Time for a Heart to Heart Chat about

Your Anger

by Michelle M Pearson

February is our Heart-to-Heart month. Yes, February contains the famous holiday, Valentine’s Day, the LOVE holiday! That makes it a perfect time to learn something new twice a week that improves the condition of your heart, spiritually, emotionally, and, yes, physically! 

As we celebrate these matters of the heart, our hearts turn to your heart and the things that will help keep it healthy so you can enjoy life longer and stronger!

That primary thing that keeps a heart healthy and strong, whether emotional or physical, is love. Deep, consistent, forgiving and forgiven, void of ALL offense… Love.

So, this heart-to-heart is about your anger.

Recent medical studies provide substantial evidence that anger can have catastrophic effects on one’s heart health.

Numerous articles and research studies both at Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, among others, show mounting evidence that anger and heart attacks are overwhelmingly linked. One Johns Hopkins study tracked 1,055 medical students for 36 years. Comparing more peaceful persons with those who tended to anger, angry students were six times more likely to suffer heart attacks by age 55 and three times more likely to develop heart or vascular disease.

“Among young adults, it’s a predictor of premature heart disease later in life,” says Harvey Simon, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

One should note, it is not merely individuals who cannot contain their anger, but individuals who carry anger in any measure for any length of time. Sure, the common thought is that everyone gets angry sometimes! But…

Did you know that just one minute of anger can suppress your immune system for 6-8 hours or more? That’s right, so even if you are burying it where no one sees, you are still doing your heart great harm. The anger is ultimately more dangerous to your health that the greatest offense anyone else could commit against you. Their actions have no power to hurt you until you take it… to heart.

Most anger arises from insecurity or insult. But the root of all anger is fear. Fear of pain. Of being taken for granted. Of previous loss. Almost always, anger rises in response to past experience rather than a result of the new incident. Knowing this, it becomes much easier to investigate the root when times are calm, repair the breach, and be made whole before new challenges arise.

Anger’s effect on health is primarily due to it’s effects on the performance of key systems of the body which result in impaired immune system, heart attack, stroke, poor mental focus, and even impaired lung function. 

When you get angry, your body releases an array of toxic chemicals called catecholamines into your blood stream. People who angry, irregardless of whether they are explosive or passive, have advanced levels of catecholamines in their system. These chemicals are highly destructive to the vascular tissues and actually speed the development of fatty deposits (cholesterol) in the heart and carotid arteries. Because of this, anger can be as much of a physical risk factor, or more, than smoking, obesity, or lack of exercise.

Our 35+ years of clinical practice has shown us that some form of anger – buried resentment, irritation, grief, unforgiveness, rebellion, fear – is at the root of more than 85% of the reasons people are such high risk disease categories! More than genetics, more than poor eating, drinking, or sleeping habits. More than any other cause, these emotions are the root of the majority of disease, illness, and injury.

So. here’s the heart to heart chat:

NOW you can FORGIVE. The first step is to choose to forgive all past hurts, offenses, and disappointments. ALL of them. It’s not a feeling, it’s a life-saving choice as an act of your will.

Second, choose from this point on refuse to allow one single night to pass harboring anger, hurt, offense, whatever you try to call it to avoid letting go of it; there is a powerful reason the Bible says ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger!” It will rob you of life and love.

And the third, biggest step, is to decide today to refuse offense. Everyday you will have ample opportunity to take some level of offense, insult, aggravation, or frustration. That is simply pride, shame, fear, or rebellion running your life and ruining your health.

The simple truth is that not everything that matters to you needs to matter. And many things that are pushing love to second place, like fear, worry, and anger, need to be given no place whatsoever! Love can be in authority without anger. And, Love can be tough, to protect, with righteous anger. So, anger itself can be felt, can come up in us, without our sinning – without our stepping out of love.

Anger doesn’t come from anyone or anything on the outside. It comes as a result of our mindset about what certain events, happenings, or words mean to us as they pass thru the filter of our mindset – usually a mind that is set on past experiences.

“How it made me feel”  is the identifier. Hold that statement up to the Word of God and see if it matches with the Truth. (Hint: It won’t.) Replace it with the Word of Truth, again and again, until that Truth is what events come up against – they will no longer have the power to trigger anger and rob you of your healthy resources!

Friends, let’s agree with Love and be loosed from the bonds of anger and the resulting heart dis-ease. Allow these heartfelt words to help you today to unchain your heart. Cut the anchor and set your sails! Feel the winds of refreshing in your hair again!

Decide today, choose, to live in God’s lavish love – the resource of divine health itself. No, make that… the resource of divine health Himself. And to share that with others.

Now abide these, faith hope, and… Love. And the greatest of these is Love.

Know someone who is struggling heart problems?

Of course, You Do!

Send Them a Link Today!

Believe. Choose. ACTIVATE. Achieve. (Repeat.)

Stay tuned for more in the series, “Heart-to-Heart for Your Health” all month long – every Monday and Thursday morning!  

(For more teaching on individual topics, please watch for our soon to be revealed NEW Products and Resources Page and get the downloads. There will be more than thirty hours of teachings available for your benefit!)

Michelle Pearson is a dynamic wellness coach, speaker, author, and the Founder & President of Picture of Health Inc. (http://thepictureofhealth.com). On a personal health journey for the past 21 years, Michelle’s mission is to educate, activate, challenge and equip others to live a full, satisfying life through the use of state-of-the-art educational resources to produce significant and lasting health breakthroughs.

Learn Anything? Please leave questions and comments below!