, the child who has been yelled at responds aggressively.
  • Observing the child’s aggression, the attacker (parent or sibling) withdraws and thus the angry child learns tricks, like yelling or whining, to get his or her demands met.

So, it is quite important for parents as well as caregivers to learn to understand anger issues in kids so that they are helping children manage anger.

The following are the factors that cause feelings of anger in children:

  • Interactions With Peers
  • Parent Modeling
  • Child’s Own Reasoning Behind Expressing Anger
  • The manner In Which Anger is Expressed
  • Level of Maturity
  • Other Causes

FAQ’s

How Do I Control My Anger?

There are various self-help anger management techniques like identifying physical symptoms and anger triggers, challenging angry thoughts early, practicing relaxation techniques, communicating effectively, and using humor. If these self-help anger management tips do not help you in controlling anger, then you can always seek professional help and undergo Therapy or group classes.

Is Anger a Mental Illness?

Anger in itself is not considered a disorder or mental illness. It is a symptom of several mental illnesses, for instance, depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Alcoholism, Bipolar Disorder, Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Narcissistic Personality or Grief.

What is the Best Therapy For Anger Management?

There are certain effective therapeutic ways that can help you manage anger. The best therapy for anger management includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), in which persons are exposed to imaginary incidents that provoke anger. Such therapy provides an opportunity for the patients to learn, identify their negative thought patterns, and try to self-monitor anger.

What is Silent Anger?

Silent Anger or Passive Aggression is the one in which a person withdraws into themself, keeps anger inside, and does not talk about how they feel when they are angry; as such, a person is afraid to confront people whom they love. It can often stem from feelings of fear that they may say something that will hurt others. People who become silent when they are angry do not take a stand for themselves and shy away from confronting people who hurt them.

What Are Three Types of Anger?

The three types of anger include Passive Aggression, Open Aggression, and Assertive Aggression. Passive Aggression is the one in which people become silent when they are angry as they do not want to express their anger out of fear of disturbing the people whom they love. Open Aggression is the one in which people become physically or verbally violent, lashing out at other people in rage, and become destructive. Such type of anger comes out of the need to dominate or control other people as a person showcasing open aggression believes that he deserves to be treated in a better way. Lastly, Assertive Anger is the one in which the person thinks before speaking, is confident about what they want to say, does not raise his voice, and is open and flexible to listen to the other side.

What is the Root Cause of Anger?

The root cause of anger is often not a recent trigger but something really deep that sometimes originates from childhood. Some people suppress or deny anger because, as kids, their family members considered expressing anger as unacceptable. Thus, such children are afraid of demonstrating anger and repress it as a result. Some other people who grow up in an environment where they are overexposed to anger as kids might consider anger to be a useful tool to get things done.

What Emotion is Behind Anger?

Anger is not a primary emotion. Rather it is considered a secondary emotion that gets triggered as a response to other sets of negative emotions including anxiety, shame, frustration, sadness, fear, guilt, jealousy, disappointment, worry, embarrassment, and hurt.

How Do I Stop Explosive Anger?

The strategies to control explosive anger include recognizing the physiological changes, identifying the emotional triggers, challenging the negative thoughts early on in the anger cycle, communicating effectively, and then using relaxation techniques to calm yourself down. In case you are still not able to manage anger, then you can seek the help of a psychologist and undergo therapy.

Why Am I Getting Mad So Easily?

Anger comes from various sources like disrespect, shame, embarrassment, disappointment, threat attack, neglect, frustration, sadness, worry, jealousy, guilt, etc. However, sometimes anger comes due to certain hormonal changes in the body or because of some mental disorder like depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), ADHD, ODD, IED, PTSD, etc.

Is Anger a Sign of ADHD?

Yes! Anger or frustration, getting stressed out, irritability, or having short temper are few of the many signs or symptoms that can indicate that a person has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is not mandatory that a person who does not have control over his anger necessarily has ADHD as there are 32 mental disorders that have anger or frustration as its symptom.

Are Anger Issues Genetic?

Anger often runs in families. But Many people think that anger is genetic. However, psychologists believe that anger is a behavior that is learned. Families teach their children ways to express their feelings like happiness, anger, sadness, and fearfulness. In case, a family does not know how to control anger, then it is very much likely that the children would showcase the same behavior. Thus, if a family does not know how to cope with anger, then it gets passed on from one generation to the next generation.

What is Bipolar Rage?

Bipolar Rage or Bipolar Anger is a mental disorder that affects your mood, that is, you undergo a cycle of mood changes between depression and mania or unexpected and dramatic changes in your mood.

How Do You Punish a Child With Anger Issues?

If your child has anger issues, there are various ways to curb your child’s explosive behavior. First, stay calm and control your own emotions. Do not yell or shout as this will make your child more aggressive. Second, do not agree to the wants or demands of your kids when they are angry as they would consider it an effective way to get their needs met. Next, you can also appreciate their positive behaviors and help them identify and designate feelings so that they have a better understanding of emotions. Further, you can help your child resort to various relaxation techniques when angry like reading a book, coloring, going in the garden area to play, etc.

Why Is My Child So Angry and Aggressive?

There are numerous reasons that result in anger and aggression in children. One of the common reasons is frustration in kids when their expectations or demands are not met or when they ate compelled to do something that they do not feel like doing. Furthermore, Anger issues in kids might also indicate that they are undergoing some sort of mental illness such as autism, OCD, ADHD, etc. Other causes of anger in kids can be trauma, biological factors, harsh parenting styles, surrounding environment, etc.

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WHAT IS ANGER

What is Anger and How Does It Build Inside Human Brain?

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“Holding on to Anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” – Buddha

Sages, philosophers, scholars etc since remote ages have touted emotional self-control as one of the stronger suits of any individual. Being able to control or master emotional explosions is a virtue that is utmost essential for a person’s existence but very hard to adopt.

Regulating one’s emotional outbursts is often misunderstood as suppressing emotions or killing emotions all together. However, the key to a fulfilling life does not mean a life without emotions but expressing feelings to an extent that is demanded by a given situation.

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This is because subdued emotions lead to a life that is sad and dull. On the other hand, too extreme feelings that are un-retiring in nature lead to modern diseases like depression, anxiety, anger and agitation.

In a quote by Buddha mentioned above, Buddha points out the extreme side of one of the strongest negative emotions in an individual known as ‘Anger’. He says that when an extreme form of anger is not kept in check, it leads to self-devastation in addition to causing harm to the person on whom it is targeted.

Read All: Buddha Quotes for successful life

As we already know, amygdala, an almond shaped cluster of neurons inside the human brain, is the seat of all emotions. Given the Amygdala’s function and its association with other brain areas, the individual has neither control over the time at which he or she would be in the grip of an emotion, nor will he or she be aware of the emotion that took them over.

The only thing that an individual can regulate is the time period for which such emotions can persist or last.

So before getting into understanding the physiological and biological effects of anger, it is important to know how damaging such a distressing emotion can be for human life. One of the best examples of its devastating effects can be taken from the greatest ancient Indian epic ‘Mahabharata’.

It quotes numerous instances where extreme and persistent Anger not only lead to the destruction of people on whom it was directed, but also destroyed people who were in its grip.

What is Anger?

American Psychological Association (APA) defines anger as an emotion marked by antagonism towards someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.

Anger as an emotion is necessary for a man’s survival because it is a way through which:

  • One can express negative feelings
  • Defend or protect oneself when attacked given it being an autonomic response to threats
  • One can come up with solutions for problems

Thus, anger as an emotion is absolutely normal to occur and in its appropriate degree is necessary for a man’s survival. The challenge with anger is that it more often than not goes out of control.

In its extreme form, Anger becomes pathological resulting in anxiety, depression, insomnia, agitation; has serious implications on personal and professional relationships and one’s health.

Anger and Mahabharata

Numerous emotions laid the foundation for Mahabharata, the great Indian epic war, famously called as the Kurukshetra War. One of these emotions was Anger which is demonstrated in a number of instances throughout the epic.

One such instance takes place towards the end when ‘Pandavas’, one of the Kuru clans, defeat the opposite Kuru clan ‘Kauravas’ and visit Dhritaraashtra to celebrate their victory. Dhritaraashtra was the King of Kuru Kingdom and father of Kaurava brothers whom Panadavas defeated in the battle.

Blind Dritaraashtra, in order to congratulate each of the Pandava brothers, asks them to come and meet him one by one. When the second Pandava brother Bheema in his turn attempts to hug Dhritaraashtra, Lord Krishna intervenes. He intelligently asks Bheema to place the nearby solid metal statue of Bheema in blind Dhritaraashtra’s arms instead of Bheema going himself to meet him.

The moment Dhritaraashtra hugs the statue presuming it to be Bheema, the statue is reduced to ruins. Such an intense hug not only signifies the strength in his arms which is equivalent to a hundred thousand elephants as a result of a blessing given to him by sage Vyaasa but it also signifies the anger that burns inside him for Bheema.

This is because it was Bheema who killed his dearest son Duryodhana in the Kurukshetra War. Despite losing all of his hundred sons in the war, King Dhritaraashtra was still burning in rage and wanted to kill Bheema to take revenge for Duryodhana’s death.

Had Lord Krishna not intervened, it was certain that Dhritaraashtra’s intense Anger would have lead to Bheema’s demise.

Thus, in this article you will learn what is anger, its nature and how is it caused.

Also read: 35 Mahabharata Quotes to Live a Wholesome Life

Nature of Anger

Anger is the most passionate of all the distressing emotions. When in its grip, an individual takes his anger out either on a person or an event in which he feels is wrong or unjustified.

Also, anger is marked by certainty that is unfounded one, thus making the person in its grip believe that whatever he is doing is correct. It convinces the mind for venting that rage out on people, events, circumstances, etc.

Further, where dejection leads to weakness, dullness and inaction, anger is stimulating and exciting. Therefore, anger makes an individual ready for action, making him react in violent ways such as fighting, hitting, pulling a trigger, slapping etc.

Moreover, anger leads to certain physiological and biological changes in an individual. Therefore the physiological changes include:

  • Increasing heart beat
  • High levels of blood pressure
  • Stimulation of energy hormones such as adrenaline and nor-adrenaline

Likewise, the biological impact of anger is seen when it persists, exists in extreme form and eventually becomes pathological leading to anxiety, depression, insomnia, agitation etc.

What Causes Anger?

Certain experiments have been undertaken to understand how anger builds up in the brain. As mentioned above, anger is a negative emotion that stimulating or exciting. Therefore, one of the typical triggers for anger is the feeling of being put in danger.

Now, this feeling can be aroused not just by physical attacks such as physical violence imposed by a person on another. However, it can also be stimulated by attack on one’s dignity or self-respect by another, being embarrassed or wrongly treated by others or irritation on one’s incapacity to achieve his goals.

All these impressions lead to stimulation of the Limbic Brain which eventually results in two kinds of effects. These threats first result in the release of hormones by the adrenal glands that lead to general surge in the level of energy in the body.

Such hormones include adrenaline and nor-adrenaline that prepare the body for the fight or flight response. However, the energy released by such hormones is short-lived.

In addition to the release of the adrenal hormones, the adrenal cortex, which is the outer layer of the adrenal gland, also gets stimulated. It prepares the body for action. But such energy stays for a longer time as compared to the one generated by the stimulation of adrenal glands.

Thus, these release of hormones by the adrenal and the adrenocortical region together create energy that can stay for hours and sometimes even days. That is the reason why individuals who are provoked stay in the state of arousal for days and hence react instantaneously to the series of triggers that follow the original trigger.

One of the things that cause adrenocortical arousal is stress. For instance, a person who had a fight with his spouse earlier in the day has a higher chance of getting angry at the slightest of mistakes committed by his employee at work.

Another trigger that builds up anger is anger itself. When a person is already enraged, the level of existing anger increases given the series of provocations that follow the initial trigger. Since the level of anger keeps on increasing with each provocation in the series, the last trigger in the entire sequence builds up anger of greater intensity relative to the previous triggers.

Thus, such a level of stimulation makes people heartless and any kind of reasoning just doesn’t work. All they think of is revenge at this point of time not understanding the implications of such a reaction.

As said earlier, anger is marked by certainty that is unfound one. It takes away the ability of the person to reason as a result of which the person resorts to reacting in a way our ancestors used to react when faced by a physical threat.

How to Control Anger?

There are many ways in which anger can be controlled. Read our detailed article on controlling anger to know about the therapeutic ways in which anger can be managed.

Conclusion

Our emotional legacy includes a set of negative emotions which when left unchecked lead to serious implications for our health, relationships and life. No doubt anger is automatic in nature and takes you in its grip uninvited, however, one can certainly manage control such autonomic responses resulting from anger if he is aware of the triggers and the cues that lead to its coming.

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IQ Vs EQ

IQ Vs EQ: Is Your EQ More Important Than IQ?

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The IQ Vs EQ debate is decades old. The common belief is that a high IQ has a direct relationship with the circumstances you go through in life. That is, you get paid well, are more healthy, and lead a highly successful life.

The general rule says that your IQ predicts your success. Accordingly, if you can use logic and reason to answer questions, see things coming, and have a sharp memory, you’re a winner in life.

So are we saying that high IQ is destiny? If you go by what psychologists say about intelligence, this is not true. High IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in your life.

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Daniel Goleman, the internationally known psychologist, in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ openly challenges this common belief. He says that your IQ contributes just 20% to the factors that determine your life success. The remaining 80% contribution is made by some other forces. 

That is, there are other sets of characteristics that you must have to be successful. These could be:

EQ Skills

  • persistence in times of struggle,
  • ability to control your impulses and delay gratification
  • controlling your mood
  • not letting worries hijack your ability to reason
  • ability to motivate yourself
  • being able to empathize
  • and be hopeful

Unfortunately, despite psychologists saying it otherwise, IQ, grades, and SAT scores still remain popular indicators of an individual’s success. The ace universities and companies across the world still test candidates only for their IQ. And outrightly ignore the non-IQ factors like persistence, self-control, luck, etc.

IQ Vs EQ Debate

IQ Vs EQ: The Difference Between IQ and EQ

What is EQ?

Emotional Quotient (EQ), also known as Emotional Intelligence (EI), refers to the ability of people to recognize, understand, and perceive emotions in day-to-day life. Thus, it includes recognizing, understanding, and managing ones’ own emotions as well as identifying, interpreting, and responding to the emotions of others.

Daniel Goleman, a science journalist, psychologist, and author of the best-selling book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ groups the EI skills into four categories:

Emotional Intelligence Skills

  • Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize one’s feelings as they come. Being able to check one’s own feelings from time-to-time is one of the important emotional intelligence skills in understanding oneself. Not being able to recognize one’s true feelings makes one a slave to his feelings. For these feelings easily take control over and compel one to behave irrationally.

  • Self-management

Self-management involves managing one’s own emotions. However, you first need to be aware of your feelings to be able to truly manage them. Self-management includes the capacity to be able to calm oneself down, get rid of frustration, anxiety, anger, sadness, etc in times of distress. You can check our video on how to control anger in the links below.

So, those who lack the ability to manage their emotions have to continuously deal with feelings of distress. On the other hand, those who are able to manage their emotions well recover quickly from life’s misfortunes. Furthermore, such people are able to exercise self-control. That is control their impulses and delay gratification.

They achieve the state of flow and are better able to focus on anything they do and achieve outstanding performance Such people are highly productive and efficient in whatever they do.

  • Social Awareness

Social awareness is the ability that extends from self-awareness. It includes empathy, the capacity to understand the emotions of other individuals. To be able to empathize is an important emotional intelligence social skills and breeds altruism. People who are able to empathize with others understand what others need. Also, such individuals do really well in professions like teachings, sales, etc.

  • Relationship Management

Relationship management is one of the other important EI skills. Individuals with such skills are good at managing relationships with others. This emotional intelligence skill extends from empathy. Furthermore, the ability to manage relationships is a skill common across people who are popular, good leaders, and have good interpersonal skills.

What is IQ?

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a measure of intelligence that takes into consideration a child’s mental age as well as chronological age. Chronological age refers to the actual age of the child taking the intelligence test. Whereas, the intelligence at a mental age means a typical level of intelligence found for people at a given chronological age.

Typically, people having a mental age equal to the chronological age have an IQ of 100. However, if chronological age is more than the mental age, people have a below-average IQ (below 100). Furthermore, if the mental age exceeds the chronological age in people, they are bound to have an above-average IQ (i.e. above 100).

Thus, IQ tests were developed in order to select students for admission in schools and universities. Stanford Binet is one of such IQ tests that was developed to identify children who had serious intellectual difficulties in school. This test measured students’ intelligence on parameters necessary for their success in school. These included:

  • verbal reasoning
  • quantitative reasoning
  • abstract or visual reasoning
  • short term memory

Understanding IQ Vs EQ Debate

There are times when even the brightest among us tend to behave irrationally. We hear instances of people pulling triggers, losing self-control, abusing physically and verbally, despite having high IQs.

Such moments of the irrationality of the smartest compel us to question our limited notion of intelligence. They bring forth the inability of high IQ, grades, and academic intelligence to tell anything about the emotional life of such individuals. That is, whether such individuals have the requisite emotional intelligence skills and preparation to deal with the challenges of life.

Psychologists are of the view that academic intelligence and high IQ at best tell you about one’s achievement as measured by grades. People with high IQ might be wealthy, happy, well-paid, etc as compared to people with low IQ. But this may not always be the case.

Thus, apart from IQ, there are other skill sets that you need to possess to have a successful life. These are emotional intelligence skills that, at times, matter even more than IQ.

Furthermore, emotional intelligence skills can be taught to children to prepare them to take up real-life challenges.

So those who challenge that IQ can’t be changed, as per Daniel Goleman, important emotional intelligence skills can be learned and improved upon by children. These skills will help them make all the difference in their life. However, this can happen only if parents, schools, and educational institutions put an effort to teach it to children.

Let’s have a look at some of the studies undertaken by well-known psychologists to understand why Emotional Quotient matters?

A study by Lewis Terman

Lewis Terman, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, was a specialist in testing intelligence. He decided to conduct a study wherein he tested the IQ of around 2,50,000 students studying in California’s elementary schools. As a part of the study, he asked teachers to list the brightest students in their classes and give them an intelligence test. Further, students who scored in the top 10% were given a second IQ test. And those who scored above 130 were given a third IQ test.

Thus, Lewis selected the best as well as the brightest students after the results were declared. 1470 children had IQs more than 140 and ranged as high as 200. Thus, he named such a group of young geniuses as termites. These students became the subject of his study as Lewis tracked, tested, measured, and analyzed their achievements over life.

Lewis believed that the termites were destined to be the future elite of the United States. But, Lewis committed an error of considering that termites would be highly successful given they had an extraordinarily high IQ. This error became pretty evident when the subjects grew older. None of his subjects were nationally known figures. They earned good incomes but those were not extraordinary huge sums of money. Most of them pursued ordinary careers. Furthermore, a good number of termites ended up in careers that even Terman considered to be failures.

Analysis

As noted in the above case, academic intelligence tells you nothing about how people would deal with the practicalities of life. The level of IQ a person has does not authenticate that he has the capability to face the turmoil that practicalities of life bring.

Furthermore, having a high IQ does not guarantee that a person would prosper, have high prestige in society, or lead a happy life. But our culture and education system focuses on the academic capabilities of a person, ignoring the other factors responsible for success. These include social, cultural, luck, and traits like emotional intelligence.

Out of all, emotional intelligence plays a key part in defining a person’s destiny. Like another set of skills, emotional competencies can be learned. Thus, a person who is highly skilled in handling emotional life would prosper. However, a person having an equal intellect but a lesser capability to handle emotional life would flounder.

Therefore, emotional intelligence includes a set of competencies that determine how skillfully we can use other talents like raw intellect.

There are various spheres in life where IQ is highly rewarded. These include placements in companies like Google or Microsoft that measure the cognitive abilities of the prospective employees on the very belief that those with high IQ have the greatest potential.

However, there is a lot of evidence that signifies that people with high emotional aptitude are successful in every domain of life. Such people have the capability to become aware and manage their own emotions. Further, they also understand the feelings of other people and know how to deal with them effectively.

As a result, people with high EQ are successful in maintaining personal and professional relationships. Such people are more likely to be happy and effective in their lives. They know how to control their emotional mind and hence are highly productive. Whereas people with low emotional quotient keep fighting with their emotions and hence are not able to focus on their work.

Study By Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard School of Education, developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) and initiated Project Spectrum, a curriculum that promotes a variety of intelligence.

As per the MI theory, Gardner emphasized that an individual possesses eight or more types of intelligence. Each of this intelligence can be used by a person individually or corporately in order to create products and solve problems appropriate to the society. These include linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence.

However, traditional schools only focus on two of these that is linguistic and logical-mathematical.

Thus, he asserted that the greatest contribution to a child’s development can be to help him choose a field that matches his talents rather than forcing him to follow the stereotypical path.

Further, Gardner’s theory signified that the tests taken in school tested only a limited set of a person’s capabilities. Such tests fail to showcase the other range of emotional intelligence skills and capabilities that play a great role beyond IQ.

So, when Spectrum students were evaluated on the Stanford Binet intelligence skills, their scores on two tests did not have any significant relationship. Students with the highest IQs had a different set of strengths when tested by the Spectrum Test. Thus, Gardner concluded that the Stanford Binet intelligence scale showcasing IQ levels of students did not provide any information in respect of probability of performance of students in areas covered by project Spectrum.

IQ Vs EQ: Is EQ Better Than IQ?

High IQ is certainly an advantage. Initially, IQ was considered as the sole predictor of success. High IQ individuals were deemed to accomplish and succeed in life. Not only that, it was believed that IQ cannot be changed, neither by education nor by experience. However, eventually, researchers realized that this rule is rather a narrow view of intelligence.

Studies revealed that having IQ is no guarantee of success. This is because IQ fails to consider another set of competencies that individuals can build on so as to accomplish in life. But despite the studies, top-level educational institutions and corporations still test the candidates for logical-mathematical and linguistic skills.

IQ still remains a popular predictor of how well a person would do in life. A high IQ individual usually does academically well, earns good money, and is happier.

However, researchers and psychologists reveal that IQ is not the sole factor that determines success. There are a number of other characteristics that contribute to your personal success. This set of characteristics form part of EQ (Emotional Quotient) or Emotional Intelligence.

For instance, people who are emotionally intelligent become good leaders, sales representatives, teachers, social workers. etc. Skills like perseverance, self-control, and understanding the needs of others are crucial for such roles.

Thus, where IQ is all about reading and math skills, Emotional Quotient is about life skills. Not only that, EQ skills can be learned and improved if taught. This is done by imparting emotional literacy.

Why is Emotional Literacy Important?

The term ‘Emotional Literacy’ was given by Claude Steiner in 1979. As per Claude Steiner, ‘Emotional Literacy’refers to handling emotions in a way that improves your personal power and improves the quality of life for you. And most important the quality of life of the people around you. Emotional literacy helps your emotions to work for you and not against you.”

In current times, we hear instances of smart people behaving irrationally and losing self-control when in the grip of emotions. More than poor math and reading grades, teachers today are concerned about the rising emotional illiteracy in school children. They are of the view that governments are putting much effort to raise the academic standards of educational institutions. However, not much is being done towards imparting emotional literacy to school children.

So, what price are the modern-day adolescents and teens paying for the lack of emotional literacy?

  • They are witnessing higher rates of anxiety and depression. All thanks to the increasing trend of nuclear families, individualism, and falling faith in religion. The result is a loss of support from extended families and communities which earlier helped people in coming out of failures and setbacks.
  • They are more prone to have eating disorders like obsessing about their weight and what they eat or bingeing followed by methods to avoid weight gain. This is found common in young girls who could not distinguish between different feelings they go through and control them. This lack of awareness of their emotions made them react negatively to minor setbacks of life. Thus, a lack of emotional awareness together with a negative reaction to minor difficulties leads them to be dissatisfied with their bodies.
  • There is an increased rate of school drop -out in children who feel lonely and helpless. Children who are rejected by their fellow mates feel socially incompetent. These social rejects are poor in reading social and emotional signals. So, even if they understand the emotional signals, they may not respond in a way that may make others feel good or want to be with them.
  • Those emotionally distressed have increased chances of getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. Consuming alcohol and drugs is taken as self-medication to soothe anxiety, depression, and feeling of melancholy.

FAQ

  • Which is Better IQ Or EQ?

    IQ only measures our intelligence potential. Having a high IQ is not enough for success in life. You need to have a strong resolute in order to achieve success. Besides this, you need to be sociable and empathetic to build a network of helpful people. All this is possible with having a high Emotional Quotient. People with high EQ have self-control, are better able to manage their relationships, and recover from failures quite well. Thus, EQ is more important than IQ.

  • What is the Difference Between EQ and IQ?

    Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a measure of intelligence that takes into consideration a child’s mental age as well as chronological age. It measures IQ Skills like verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, abstractor visual reasoning, and short-term memory. Whereas, EQ, also known as Emotional Intelligence (EI), refers to the ability of people to recognize, understand, and perceive emotions in day-to-day life. Thus, it includes recognizing, understanding, and managing ones’ own emotions as well as identifying, interpreting, and responding to the emotions of others. Thus Emotional Intelligence Skills include Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.

  • Is EQ More Important Than IQ in the Workplace?

    Employers are beginning to shift their focus from IQ to EQ skills as a result of numerous studies that reveal the importance and benefits of emotional intelligence, especially in the workplace. This does not mean that IQ skills do not matter at all for great performance in the workplace. However, as per Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman 2.0, EQ gives you certain skill sets that help you to stand out in the fields where such capabilities make the most difference. For instance, leadership is one such area where EQ overpowers IQ. This is because people with high EQ are calm, empathetic, able to solve problems and make thoughtful decisions.

  • Are IQ and EQ Mutually Exclusive?

    Though IQ still remains a key determinant in the path of success. However, various statutory bodies, as well as nations, have begun to promote Emotional Intelligence as an important part of their educations programs. They are of the view that preparing students with technical or academic skills alone is not enough for them to achieve success and well-being. They also need to work on attaining social and emotional skills like perseverance, empathy, mindfulness, courage, or leadership. Thus, IQ and EQ are mutually exclusive. The key to success is having a combination of both IQ and EQ.

  • Does High IQ Mean Low EQ?

    It is typically suggested that people with high IQ usually have a low EQ. As per Relly Nadler, Steve Jobs’ IQ outshined his EQ. He had various traits that were ‘Derailers’ from having a good EQ. Like he lacked impulse control, was inflexible, a perfectionist, and was too hard on people. But he had certain EQ Skills that led him to be one of the most influential figures in modern times. These skills included vision, confidence, and change catalyst. Another study revealed that some basic level of general intelligence (IQ) is necessary for being emotionally intelligent. This is because a certain set of cognitive abilities are required to understand others and drive the social world. So, we cannot conclude that people with High IQ have a low EQ as well.

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AMYGDALA FUNCTION

How Does Amygdala Function in Human Brain?

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Diego Maradona, one of the influential Argentine soccer players, was put under the care of Paramedics when he collapsed in his chair after Argentina won against Nigeria at the 2018 World Cup.

Maradona was seen overreacting to Argentina’s victory and as a result collapsed while celebrating Argentina’s late victory over Argentina.

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Moments like these are common when it comes to human life. Think about the situations when you almost fainted celebrating your success, much like Maradona. Or ponder over the times when you last bursted out on your sibling, a response that you later felt was unjustified and hence not needed.

Day To Day Emotional Attacks

Take for instance Harper’s case. Harper had been preparing for her entrance exam from past one year. On the morning of the exam day, when Harper was getting ready, she had a fight with one of her siblings early in the morning. This got her overwhelmed and put her in a bad mood.

She carried this foul mood to the examination hall where she found herself not able to focus on her exam. As a result, her brain was engulfed with panic and she could not attempt majority of the given questions.

Thus, when she came out of the exam hall, she knew that she had ruined her one year’s effort. This got authenticated when results were declared as she could barely pass.

Impassioned moments like these put you in a state where you simply jump to actions even before your thinking brain gets a chance to understand the situation at hand.

All these emotional explosions are a result of a centre in our limbic brain known as the ‘Amygdala’.

It is the Amygdala that results in both distressing as well as extremely pleasant emotions that can barely be controlled.

In this article, you will learn, what is Amygdala, how does Amygdala function and role of other limbic structures in stimulating emotions in humans.

What is Amygdala?

Amygdala is an almond shaped collection of interconnected structures, located right above the brainstem. Furthermore, each side of the brain has one amygdala each.

In other words, there are two amygdalas, one located at each side of the head close to the temporal lobe. As compared to primates, the human amygdala is comparatively large in size.

Further, Amygdala along with nearby Hippocampus form the two important parts of the Limbic Brain. In fact, these are the primitive Limbic structures that lead to the development of Cortex and Neocortex in human brain.

Thus, much like the primitive times, most of memorizing and learning takes place inside these limbic structures.

The Amygdala, on the one hand, specializes in emotional issues and is a storehouse of emotional memories. On the other hand, Hippocampus is the Limbic structure that acts as a storehouse of factual information that is necessary for giving emotional meaning to the given set of experiences or events.

Example

Take for instance Harpers case given above. Now, the Amygdala will be responsible for sending signals of anxiety the next time Harper would sit for the exam. Whereas, the Hippocampus would help her memorize the other details of the incident such as the location of the examination hall, its setup, her peers who took the exam, etc.

Thus, given the Amygdala’s role in the emotional brain, studies have shown that if the amygdala is removed or severed from the rest of the brain, there would be no emotions in human life.

As mentioned in Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence book, Joseph LeDoux was the first neuroscientist who discovered the important role played by Amygdala in the emotional brain.

LeDoux’s research reveals that Amygdala can take charge of what human beings do while the thinking brain, the neocortex, is still at work to understand what the existing event is all about.

Amygdala Function

In order to understand how Amygdala functions, we will take into consideration one of the emotions that is crucial for the survival of human beings. This emotion is none other than fear.

In primitive times, the very survival of our ancestors was due to the emotion Fear whenever their life was endangered due to the attack of wild animals or interlopers. In events like these, humans had to make quick decisions of either escaping or fighting back.

This required them to respond instantaneously as waiting for long would mean putting their life in danger. So, fear played a great role here as it enabled them to react quickly by either escaping, fighting or killing the attacker.

Now, Fear undoubtedly played a key role in the survival of our ancestors. But in modern times, these misguided fears have lead to a variety of challenges such as panic attacks, anxiety, worry, phobias and obsessive compulsive disorders.

Given this, it would be interesting to know what exactly happens when humans are in the grip of such emotions? Well, the point of origin of such emotional explosions is the Amygdala. Let’s understand how does Amygdala gets triggered leading to Amygdala Hijack.

Example

Let’s put Harper in another situation. She is asked to prepare a presentation which she would have to deliver in a class of seventy students. Since the topic given to her for the presentation is not of her interest, she starts to think that she will not be able to do well.

The very thought of standing and speaking on that topic gives her jitters. Even after hours of practice in her hostel room, she is not able to get out of the thought of screwing the presentation up.

On the day of presentation, the thought overpowers her brain as she goes all blank. Even after repetitive cheering from the audience, she is unable to pull off the presentation. On asking her later what happened to her, she explains that she got overwhelmed by the thought that she would have to present in front of people who are strangers.

Let’s see what went wrong in Harper’s brain that made her go all blank.

Role of Amygdala

  • Taking in Sensory Input

The first step involves the brain taking input from the physical world and converting it into neural signals understood by the brain so as to make it alert. In Harper’s case, this input was a crowd of 70 strangers that she saw the moment it was her turn to give the presentation.

Thus, this input takes enters the brain via eyes, goes to the brainstem and then further to the Thalamus. Form Thalamus, this information gets separated into two branches.

A small amount of neural signals go directly to the Amygdala and the Hippocampus. Whereas, the majority of these input signals go to the visual cortex in the Occipital Lobe. Here the information gets assessed and analyzed.

  • Sorting By Hippocampus

As mentioned above, Hippocampus is a Limbic structure that memorizes the factual information about events and occurrences. Thus, the moment sensory information reaches Hippocampus, it compares the input with the facts of similar events already registered to see if the event at hand is familiar.

  • Higher Level Analysis By Visual Cortex

While the information gets sorted for familiarity in Hippocampus, amount of sensory input reaching the Visual Cortex goes in for undertaking higher level analysis of the sensory input so received.

In Harper’s Case, the visual cortex would try to understand the scene witnessed by her, that is, the panel of judges, the performance of the co-presenters, the reaction of the crowd etc.

Now, the visual cortex will present its understanding such as expert judges, outstanding performance by the co-presenters, demanding crowd and send these messages to the Amygdala and the Hippocampus.

Now, Amygdala and Hippocampus would further compare this analysis to the stored memories. If the decision given by both the Amygdala and the Hippocampus is encouraging, then the general state of vigilance does not move to the next level.

Encouraging decision here means that the verdict given by both Amygdala and Hippocampus is say supporting crowd, familiar guests and judges, fair performance by co-presenters etc.

However, if both Amygdala and Hippocampus are not certain about the sensory inputs received, another set of interaction between amygdala, hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex takes place. This escalates the uncertainty further making the person more alert and worried about the underlying worry or fear. In harper’s case, the fear relates to facing people, her performance in respect of presentation etc.

If this analysis by amygdala, hip[pocampus and the prefrontal cortex does not get any answer, the amygdala gets triggered. It sends alert signals that further activate hypothalamus, brainstem and the autonomic nervous system.

Parts of Amygdala

Let’s understand how the Hypothalamus, Brainstem and the ANS get activated by the alarming signals received by the Amygdala.

Amygdala is divided into various sections, each receiving different kind of information. Following are the various parts of Amygdala and its functions:

  • Lateral Nucleus

Receives signals from Thalamus, auditory and visual cortexes.

  • Corticomedial Nucleus

Receives information of smell via olfactory bulb. The received information goes to the Hypothalamus.

  • Central Nucleus

Messages of taste and signals from the internal organs go to the central area of the Amygdala. The information received both by the central and the medial nucleus goes to the Hypothalamus. This leads to secretion of Corticotropin Releasing hormone (CRH) which puts the body in flight or fight mode through a series of other hormones released by various glands.

Further, through Central Nucleus, signals are sent to the ANS through Medulla. This further stimulates the cardiovascular system, muscles and the gut.

  • Basal Nucleus

Information from the basal nucleus goes to Corpus Striatum that is responsible for bringing movement in the body.

From the basolateral area, the information goes to Cingulate Cortex and the central gray fibers of the brain. In humans, these signals are responsible for high-pitched voice when encountered with a threat.

In addition to this, Amygdala sends signals to an area in the Brainstem called Locus Coeruleus. This part is responsible for producing and distributing a Hormone called Nor-Adrenaline (Norepinephrine). This hormone is responsible for further stimulating the areas of the brain that receive this hormone, thus making them even more sensitive.

In other words, Norepinephrine spreads throughout cortex, brainstem and the limbic system which leads to the hijacking of brain. As a result, even an ordinary situation like a presentation seems extraordinary to the brain sending the sensations of fear through the human body.

Conclusion

Thus, it is the Amygdala that is the source of all emotions in humans. Fear, anger, anxiety, happiness, love, etc all originate from Amygdala which if extremely intense lead to emotional hijacking. As a result, emotion overpowers rational brain making human react in an unpleasant which they later regret.

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AMYGDALA HIJACK

Amygdala Hijack: When Emotion Overpowers Reason

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It’s been 12 years since Zinedine Zidane’s moment of headbutt took the world of football by surprise. In Berlin on July 9, 2006, France played the final World Cup match against Italy. And Zidane had to play his last match as a football player. In the extra time, France and Italy had locked in 1:1.

However, during the second half of extra time, Zidane headbutted Italian soccer player Marco Materazzi in the chest. As a result, Zidane was shown a red card and Italy won 5:3 on penalties for their first World Cup since 1982.

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As per sources, Materazzi had said something insulting to Zidane that provoked him to give a headbutt to Materazzi in the chest. This was the most iconic dismissal of a player in the soccer world game history.

Such an instance compels us to introspect as to why Zidane responded aggressively at such a crucial point in the game. What was Zidane thinking when he acted in such a way – an act that led France to lose the World cup.

He Was Thinking nothing!

Technically, Zidane was “not thinking at all” during that emotional rush that compelled Zidane to strike back. His brain was overpowered by emotions, not knowing what was happening.

Such an emotional hijacking of the brain is a neural takeover that stems in a part of the centre brain known as ‘Amygdala’. Instances like that of Zidane occur in our daily lives and we often react in a similar fashion not realizing what the consequences of such a reaction would be.

Typically, we regret later for such impassioned reactions, once we come out of that emotional state.

The question is why do we behave in such an irrational way? Why our impulsive feelings overpower our rational brain and recruit it to deal with such an emotional emergency?

This article answers this question as it talks about how amygdala hijack leads to emotional explosions and how one can diffuse such emotions in order to make wiser decisions.

Amygdala and Hippocampus

Amygdala is a small part in the limbic system of our brain that houses the entire emotional activity. It is an almond shaped cluster of nuclei located just above the brainstem near the bottom of the limbic ring.

Further, each side of the brain has an amygdala that is located towards the side of the head.

Hippocampus is a complex structure that is embedded deep inside the temporal lobe

Thus, Amygdala and Hippocampus are the two parts of the limbic system that perform a key role in motivated behavior and emotion. All the learning and remembering takes place in these limbic structures.

The amygdala is the storehouse of emotional memories. Whereas the hippocampus gives context to emotions. In other words, Hippocampus stores just the facts of the events and occurences while the Amygdala stores the emotional essence of those events.

Role of Amygdala

As mentioned in Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, Joseph LeDoux, a Neurologist at the Center for Neural Science at New York City, was the first to discover the significant role of Amygdala in the emotional brain. His research findings lay emphasis on the fact that how Amygdala takes control over the entire brain activity during an emotional emergency. It signifies that Amygdala starts responding even before the thinking brain begins to respond.

The thinking brain takes much time in responding as it analyzes information and give a much more sophisticated response relative to the one given by the Amygdala.

Furthermore, research studies have brought to the forefront evidences that a person is unable to understand the emotional importance of given events where amygdala is severed from the rest of the brain. Patients with such seizures were found to completely (i) lose interest in people; (ii) were unable to recognize family, friends and relatives; and (iii) were expressionless.

Therefore, to understand amygdala hijack, neuroscientists came up with a detailed study regarding the neural dynamics of emotion by studying fear.

Amygdala and Fear

Fear is one of the prominent emotions that is significant for human survival. In primitive times, fear acted as a wise guide for our ancestors as it saved them from predators or interlopers. Fear prepared their body to fight or escape when they had such dangerous encounters.

However, in modern times, where civilization presented a new set of challenges and realities, such primitive emotional outbursts left us suffering from misguided fears like anxiety, worries, panic attacks etc. This is because in modern times, we do not face such threats to our survival like being attacked by wild animals or interlopers.

But, we continue to face modern day challenges with such automatic impulses. This is because these automatic reactions have got imprinted in our nervous system as a result of its prolonged use in the human prehistory.

These instant reactions made the difference between death and survival in primitive times. These emotional impulses were fit for coping with primitive dangers but are not appropriate for facing the modern day world.

So, such fight or flight reactions to modern day challenges triggers the Amygdala. Such a stimulation of the Amygdala instantly leads to hijacking of the brain, releasing hormones that increase reactivity in the other parts of the brain as well.

That is, such an emotional emergency drives even the rational brain, not even giving it a chance to understand the situation at hand.

So let’s understand how such a Amygdala hijack takes place inside the brain.

How Does it Happen?

Suppose you get disturbed by a crashing sound coming from the adjoining room in the middle of the night. That is the time when fear starts sinking in. So what happens inside the brain that makes you experience fear in situations like these?

It is the amygdala as well as the neural pathway of fear that activates your cardiovascular system, muscles, increases your heart beat, makes you sweat, brings that fearful expression on your face and makes you more alert.

So, the moment you hear the crashing sound, these raw sound waves pass first through the ear to the brainstem and finally reach the thalamus. From the thalamus the signals are separated into two branches.

Majority of these signals take the longer route and go to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe where these sounds are assessed and analysed.

However, a small set of these neural signals take the shorter path and get straightaway passed on to the amygdala and the nearby hippocampus. This results in a quicker but less precise response.

Role of Hippocampus

As mentioned earlier, the function of the hippocampus is to register the memories of various inputs and to give context to such memories. It is the hippocampus that recognizes the differences between one sensory input from the other.

For instance, in the above example it is the hippocampus that helps us understand whether the sound is a collision or just an ordinary sound.

Role of Auditory Cortex

Likewise, the auditory cortex is responsible for complex analysis of the sensory input. For instance, in the above example, auditory cortex helps us decide if the sound is that of a dog, cat, an object falling from a height, shuttering of window etc.

Working of Amygdala, Hippocampus and Auditory Cortex

Thus, the hippocampus which is key storehouse of memory starts comparing these sounds with memories of sounds already registered with it. On the other hand, the auditory cortex works parallel to the hippocampus and undertakes a higher level analysis of such a sound.

After the auditory cortex assesses the sound, these signals are sent back to the amygdala and hippocampus that start comparing these sounds with similar memories already registered.

If both the amygdala and hippocampus conclude that the sound is an ordinary one, a general alert is passed on to the entire brain regarding the given situation. However, if such a sound is not a familiar one, the circuit between amygdala, hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex gets activated.

Such a stimulation of this circuit leads to increased certainty about the given situation. This increases your attention thereby making you more anxious to determine the source of the sound.

What Happens When Amygdala and Hippocampus Fail To Identify The Sensory Input?

If still such limbic structures are unable to identify the source of the sound, the amygdala gets triggered and it activates other areas of the brain like hypothalamus, brainstem and autonomic nervous system.

As a result, the hypothalamus releases fight or flight hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline. Further, body gets prepared for movement and leads to increasing heartbeat, blood pressure, sweating, etc.

This means that the shorter pathway that gives direct inputs to the amygdala from the senses starts responding even before such inputs are fully registered by the executive brain or neocortex.

So this makes us conclude that the amygdala can give a faster emotional response through this emergency route even as a parallel circuit works between amygdala and the neocortex.

In other words, amygdala triggers us to give an automatic reaction. While the much slower neocortex gives its more sophisticated response after fully analysing the given input.

Symptoms of Amygdala Hijack

The symptoms of amygdala hijack are due to the release of fight or flight hormone known as Corticotropin Releasing Hormone (CRH) from the hypothalamus.

This hormone leads to the fight or flight reaction in the human body with the help of a number of other hormones released during the emotional hijack. This release of hormones leads to symptoms like:

  • Increasing heart rate
  • Increased blood pressure
  • Dilating pupils
  • Mobilizing muscle movements
  • Fixating facial expressions
  • Freezing unrelated movements
  • Slows down breathing
  • Increased Sweat
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WHAT ARE EMOTIONS

What are Emotions & Traits of Emotional Mind?

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It’s important to look back on one of the most horrible episodes in world history to understand what are emotions and how emotional imbalance can have serious implications for humanity at large.

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The Holocaust

The period between 1941 – 1945 was the one when Nazis hosted Concentration Camps, Death Camps or Medicalized Killing of 6 million Jews. This mass killing was justified on the premise that people who were racially inferior, that is the European Jews, and physically impaired deserve to be killed.

Hitler was consumed by the idea of supremacy of pure German race. He held that “the life unworthy of life” must die for the pure German race to live and grow. This led to the horrible episode that is famously referred to as “The Holocaust”.

Under this, people who were considered as least useful, that is, those physically impaired, sick or the ones belonging to the Jewish bloodline were shifted to Death Camps. In these Camps, such people were denied of food and were used for conducting medical experiments.

In addition to this, the Jews in such Camps were, however, put into carbon monoxide gas chambers and were confined to death. Now, what was Hitler’s Psyche behind such a perilous act is something that Psychologists have been studying.

Hitler’s Psyche

According to a famous study by Henry A. Murray, Hitler’s Personality is a “Counteractive Type”. People with such a Personality Type make intense and stubborn efforts to:

  • Get rid of impaired self esteem during the early stages of their life. These include insults, incapacities, personal deficiencies etc.
  • Take revenge in order to overcome damaged self-esteem. Thus, revenge is undertaken by forming an ideal ego. This includes denying the weaknesses of one’s personality and putting in efforts to become someone who is entirely contrary to the one he was. This is known as ideal ego that involves a superior image about oneself that helps in achieving things that were earlier impossible to do. This way, the person is able to heal the injuries caused to one’s pride and earn the respect and fame.

Now, what made Hitler a “Counteractive Personality Type”?

Suppressed Emotions Caused Holocaust

It was his childhood experience. According to the studies, the origin of all the insults was Hitler’s father. It was believed that Hitler’s father was a rude man who used to beat Hitler to which he was not able to react.

This was because as a child, Hitler himself had weaknesses like timidity and submissiveness that resulted in his feelings getting suppressed. Thus, such a suppression made him admire strength and power, condemn weakness as well as people from other bloodlines such as the Jews and slaves.

As we can see clearly, Hitler’s childhood experiences with his father resulted in feelings of anger, revenge and aggression. These feelings eventually took the shape of mass murders and killings and his desire to rule the world.

In this article, you will learn, what exactly are emotions and what are the characteristics of our emotional mind.

What Are Emotions?

Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence defines emotion as

“a feeling and its distinctive thoughts, psychological and biological states and range of propensities to act”.

The word emotion comes from the latin verb motere which means to move. And the prefix ‘e’ means move away. Thus, to put it in simple words, emotions have implied tendencies for actions. In other words, each emotion results in action.

Further, there are a number of emotions that we experience as living beings. Each emotion plays a distinctive role in compelling us to act in a variety of ways. Thus, it makes us undergo psychological and biological changes.

Furthermore, a lot has been discussed about the key set of emotions that we experience as living beings. However, psychologists have not been able to define precisely the emotions that act as fundamental emotions in living beings.

The suggestions made in respect of the fundamental emotions are as follows.

Primary Emotions

1. Anger

Anger is an emotion that is experienced when one feels hurt, injured, mistreated, misused. It includes outrage, wrath, hostility and in its extreme form leads to hatred and violence.

Furthermore, the physiological symptoms of anger include increased heart rate, stimulating adrenaline rush and blood flowing to hands. This gives energy to the person to hit an enemy.

2. Sadness

Sadness as an emotion is marked by feelings such as despair, gloom, grief, sorrow, loss, etc. Person feeling sad experiences lethargy, loss of energy, and excitement to undertake pleasurable activities.

Further, continuous sadness leads to depression. This leads to low metabolism that allows the suffering person to mourn over the loss and understand its implications for oneself. Once the energy gets restored, the person is able to plan for future life.

3. Fear

Fear is an emotion that is felt as a result of something that is understood to be dangerous by a living being. This results in typical reactions like escaping, hiding, perspiring, or freezing from the upcoming threat.

It is further pronounced by anxiety, concern, dread, terror, and eventually results in panic or phobia.

When one experiences fear, blood runs into the legs of the individual thus enabling him to run. Further, the face goes pale as the blood moves away from it.

Also, the body of the individual freezes giving him time to think of the reaction to be given in response to the upcoming danger. Therefore, fear activates a host of hormones making the individual to take action and focus on the threat in question.

4. Enjoyment

Enjoyment is an emotion that makes the individual like what he is doing. It is a feeling of joy, bliss, amusement, happiness and in its extreme form results in mania.

As a result, the person feeling happy gets energized and is willingly able to take up activities at hand or make an effort towards various goals set by him.

5. Love

Love is one of the intense emotions that is marked by acceptance, kindness, trust, and affection. This feeling and the resulting sexual satisfaction stimulates a set of hormones that put the body in a state of contentment.

6. Surprise

It is an emotion that leaves a person shocked, astonished, and amazed as a result of the happening of an unexpected or a sudden event.

The physiological impact of such an emotion typically includes the lifting of the eyebrows. This allows for more input to be captured by the eyes leading to a greater understanding of the sudden event and coming up with the best response for the same.

7. Disgust

This is a feeling of contempt or revulsion that is caused by something offensive or uneasy. It becomes evident via the facial expression of the person feeling disgusted upon smelling something bad or tasting something unpleasant in taste.

8. Shame

It is an emotion when one feels humiliated or regrets a particular situation or an action. This emotion is marked by the feeling of guilt, remorse, regret, etc.

Given these primary emotions, let’s now have a look at the characteristics of our emotional mind.

Characteristics of Emotional Mind

Emotions have certain qualities that make them different from other aspects of the human mind. Our mental life is characterized by two minds: one that thinks and the other that feels.

The thinking mind also called as the rational mind that helps us to think, understand and reason. On the other hand, the emotional mind is impulsive, powerful and at times illogical.

The internationally renowned psychologist Daniel Goleman in his New York Times best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, listed the following characteristics of the emotional mind.

1. Emotional Mind Responds Quickly But Carelessly

The emotional Mind is very quick in responding to various events as compared to the thinking mind. It does not believe in taking the time to understand what is going on at present.

Unlike the Thinking Mind, the agility of the emotional mind prevents a person to think, reflect or understand the given situation and thus compels the person to action.

Now, in primitive times, such an emotional response to the upcoming danger served as a defense for mankind.

It saved the living beings from dangers such as confronting an animal, as the emotional mind enabled them to take the decision of running or hiding within no time.

So, there is hardly any time between the event that stimulates the emotional mind and the reaction that results from it.

Therefore, the emotional mind doesn’t go into analysis or complications of thought. It looks at events in a very simplified way and thus directs actions with conviction. This is exactly the reason why many times we regret our emotional reactions when we sit back and think later.

So, the benefit of such a quick response is that it makes us aware of the upcoming danger. Further, it also helps us to understand quickly the emotional state of the other person, that is if the person is sad, angry, or happy, etc.

But, the disadvantage of such an evolutionary emotional repertoire is that it makes people form judgments or impressions in split seconds. Since it doesn’t allow the Thinking Mind to come into the picture, these first impressions, which can be misleading, become the basis for making decisions.

Thus, the agility of the Emotional Mind compromises accuracy or precision.

2. Heart Comes Before the Head

The Rational Mind takes time to assimilate, understand, and respond to the events as compared to the Emotional Mind. Thus, the Emotional Mind takes lead in emotional situations.

Further, the reactions of the Emotional Mind are quick and involuntary in nature, that is, they are beyond one’s control. Take for instance emotions like love, anger, or fear. These simply happen to us without our wanting them to happen.

People experiencing such emotions usually fail to give an explanation of their reaction to a particular event. They don’t know what actually encouraged them to behave in a particular way.

The other way of reacting to events is slower relative to the quick response. Thinking follows feeling in such emotional reactions as the individual is aware of the thoughts that triggered emotions.

Thus, complex emotions like feeling humiliated or anxious about the upcoming presentation are examples of emotional reactions where feeling follows thought.

Given this, one can say that it is impossible to know what emotions get triggered by a specific event. For instance, one cannot know in advance whether a given situation will make a person happy, sad, insane, etc.

However, it is certainly possible for one to have control over his thoughts. For instance, thinking about happy times makes you feel happy.

3. Emotional Mind is Associative & Childlike

When it comes to the emotional mind, there are no rules and there is no cause and effect. Everything is possible when it comes to the Emotional Mind.

Sigmund Freud describes beautifully how Emotional Mind functions. It follows the concept of “Primary Process” thought. Accordingly, Primary Process involves forming an image of the desired object in order to satisfy the urge for that object.

For instance, a travel buff sitting in an office might think of a beautiful island to seek pleasure and satisfy his urge of leaving everything to travel.

Similarly, people have sexual fantasies to derive pleasure and seek instant gratification to pacify their sexual desire.

Thus, in order to seek instant gratification, people form their own images or have hallucinations or dreams about a particular object they desire. The Emotional Mind builds associations and takes those associations the same as reality.

What About the Rational Mind?

The Rational Mind works on logic and builds reasonable connections between cause and effect. Whereas, the Emotional Mind connects events without careful judgment.

Similarly, the way the Emotional Mind builds connections, it is also childlike in nature. As mentioned above, Emotional Mind carries action with certainty. For instance, thoughts like “I’m always right” or “She’s always angry” or “I can never understand”, all are the actions of an Emotional Mind and show its underlying conviction.

Further, the Emotional Mind practices “Confirmation Bias”. As per this bias, the mind tends to understand or remember facts that favor one’s beliefs or thoughts and suppresses and ignores memories or facts that go against one’s beliefs.

Also, the opinions of the Rational Mind are temporary in nature. These change as new evidence comes up to accept or reject a particular situation.

Whereas, the belief of the Emotional Mind is permanent and certain. Hence, it tends to ignore the facts that could help in explaining the reasons for the occurrence of an event.

Thus, people facing emotional imbalance are difficult to deal with. It gets challenging to reason with them as no logic or reason works no matter how much sound it is. This is because they are in the grip of the emotions that compels them to ignore all reason.

4. Past Comes To Explain The Present

We often find ourselves reacting to an event or a person or a situation keeping in mind our prior experiences. That’s how our Emotional Mind functions.

The Emotional Mind responds to a given situation, person, or event, bringing in the past associated with it. This backfires in many situations because what was a reality in the past might not be so in the present.

For instance, a child who has experienced suppression of feelings on voicing his opinion during childhood learns to act submissively the moment he faces a situation when an adult. That is he behaves submissively even if the environment allows him to voice his opinion.

Thus, our Emotional Mind compels the rational mind to come up with justifications for the present situation without grasping the impact of emotional memory.

5. Emotional Mind Is Controlled By The Feeling of The Moment

The Emotional Mind works to a greater extent by the feeling of the moment. For instance, if one is feeling sad, he will think and react in a different way as compared to the time when one is feeling happy.

Therefore, every emotion has its own action, thought process, and memory. The moment an emotion gets triggered, the Emotional Mind looks for choices available for action. The most relevant options are then kept at the top of the order so that these can easily be implemented the moment emotion gets triggered.

Each emotion has its own impact on the psychological and biological state of the individual, thus making him act, behave, and go through the bodily changes accordingly.

Conclusion

Actions coming out of the Emotional Mind are automatic. Such an emotional repertoire became the cause of survival for primordial beings. However, with the civilization growing, living beings find it difficult to face the challenges of the current world with such an evolutionary emotional legacy.

The speed with which the Emotional Mind reacts compromises the accuracy, making living beings react in an impulsive way rather than responding rationally.

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ENDOCRINE SYSTEM

Endocrine System: Major Glands & Their Hormones

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Imagine you have a presentation to give in the next one hour. You find your heart pounding, hands sweating and your body trembling out of fear. So you either find yourself resisting the situation. Or you get the energy to simply fight back and deliver a great presentation. Have you ever wondered what processes are at play for such responses?

Well, such responses are a result of a number of organs releasing chemical messengers called hormones directly into your bloodstream, each performing a specific function. These hormones are responsible for regulating various metabolic activities as well as fight or flight responses.

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Now, such responses are necessary to protect you against danger and stressful situations such as trauma, work pressure, surgery etc.

However, exposure to such stress hormones for long periods of time can cause hormonal imbalance, leading to serious disorders.

Thus, glands and their hormones together form part of the endocrine system. This system plays a pivotal role during conditions that demand extensive as well as long lasting regulatory action. Thus, the Endocrine System harmonizes with Nervous System for the body to function properly.

The impulses originating from the nervous system can impact the release of hormones from the endocrine glands in the human body. These hormones in turn play a key role in regulating the growth, development and metabolism of the body.

Therefore, to understand the mechanism of glands and their hormones, we need to know what is endocrine system, various endocrine glands and the hormones released by such glands.

What is Endocrine System?

It is a regulatory system of glands that secrete hormones within specific organs. These hormones are chemical messengers that are released directly into the bloodstream by endocrine glands. Further, the chemical messages are carried by the hormones to different cells in the body that interpret such messages and act accordingly.

Now, the term ‘endocrine’ means the hormones produced by glands are released into the bloodstream in return of the impulses received. The term ‘exocrine’, on the other hand, means the release of secretions via specific glands outside the body. For instance sweat, saliva etc

Let’s now have a look at the different types of endocrine glands and the hormones released by each of them.

Endocrine Glands and Hormones

1. Hypothalamus

Hypothalamus is a tiny structure located within the brain that regulates Autonomic Nervous System. Thus, it influences bodily functions including:

  • eating and drinking
  • blood pressure and heart rate
  • sexual functions and behaviour
  • body temperature
  • sleep wake cycle and
  • emotional conditions like fear, anger, pleasure, pain etc.

Since this small structure is a part of the Central Nervous System, the Hypothalamic hormones that it releases are produced by neurons. Furthermore, the amount of hypothalamic hormones released is regulated by the signals received from the other neurons. Therefore we can say that hypothalamus acts as a major link between the nervous and endocrine systems.

This can be explained with the help of an example.

Example

Whenever we as humans are exposed to signals from external environment, various parts of the brain receive such information and send it to hypothalamus. Therefore, the functions performed by hypothalamus gets impacted both by external and internal environment as well as the hormonal activity of other glands.

So, the impulses from the external environment that influence the function of the hypothalamus include temperature, intensity of light, the behavior of other individuals and various other visual, olfactory, auditory and sensory impulses.

On the other hand, the information about the internal environment of the human body gets transmitted from other areas of the brain to the hypothalamus through neurotransmitters.

Thus, the activity of the neurotransmitters controls the release of hormones from the hypothalamus.

Hypothalamic Hormones

Remember, hypothalamic hormones are generally releasing or inhibiting in nature. This is because they typically promote or inhibit the secretion of hormones from the pituitary gland.

Following are the major releasing and inhibiting hypothalamic hormones:

  • Corticotropin Releasing Hormone (CRH)
  • Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GnRH)
  • Thyrotropin Releasing Hormone (TRH)
  • Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (GHRH)
  • Somatostatic
  • Dopamine

2. Pituitary Gland

Pituitary gland is a small marble sized gland located in the brain right below the hypothalamus. This gland consists of two parts:

(i) Anterior Pituitary Gland

The anterior pituitary gland releases hormones that affect either of the following two:

  • target glands like adrenal glands, gonads or thyroid gland to target gland hormones and
  • target organs

Further, the hormones released by the anterior pituitary gland include:

(a) Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH)

ACTH acts on the adrenal cortex (outer layer of the adrenal gland) to release cortisol and small amount of male and female sex hormones.

(b) Gonadotropins like Luteinizing Hormone and Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH)

Gonadotropins comprise of two molecules that include Luteinizing Hormone(LH) and Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH). These two hormones control the release of male and female sex hormones in ovaries and testes respectively. Further, these two hormones also regulate the production of egg cells and sperm cells.

(d) Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH)

TSH stimulates the thyroid gland which in turn releases thyroid hormone.

(e) Growth Hormone (GH)

The Growth Hormone (GH) is produced in ample quantity in the human body. This hormone plays a great role in regulating growth and development of a human body. For instance, it stimulates the growth of internal organs, muscles, fat tissues, endocrine glands, development of reproductive organs etc.

Thus, the quantity of GH is the highest during childhood and puberty. Whereas, GH levels decline as an individual matures. However, small amount of GH levels are important for the functioning of the human body even during later life.

In addition to this, the GH also regulates carbohydrates, protein and fat metabolism.

(f) Prolactin

Prolactin is a hormone that promotes milk production in females after childbirth as a result of suckling by the young one. In addition to this, the prolactin hormone also plays a central role in other areas like reproductive, metabolic, regulation of immune system and behavioural functions.

The release of prolactin is regulated by a hormone called dopamine produced by the hypothalamus. Thus, dopamine reduces the release of prolactin. This means more the level of dopamine, lesser the production of prolactin.

Furthermore, prolactin itself promotes the release of dopamine thus creating a negative feedback loop. Accordingly, increased prolactin passes impulses to hypothalamus, which further releases dopamine. This release of dopamine results in reduction of prolactin release.

Oestrogen is another hormone that regulates the production of Prolactin. This hormone increases the secretion of prolactin from the pituitary gland. Thus, during pregnancy, increased amount of prolactin is released as a result of increased levels of oestrogen in the blood of pregnant women.

Also during menstruation cycle in women,the level of prolactin in blood increases as oestrogen level is the highest during this period.

(ii) Posterior Pituitary Gland

Posterior pituitary gland is a large collection of axonal projections of neurons located in the hypothalamus. This gland does not produce hormones of its own. Rather, it stores and releases two hormones vasopressin and oxytocin that are produced in the hypothalamus.

(a) Vasopressin

Vasopressin is also known as Arginine Vasopressin (AVP). This hormone helps in maintaining water and electrolyte levels in the body. Therefore, the release of AVP hormone helps in conserving water in the body by reabsorbing it from urine in kidneys. Also, the level of sodium in blood as well as blood volume and blood pressure control AVP release from the pituitary gland. This means AVP release is reduced as a result of high blood pressure or increased blood volume.This leads to more release of water in the form of urine leading to lower blood volume and blood pressure.

(b) Oxytocin

Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced in the hypothalamus but gets stored in the pituitary gland. One of the major functions of oxytocin is that it promotes contraction of the uterus during childbirth. Thus, the release of oxytocin hormone triggers the uterine muscles to contract to help in childbirth.

In addition to this, oxytocin also promotes lactation. Therefore, this hormone gets released as the baby sucks the nipples which enables the movement of milk , thus letting it come out. This hormone is regulated by the release of oxytocin itself.

For instance, when the uterus starts contracting, oxytocin hormone is released. The release of this hormone further stimulates uterus contraction. As the uterus contracts more and more, more and more of oxytocin is released. However, the release of this hormone stops once the baby is delivered or the baby stops feeding.

3. Adrenal Glands

Adrenal glands are small structures that are located right on top of each of the kidneys. These glands consist of an outer layer known as the ‘Adrenal Cortex’ and an inner layer called and the ‘Medulla’. So, the adrenal cortex releases a number of hormones that are typically referred toas the ‘corticosteroids’.

These ‘corticosteroids’ predominantly include glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids. Furthermore, it also releases a small amount of sex hormones known as adrenal androgens. But, sex hormones released are very small in number as compared to ones produced by sex organs like testes and the ovaries.

On the other hand the inner adrenal medulla releases two substances, that is, adrenaline and non – adrenaline. These hormones are responsible for fight or flight response during stress.

(i) Glucocorticoids

Now, the predominant glucocorticoid in human body is cortisol. This hormone is responsible for regulating carbohydrate, protein and lipid metabolism. For instance, cortisol increases the amount of glucose level in the blood by triggering a process called gluconeogenesis in the liver.

As the name suggests, gluconeogenesis means release of new glucose molecules in the blood when the body is in a fasting (non – eating) state. Furthermore, cortisol also promotes the formation of a molecule called glycogen in the liver. It is a molecule that stores glucose to help maintain glucose level in the blood when the body is in a fasting state.

Apart from regulating the metabolic activities, cortisol protects the body from dangerous effects of stress factors like injury, emotional stress, surgery, etc .

(ii) Mineralocorticoids

The predominant mineralocorticoid in humans is aldosterone. This hormone plays a key role in regulating the level of salt and water in the human body.

The main function of this hormone is to conserve sodium and water levels in the blood and excrete potassium through urine from the body. Thus, aldosterone encourages reabsorption of sodium in the kidney along with water, thus leading to less water excretion and increased blood volume.

4. Gonads

The gonads include ovaries and testes. These glands perform two important functions. Firstly, ovaries releases ova and testes release spermatozoa . Secondly, the gonads harmonize steroid sex hormones. These hormones are important for the development and functioning of male and female reproductive organs as well as sex characteristics like facial hair in men, lactation, child birth and preparation of pregnancy in women. Furthermore, there are three types of sex hormones including:

(a) Estrogens

Estradiol is a major estrogen that is produced in ovaries in addition to estrone and estriol. Besides ovaries, estrogens are produced in corpus luteum, placenta and the adrenal glands. Here, corpus luteum refers to a collection of cells that is obtained from the follicle which produces ovum during a particular menstrual cycle.

In the case of men and post menopausal women, estrogens are obtained when adrenal, ovarian and testicular androgens undergo conversion.

Thus, the primary function of the estrogen is to regulate the development and functioning of the female genitalia and breasts.

Then, during puberty these estrogens help in:

  • the growth of uterus, breasts and vagina
  • fat accumulation and distribution in the body, thus giving shape to the female body
  • halting the height of an adult, regulating the development of secondary sexual characteristics

Lastly, in the adult women estrogens:

  • regulate the menstrual cycle
  • help in regulating hormones during pregnancy and lactation and
  • maintaining the female libido

(b) Progestogens

These are the hormones released by the ovaries during a certain stage of the menstrual cycle. Furthermore, these hormones are also released in the placenta during most of the pregnancy. Furthermore, progestogens encourage the development of the mammary glands in the female breasts in order to prepare them for lactation. Alos, these hormones bring about the changes in the uterine lining to prepare women for pregnancy. The main progestogen is progesterone. It is a hormone that is secreted by the corpus luteum in the ovaries during the menstrual cycle.

(c) Androgens

The primary androgenic steroid is testosterone. These hormones are released mainly by the testes. However, small amounts of testosterone is also released from the adrenal glands in both men and women and from the ovaries.

The major function of this hormone is growth and development of male genitalia. In addition to this, the testosterone also helps in protein that leads to increased muscle mass in the body.

Now, the specific functions of testosterone depend upon the various stages in human life.

  • This hormone promotes the development of internal and external male genitalia in case case of a fetus.
  • Then, during puberty testosterone helps in the growth of the male sex prgans and secondary male characteristics like surge in pubertal growth and terminating growth and adult height, growth of facial, pubic and body hair,deepening of voice etc.
  • Finally, in adult males, testosterone helps in maintaining masculinity, libido, sexual potency and production of sperms.

5. Thyroid Gland

The thyroid gland consists of two lobes. One is located right in front of the windpipe, known as trachea. The other one is located below the voice box, known as the larynx.

Now, the thyroid gland releases two hormones, namely thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). Together these hormones are known as thyroid hormones. Furthermore, 90% of the thyroid hormone released in the thyroid gland constitutes T4.

Whereas, T3 is an active hormone that is produced as a result of T4 getting converted into T3 in the liver and kidneys. So, the major function of the thyroid hormone is to increase the metabolism.

For instance the thyroid hormone activates the production of specific proteins in the body that help in generating heat. This is an essential function as the release of such proteins help in maintaining body temperature during cold climates. In addition to this, thyroid hormone also promotes other metabolic activities that involve carbohydrates, proteins and lipids. These are essential for generating energy or proper functioning of the human body. Also, thyroid hormone performs the following functions:

  • normal bone growth and maturation
  • normal development of teeth, skin and hair follicles
  • proper functioning of nervous, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems

6. Parathyroid Glands

 

These are four small sized glands located right behind the thyroid gland. THese glands produce parathyroid hormone (PTH). The major role of these hormones is to increase the level of calcium in the blood, thereby helping to maintain the quality of bones and sufficient supply of calcium in the body.

In particular, PTH lead to reabsorbing calcium from urine and release of phosphate in urine. Also, PTH encourages the release of calcium from bones as well as bone resorption. Both these lead to increase in the level of calcium in the blood. Finally, PTH also encourages the absorption of calcium from food.

So, as far as the regulation of PTH is concerned, the release of these hormones is not controlled by the pituitary hormones. Rather, it the calcium level in the body that regulates PTH. Therefore, low level of calcium leads to stimulating the PTH release. Whereas high PTH level inhibit the same.

7. Pancreas

Pancreas is a gland that is situated in the abdomen right behind the stomach. This gland performs two primary functions. Firstly, the pancreatic cells produce various digestive enzymes that are released in the gut. These enzymes help in digesting the food effectively. Thus, here the pancreas act as the exocrine gland.

The second function that the pancreas performs includes the releasing of two hormones – insulin and glucagon. These hormones are released into the blood and play an important role in regulating glucose levels in the blood. Thus, here the pancreas act as an endocrine gland.

(a) Insulin

Insulin is the only hormone that lowers the level of glucose in the blood. However, it promotes the formation of molecules (like glycogens, proteins and lipids) that store energy and reduces the break down of those stored nutrients.

Thus, insulin targets those organs that perform the function of storing energy. These organs include liver, muscles and adipose tissue. Following are the metabolic effects caused by insulin:

  • Insulin promotes glucose uptake into cells and converts it into glycogen;
  • Helps in breaking down glucose and inhibits gluconeogenesis
  • Also, it promotes the transmission of amino acids into cells, synthesizes protein in muscle cells. Thus, reducing the amount of amino acids available for gluconeogenesis in liver.
  • Furthermore, insulin increases the activity of synthesizing fat in liver and adipose tissue. Thus reducing glycerol and inhibiting gluconeogenesis

Hence, there are various factors that help in regulating the secretion of insulin. These include blood glucose levels, glucagon and hormones like GH, glucocorticoids and thyroid hormones.

(b) Glucagon

Glucagon is a pancreatic hormone that increases the level of glucose in blood. For instance, glucagon stimulates the breakdown of glycogen and gluconeogenesis in liver as well as lipid and protein breakdown.

Furthermore, the secretion of glucagon is regulated by the same factors which are responsible for controlling insulin release. However, the effect of such factors in regulating glucagon is opposite to that of insulin.

Therefore, an increase in the level of blood glucose increases insulin release but inhibits the secretion of glucagon. This means that there should be a balance between the activities of insulin and glucagon as it helps in maintaining blood glucose levels.

Any interruption in such a balance may lead to disorders like diabetes.

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WHAT ARE HORMONES

What Are Hormones And How Do They Function?

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In this article, we will try to understand what are hormones, mechanism of hormones, different endocrine systems and the various hormones released by our Endocrine System.

  1. What are Hormones?
  2. Types of Hormones
  3. How do Hormones Function?
  4. Regulation of Hormonal Activity

In this article, we will try to understand what are hormones, the mechanism of hormones, different endocrine systems, and the various hormones released by our Endocrine System.

The human body has the ability to regulate its internal state that persists despite the changes in the external environment. This process of keeping the internal environment of the human body at an appropriate level is called Homeostasis. Now, to maintain this constant internal environment, various parts and organs of the human body must function as well as communicate with each other properly.

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For instance, the internal body temperature and the level of various minerals and salts must be maintained at a predetermined level and should not alter. Furthermore, various parts and organs of the human body must communicate with each other properly. This is to ensure that the human body can respond to the changes in the internal as well as external environment in a suitable manner.

Thus in order to set out such communication between the parts and organs, both the Nervous System and Endocrine system play a key role.

The Nervous System helps in rapid transmission of information between various parts of the body. Whereas, the Endocrine System produces different types of hormones from various glands and transmits them into the bloodstream. Such hormonal communication is appropriate for conditions that demand extensive as well as long lasting regulatory action.

Now, both the Nervous and Endocrine System harmonize with each other to allow the body to function properly. This means the impulses originating from the Nervous System can impact the release of hormones in the body or vice versa. And these play a major role in regulating the growth, development and metabolism of the body.

What are Hormones?

Hormones are the chemical messengers that are released directly into the bloodstream through endocrine glands. Further, these hormones are then transmitted to various organs and parts of the body to perform their respective functions. The endocrine glands include:

  • Hypothalamus
  • Pituitary Gland
  • Adrenal Gland
  • Gonads (Testes and Ovaries)
  • Thyroid Gland
  • Parathyroid Gland
  • Pancreas

Now, the term ‘endocrine’ means the hormones produced by glands are released into the bloodstream in return of the impulses received. The term ‘exocrine’, on the other hand, means the release of secretions via specific glands outside the body. For instance sweat, saliva etc.

These released by various glands are carried to different target cells via the bloodstream. Few of the hormones impact specific cells in the body. Whereas, other hormones impact different cell types across the body.

In return, these target cells that get impacted by such have receptors located either inside the cell or on the surface of the cell itself. Thus, the communication between hormone and its specific receptor leads to certain bio – chemical reactions in the target cell. Such reactions in turn lead to altering the target cell’s function.

Types of Hormones?

Hormones can be classified into four groups:

1. Amino Acid Derived Hormones

Hormones that are derived from Amino Acids, that is, these are modified amino acids.

2. Polypeptides and Proteins

These are chains of amino acids including less than or more than 100 amino acids respectively. Some of these protein are glycoproteins that include include glucose or other carbohydrate groups.

3. Steroids

These are lipids synthesized from cholesterol. Furthermore, these include four interlocking carbohydrate rings.

4. Eicosanoids

These are again lipids synthesized from fatty acid chains of phospholipids.

HormoneEndocrine GlandChemical ClassFunction
AdrenalineAdrenal GlandAmino Acid Derived Hormone
  • Helps in preparing the body for fight or flight response in case of stress.
  • Its key actions include:
    • increasing heart rate
    • blood pressure
    • enlarging pupils
    • leads to increase in strength and performance as well as increased awareness in stress
Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH)Anterior Pituitary GlandPeptide
  • Stimulates the release of:
    • cortisol from the adrenal cortex
    • Androstenedione
Corticotropin Releasing Hormone (CRH)HypothalamusPeptide
  • Major driver of stress hormone system
  • Releases ACTH from the pituitary gland; ACTH travels via bloodstream through adrenal gland to release stress hormone cortisol
  • Suppresses appetite, increases anxiety, improves memory and attention
AldosteroneAdrenal GlandSteroid
  • Regulates salt and water level in the body; stimulates kidneys to reabsorb water and salt and release it in bloodstream; releases potassium in urine
  • Restores blood volume as well as blood pressure

How do Hormones Function?

Hormones are of different classes. Some of these include Steroids, Amino Acid Derivatives and Polypeptides and Proteins. Each hormonal class has a different molecular structure – that is size and chemical properties. Due to the difference in the molecular structure, each class of hormones vary in the way they act. In other words, if or not these can enter the target cells and the manner in which they regulate such cells.

Example

(i) Steroids

For instance, steroids are released by gonads and part of the adrenal gland. The steroid molecules can enter their target cells and communicate with receptors in the cell itself. As a result, the substances released due to such an interaction hold on to the cell’s genetic material, thereby regulating the activity of such genes.

(ii) Amino Acid Derived Hormones

Then, there are Amino Acid Derived hormones that are released from the thyroid gland and other parts of the adrenal gland. These can enter the cell and interact with receptor proteins that are related to the specific regions of a cell’s DNA. Thus, such an interaction leads to the change in the activity of the genes that get impacted.

(iii) Polypeptides

Lastly, polypeptides and protein hormones are the hormones that include chains of amino acids of various lengths. Such are produced by the Hypothalamus, Pituitary and Pancreas. Unlike steroids and amino acid derived hormones, the polypeptide and protein hormones cannot enter the cells due to their own structure. Thus, these hormones communicate with the specific receptors on the surface of the target cells. Such an interaction produces bio – chemical changes either in the target cell’s membrane or inside the cell itself, thus leading to the change in the activity of the cell.

Regulation of Hormonal Activity

As mentioned above, the homeostasis inside the human body must be maintained in order to respond to the changes in the external environment in a suitable manner. For this to happen, the production and release of hormones inside the body must take place in a regulated way.

Thus, it is important to note that in order to achieve such a control, the functions of a human body are controlled by multiple hormones which in turn regulate each other.

Let us understand through an example how regulate activity inside the human body.

Example

  • Negative Feedback Mechanism

Hypothalamus is one of the endocrine glands that releases specific hormones that are carried to the pituitary gland via the bloodstream.

These hormones trigger the pituitary gland. Certain set of pituitary hormones are released that are transmitted via the bloodstream to the target glands like adrenal gland, gonads or thyroid.

Then, the pituitary hormones communicate with their respective target cells in these glands. As a result, specific type of hormones get released that in turn influence the organs they target.

This is to say that these hormones released by the target glands act back on the pituitary or the hypothalamus. In most of the cases, such an action leads to inhibiting further hormone release from both the pituitary and hypothalamus organs, thereby turning off the system. This is known as the Negative Feedback Mechanism.

  • Short-Cut Loop

However, in certain cases, hormones released by the pituitary gland act back directly on the hypothalamus, thus restraining the release of hypothalamic hormones.

Furthermore, the amount of hormones that are required to be released from the target glands in order to turn off the hypothalamic or pituitary hormone release keeps on changing. Such a change occurs at different stages of life or states of physiology.

For example, when sexual maturation occurs, the responsiveness of the hypothalamus and pituitary glands to the steroids released by the gonads reduces.

  • Positive Feedback Mechanism

Unlike the above case, the release of certain hormones is regulated by a mechanism in which the hormones released by target glands act back on the pituitary or hypothalamus, thus leading both these organs to release increased hormones. This increased release from the pituitary and hypothalamus further stimulates the release from the target gland.

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HUMAN BRAIN ANATOMY

Human Brain Anatomy: Structure & The Way It All Works?

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Human beings possess the privilege to indulge in higher mental processes like reasoning, memorizing, planning, problem solving etc. Further, they even possess the capacity to generate multiple responses to various external stimuli.

Needless to say, it is all possible because of the slimy, three pound, complex organ called the Brain packed in the skull of the human body. Being the most complex organ of the human body, brain holds the capacity to:

  • receive, process and store information;
  • exchange information between its different parts;
  • allow human beings to reason, plan, have emotional experiences, desires and
  • everything that they can do, think and feel
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Human Brain consists around 86 billion neurons that communicate with each other to transmit information to different parts of the brain. These neurons are interconnected in such a manner that they enable the brain to process information in a parallel function. That is, the brain is able to process information in a variety of ways all at the same time.

It might take infinite blog posts to understand the brain, its parts and their functions. However, a basic understanding of brain anatomy and its functions would help you know how human behavior is a result of the various complex processes occurring inside the brain.

This is further supported by the old saying “everything psychological has a biological base.” In this article, we will look at the human brain anatomy and the various functions performed by each of its parts.

Brain Anatomy

Brain along with the spinal cord form the Central Nervous System (CNS) in the human body. Thus, the Brain is the most complex organ and is the one that is responsible for everything that human beings think, feel and do. That is from memorizing, learning, reasoning, planning to creativity, motivation, imagination, emotional experiences etc.

Now, there are a number of structures that it shares with the other living forms on earth. However, there exist various structures that make it a superior being compared to all the other living forms.

So, let’s understand what is the structure of a human brain?

1. Brain Stem

Brain Stem is a part of the Brain that starts just above the Spinal Cord and goes up to the centre of this complex organ. It contains structures controlling the various processes of the human body that humans come to share with other life forms on earth. These are as follows:

a. Medulla

Medulla, also known as “Medulla Oblongata”, is a structure in the Brain Stem which is located below the Pons and above the Spinal Cord.

A number of sensory and motor signals pass through Medulla either by moving towards the higher brain or coming down to muscle and glands in other parts of the human body.

Medulla is basically responsible for regulating a number of Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) responses. These include key functions such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate, coughing, sneezing etc.

Furthermore, as part of the brain stem, Medulla helps in transmitting messages between parts of the brain and spinal cord. Thus, some pairs of Cranial Nerves carry these signals. These nerves originate from either the area between Medulla and Pons or from the Medulla itself.

b. Pons

Pons are a part of the Brain Stem that links the Cerebral Cortex with Medulla and is located just above the Medulla. One of the key roles of Pons is to control the breathing in the human body.

Apart from this, Pons also help in transmitting signals to and from various parts of the Brain. Both Pons and Medulla consist of a heavy network of neurons called the Reticular Activating System.

This enables the Brain to play an important part in sleep and arousal. It further helps in performing other functions including attention, circulatory reflexes, cardiac reflexes and muscle tone.

2. Cerebellum

 

Cerebellum is a structure in the human brain that is located just behind Medulla and Pons. Everything that a human is able to do like walk, run, jump, throw a ball etc. is regulated by Cerebellum.

In other words, its key function is associated with controlling motor activities to help them occur in a synchronized manner. Thus, any person having a damaged Cerebellum does not lead to complete Paralysis. However, a person having a damaged Cerebellum can experience jerky muscle functioning making it impossible for him to stand.

In addition to this, Cerebellum also plays an important role in some of the important processes like learning.

3. Midbrain

Midbrain is a structure that is located right above the Medulla and Pons, that is, close to the end of the Brain Stem. Further, the Reticular Activating System forming part of Medulla extends to the Midbrain.

In addition to this, Midbrain consists of some of the earliest centres that are related with vision and hearing. Thus, the main function of the Midbrain is to control visual and auditory processing as well as motor movements by receiving sensory input.

4. Hypothalamus

Hypothalamus might be a tiny structure which is less than one cubic centimetre in size but it influences human behavior to a great extent. The key function of the Hypothalamus is to control the Autonomic Nervous System.

Hence, it is responsible for reactions such as stimulating and inhibiting salivation, sweat, dilating and constricting pupils that prevent or produce tears respectively, regulating heart beat etc.

Further, it also helps in keeping the internal environment of the human body at the appropriate level, a process called Homeostasis.

Hypothalamus is also responsible for playing an important part in various types of motivated behaviors such as:

(i) Controlling Eating and Drinking

Damage to the Ventromedial part of Hypothalamus leads to overeating. Whereas damage to Lateral Hypothalamus leads to reduced appetite. Thus, Hypothalamus also plays an important function of communication between frontal cortex and brain parts that control thirst and hunger.

(ii) Mating and Aggression

It helps in controlling the release of hormones from the Pituitary Gland in the Endocrine System.

5. Thalamus

Thalamus is a structure that is located right above the Hypothalamus. It consists of two parts that resemble football with one located in each of the two hemispheres. Thus, Thalamus receives information from all the senses except for the smell.

It further processes this information and transfers the same to Cerebral Cortex and various other parts of the brain. In addition to this, Thalamus is also responsible for sleep, wakefulness and alertness.

6. Limbic System

There are various structures inside the Brain that when put together form the Limbic System. These structures that make the Limbic System perform a key role in motivated behavior and emotion.

Now, the motivated behaviors can range from fight or flight responses to mating. Thus, one of the structures of the Limbic is the Hippocampus. The Hippocampus plays an important part in forming memories.

Then, the other structure of the Limbic System is the Amygdala. The Amygdala is engaged in various facets of emotional control and forming emotional memories.

Thus, damage to the Limbic System plays a major role in human violence.

7. Cerebral Cortex

This is a part of the Human Brain that differentiates humans from other living forms. Therefore, to understand why it is the case, you need to know what is Cerebral Cortex and what all functions it performs.

Cerebral Cortex is nothing but the outer layer of the Brain that contains billions of interconnected Neurons. Because of the presence of huge number of cell bodies, this outer surface is grey in color. Therefore it is called the Grey Matter.

Then, right below the Cerebral Cortex lie the Myelin Sheath Axons that link the neurons of the Cerebral Cortex to the other parts of the Brain. Since, there are a huge number of Myelin Sheath Axons in this region, it appears to be opaque and is thus called the White Matter.

Now, what makes the human Cerebral Cortex different from that of other living forms is its huge size. Also, the Cerebral Cortex is divided into two parts namely the left Cerebral Hemisphere and the right Cerebral Hemisphere.

These Hemispheres are similar in appearance but not in function as each of them are specialized in performing a certain set of tasks.

8. Corpus Callosum

As mentioned above, both the left and the right Cerebral hemispheres might appear perfect look alikes. This is true when it comes to appearance but it is not true when it comes to their respective functions.

Both the hemispheres depict lateralization of function. This means that each of the hemispheres of the Brain are specialized in performing different set of functions.

Now, the left Cerebral Hemisphere is typically called the Verbal Hemisphere and specializes in speech and verbal tasks. Whereas, the right Cerebral Hemisphere is specialized in regulating motor movements and integrating, understanding and communicating emotions.

Now, both the Hemispheres communicate with each other through the Corpus Callosum. This is nothing but a broad band of fibers present between the two Cerebral Hemispheres that helps in connecting the left Cerebral Hemisphere with the right one.

9. Lobes

The Cerebral Hemispheres of the human brain are divided into four major regions called Lobes. These Lobes include:

(a) Frontal Lobe

Frontal Lobe is the area of the Cerebral Cortex that is situated close to the face. Further, it is bounded by Central Fissure, also known as Central Sulcus, which is a deep fold that separates the Frontal Lobe from the Parietal Lobe.

Just alongside the Central Fissure but within the Frontal Lobe lies the Motor Cortex which helps in regulating all the bodily movements. Thus, a person having a damaged primary Motor Cortex does not experience complete paralysis. Instead, damage to the Motor Cortex leads to losing control over smooth movements specifically of fingers.

(b) Parietal Lobe

Parietal Lobe is the area that lies beyond the Central Fissure. This area contains Somatosensory Cortex which receives information from skin senses including touch, pressure, temperature etc.

Thus, a person having a damaged Somatosensory Cortex may experience a variety of effects based on whether the damage has occurred in the left or the right Cerebral Hemisphere.

Therefore, damage in the left Hemisphere results in affected persons losing the capacity to read and write or facing difficulty in finding various parts of their body. However, damage in the right hemisphere may lead to affected person being unconscious of the left side of their body.

(c) Occipital Lobe

This region is located close to the back of the head. Further, the main function of the Occipital Lobe is the visual function. This region consists of a sensory area that receives information from the eyes.

Thus, persons having a damaged Occipital Lobe develop a hole in their visual field. As a result, objects lying at a particular location can’t be seen whereas the remaining visual area is seen clearly.

Again, damaged Occipital Lobe may produce effects based on which Cerebral Hemisphere experiences an injury.
Therefore, damage in the left Hemisphere leads to loss of vision in the right eye. Whereas, injury in the right Hemisphere results in loss of vision in the left eye.

(d) Temporal Lobe

This region is located right above the ear, that is, the two sides of each hemisphere. Its main function is to regulate hearing as it contains a sensory area that receives information from the ears.

Thus, people having a damaged Temporal Lobe in the left hemisphere fail to understand the spoken words. Whereas, if the right Hemisphere gets injured, they are able to understand words, but lose the ability to identify other aspects of sound such as tone, melody, rhythm etc.

Conclusion

These structures form the basic human brain anatomy. Thus, a basic understanding of the brain structure would help us understand how the complex set of processes occurring inside the brain impact human behavior.

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CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

Central Nervous System: All You Need to Know

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In our article on neurons, we saw how these cells inside the human brain functioned and communicated with each other as well as other body cells. Thus, to understand the neuronal function, it was mandatory to know the structure of a neuron.

Similarly, to understand the functioning of the human brain, it is important to understand the structure and working of the Nervous System. The Nervous System performs the function of:

  • receiving sensory input,
  • transmitting information to the processing areas of the brain and spine
  • integrating information in brain and spine
  • sending information back to muscles, glands and organs for them to respond appropriately

Now, neurons, glial cells, and synapses help in gathering information known as the sensory input. The Nervous System consists of billions of nerve cells called neurons and synapses that form between two or more neurons. These synapses, in turn, connect the neurons with each other or other body cells.

Further, the neurons pass on signals from the sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord. Then, the processing of such information takes place inside different parts of the brain. Once the information gets processed, the nerve impulses are then transmitted from the brain and spinal cord to muscles and glands.

The resulting nerve signals is known as the motor output. Thus, this entire functioning of the Nervous System can be understood only when one knows the components that make the Nervous System of the human brain.

What is Nervous System?

The nervous System is a complex network of neurons that controls the functions of our body and is responsible for everything we experience consciously including seeing, feeling, thinking, reasoning, imagining, etc.

Although, the Nervous System as a whole function in a unified manner, it consists of two portions:

  • Central Nervous System

This further consists of the Brain and Spinal Cord. The Brain is the control center of the body. It has various other centers that are responsible for receiving sensory input, processing of information and giving motor output.

  • Peripheral Nervous System

This comprises of spinal and cranial nerves that connect with the brain and spinal cord. Furthermore, this part of the Nervous System is divided into the Somatic and Autonomic Nervous System. While Somatic Nervous System connects CNS to voluntary muscles like bones, joints, skin etc.

The Autonomic Nervous System connects CNS to organs over which we have little voluntary control like cardiac muscles, digestive system etc. This division does not end here. The Autonomic Nervous System is further subdivided into Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems. We will discuss these further in the upcoming sections.

Meaning of Central Nervous System

As mentioned earlier, CNS is the control center of the body. As a control center, it regulates the functioning of organs, thought processes as well as body movements. The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Structure of Central Nervous System

The structure of the Central Nervous System comprises of the Brain and the Spinal Cord.

1. Brain

The most complex part is the Brain, which is the central control module of the human body. It coordinates the entire activity of the body, right from physical motion to release of hormones, development of memories and sense of emotions. To perform these functions, each part of the brain has defined roles to play. Thus, brain is subdivided into following main parts:

(i) Brain Stem

Brain Stem is the portion of the brain that starts right above the Spinal Cord and continues into the centre of the brain. It consists of structures that control all the vital processes of the human body which include:

  • Medulla

This system inside the brain is responsible for controlling vital functions of the human body. These include heart rate, breathing, blood pressure etc.

  • Pons

This portion of the brain is located between the midbrain and medulla through which sensory and motor information passes.

  • Reticular Activating System

This structure inside the brain is responsible for sleep, arousal and control of muscle tone and cardiac reflexes.

(ii) Cerebellum

This part of the brain is located behind medulla and pons. It primarily coordinates motor activities in a synchronized way.

(iii) Midbrain

Midbrain is a structure that is located above medulla and pons near the end of the brain stem. It is the extension of the reticular activating system and consists of basic centers responsible for hearing and vision.

(iv) Hypothalamus

Hypothalamus is a small part in the brain that plays an important role in controlling autonomic nervous system and several aspects of our motivated behaviour such as eating and aggression.

(v) Thalamus

Thalamus is a structure that is located deep inside the brain that is associated with the changes in emotional reactions. This part of the brain receives sensory inputs from other parts of the nervous system, analyze the same and then transmits it to the other parts of the nervous system

(vi) Limbic System

These are the set of structures that play a key role in our emotional reactions and behaviour like escaping from danger, fighting, mating etc. Two of its structures includes Hippocampus and Amygdala. Hippocampus is the structure of the limbic system that plays an important role in creating memories. Whereas Amygdala is another limbic system structure that is responsible for various aspects of emotional control and creation of emotional memories.

(vii) Cerebral Cortex

This part of the brain is responsible for an individual’s capability to plan, reason, remember and imagine. The Cerebral Cortex is the outer covering of the brain that is divided into cerebral hemispheres that is divided into two cerebral hemispheres – the left and the right cerebral hemispheres.

The right hemisphere is responsible for the left side of the body. Whereas, the left hemisphere is responsible for right side of the body. Both hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other through a band of nerve fibres called the Corpus Callosum.

Each of the cerebral hemispheres performs specialized set of functions. Furthermore, these hemispheres are divided into separate lobes or distinct regions on the basis of the size of the fissures that it is folded into. These lobes include:

  • Frontal Lobe – Portion of the cerebral cortex that lies near to the face and is bounded by the Central Fissure.
  • Parietal Lobe – Portion of the cerebral cortex that lies behind the Central Fissure. It contains somatosensory cortex. This part of the cortex receives information from the skin senses like touch, pressure and temperature.
  • Occipital Lobe – Portion of the cerebral cortex located near the back of the cortex. The primary function of this part of cerebral cortex is to help in visual processing. This region of the cerebral cortex contains a sensory area that receives input from the eyes.
  • Temporal Lobe – Portion of the cerebral cortex that is located along the side of each cerebral hemisphere. This part of the cerebral cortex plays a major role in hearing and consists of a sensory area that receives information from the ears

2. Spinal Cord

Spinal Cord runs through the middle of the bony structure known as vertebrae. It has two major functions:

Firstly, spinal cord carries sensory information from the receptors throughout the body to the brain via afferent (sensory) nerve fibres. Further, the spinal cord also helps in carrying information from the brain to muscles and glands via efferent nerve fibres (motor nerve fibres).

The second major function of the spinal cord lies in reflexes. These reflexes are automatic actions induced by specific stimuli. In other words, these reflexes encompass neural pathways through which information received from various receptors is transmitted to the spinal cord. Here, these neural impulses stimulate other neurons known as interneurons. These inter neurons pass information to muscle cells, producing reflex actions in return. Therefore, the reflexes taking place at the spinal cord level allow us to respond to dangers much more quickly as compared to the case where information first had to be carried all the way to the brain.

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