The Relationship Between Anxiety and Anger
Anger is the most common emotion we may encounter in our daily activities.
In a study published in 2012, researchers found that in a large sample of individuals with elevated levels of anger, they met the diagnostic criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
On an empirical level, consider how someone who suffers from anxiety may often have difficulty sleeping and, therefore, the lack of sleep may make them more irritable to stimuli that under normal circumstances would hardly bother them.
Another way these two are linked is through depression. The high rates of comorbidity of anxiety and depression are well known. The depressed mood that characterizes depression makes the person think negatively and this causes greater discomfort and so on... This in turn reinforces the depressive symptoms, which make the person perceive environmental stimuli as negative and react accordingly.
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On the other hand, this relationship between anxiety and anger is bidirectional... And anger can cause anxiety, since afterwards, the person may have anxious obsessive thoughts about the consequences of such behavior (e.g. that he will lose his job or that this will result in losing a loved one, etc.).
Is it worth it, in such moments of unjustified anger (Cicero said that anger is a small madness) to sacrifice what we love so much?
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