Is Hidden Anger Making You Gain Pounds?

Ralph loves fatty foods, doughnuts in particular. He finds himself consuming these by the droves in the mornings before he faces work. He tries repeatedly to stop this out-of-control overeating but he can't do it despite the fact that his rapidly increasing size is threatening his job at which he must appear personable.

Ralph loves fatty foods, doughnuts in particular. He finds himself consuming these by the droves in the mornings before he faces work. He tries repeatedly to stop this out-of-control overeating but he can't do it despite the fact that his rapidly increasing size is threatening his job at which he must appear personable. It is only when he discovers a hidden connection between anger and his overeating that Ralph gets a grip on this habit - I will tell you how in a moment, but let's look at that hidden connection first. What has anger got to do with overeating?

Surprising as it may seem, while anger won't raise the numbers on your scale directly, it can indirectly contribute to them in a big way because anger is one of the major causes of emotional overeating. If you find yourself reaching for your favorite comfort foods whenever someone makes you mad, your anger may be an indirect but important cause of your gaining pounds.

The reason for this is that food can be so soothing that it can allow you to avoid whatever negative emotions you may be feeling when the cravings strike. In fact, if you reach for the food fast enough, you probably don't even notice you're feeling anything unpleasant at all.

This is especially true for the emotion of anger. Society conditions us to keep our angry feelings under control but sometimes, this includes not feeling the anger at all. If you're like most people, you're not comfortable with anger. Food is an easy way to keep it at bay and avoid expressing it.

Of course, the problem is that your anger doesn't go anywhere when you eat unwisely as a way of handling it. You still feel the anger - it's just hidden from your awareness for a while by the temporary comfort of food. Meanwhile, the downside is that you become heavier, and the angry feelings remain dormant, ready to come up to the surface and bring about yet another food craving. It's a no-win continuous cycle.

Ralph is a perfect example. He feels completely unappreciated at work since his boss treats him like a scapegoat. Despite the fact that his sales figures surpass those of most of his coworkers, he watches others receive accolades while his work goes unnoticed. He continues to look for a more satisfying job, but he has yet to find one.

Ralph starts his day angry and ends it angry. The only way he can get past the anger and make it to work is by eating a few donuts for breakfast. When he gets home after another frustrating day, he goes straight for his favorite fatty comfort foods before he even makes dinner. Sometimes, he fills up so much on the fatty foods that he fails to eat anything nutritious at all.

It's certainly understandable why Ralph's situation would make him feel angry, but his coping mechanism is not helping. Instead, it undermines his health and causes him to put on pounds. This only adds to his frustration and his difficulty in finding another job.

While Ralph may not be able to immediately alter his situation at work, he can definitely change his own attitude. It isn't easy, but it's certainly preferable to allowing his anger to get the best of him. Ralph needs to acknowledge his anger and find a way to release it constructively. He could try martial arts or a punching bag until he finds a better job. If he keeps his focus on the positive steps he can take to change his circumstances, he will feel much better, and he won't have to drown his feelings with eating.

You can certainly see the logic. Using food to suppress anger is the equivalent of "swallowing" your feelings, rather than expressing them. And the biting action offers some relief because it satisfies the primal instinct to bite our enemies in defense. For this reason, crunchy foods may feel especially good at such times.

There are several techniques for conquering emotional overeating, but there is something you can do immediately to break the habit of using food as an anger suppressor:

Take a 3" x 5" index card and write the following sentence on it:

"Even though I'm angry at (insert name of person or situation) and can't express this openly, I deeply and completely accept myself (or "love myself," etc) without judgment."

Before you go to bed each night, and after you rise in the morning (and at any other time you wish), read this sentence out loud to yourself three times.

This is a mini-version of the powerful "EFT Choices Method" which is a highly effective technique for combating emotional overeating. EFT utilizes the principles of acupressure and uses light tapping on certain strategic comfort spots on your face and upper body to train your mind to become more peaceful and self-accepting - a great advantage for losing pounds. You will no longer feel that compulsion to grab for unnecessary food when you come into harmony with yourself and accept your anger.

Self-help techniques like EFT are especially important because they get to the core of the eating problem, while diets usually fail because they focus on what foods you are eating rather than the reason you're eating them.

If you want to stop emotional overeating, your first task is to become aware of the emotion you are suppressing. The next time you reach for that candy bar, stop and ask yourself if you are angry with someone. If so, try the EFT exercise provided above, and watch the pounds melt away!

By: Psychologist Dr. Patricia Carrington
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Parental Stress - Coping With Kids

Rearing well adjusted children is a real accomplishment on the part of any parent and with today’s trend and lifestyle it is a hard task. Nowadays training kids begins at birth. There are lots of articles written on dealing with newborn babies or coping with toddlers, particularly for new moms, but surprisingly, there is little guidance on how to deal or cope with parental stress.

Several children under the age of five can be really troublesome and handling them is a tiring task. Parents really have to work hard as the kids at that age demand lot of time and attention. This really stresses the parent and makes them feel trapped. Parents have to be magically equipped with patience, parental love and mothering instinct.

Growing children wreck a tidy room or scatter toys and cushions around the house. Potty training is other serious issue and you have to be geared to deal with accidents, while washing their hands is like playing in a swimming pool. Kids like to explore everything and they learn from such exploration. Hence stopping them would curb their inquisitiveness. As a parent you should tackle these issues with care and lot of patience, as love and patience builds a strong foundation in the parent and child relationship.

Due to a stressful lifestyle, many relationships break up and hence there are a lot of single parents around. Such single parents find parenting more difficult as compared to a couple. Managing kids and a career is like walking on two rails. They are usually stressed by running around trying to manage things, and this sometimes leaves the kids neglected. Sometimes parents are not able to pursue their own dreams because they are busy tackling issues related to their kids.

Luckily nowadays there are some voluntary organizations where help can be sought. These organizations offer help for few hours each week like baby-sitting and this help can give the parents some hours of respite. Moms can get free time to mow the lawn, do some home decoration, pursue their passions or even shop. With kids growing and their demands increasing day by day, mothers lose their identity and get hassled under the pressure.

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t be depressed if you fail, as you are a normal human being. Mistakes can happen as there are limitations, hence accept them and do your best. Clean the rooms one by one and not like a superwoman. If you can, try and reduce the furniture or clear off the carpets as they are the things that delay cleaning.

It doesn't matter if the house isn't spotless. What matters is that you spend time playing and having fun with your kids. You will all benefit and at the end of the day you may feel more cheerful and capable of clearing some of the mess. Then give yourself half an hour to soak in the bath, or even do your nails.

http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/margaret-tye/8948.htm

Marriage is a Job

Marriage is a job and we'd all be a lot better off if
we approached it that way.

Think about the similarities: In order to get a job or
a spouse, you dress up, behave unnaturally, and hide
those little things that might be a deal-breaker, like
your prison record or the fact that you save your
cat's hair in baggies. Once you've achieved your
objective, whether it's getting hired or walking down
the aisle, both have a "honeymoon period," where no
one really expects you to buckle down and get to work
right away. Usually there's less sex on the job than
in the marriage, unless you've chosen porn as your
field or married someone sixty years your senior.

And anyone who has been married longer than Renee
Zellwegger and Kenny Chesney can tell you that once
you've gotten past the interview and the honeymoon
period, everyday married life can be just as boring
and frustrating as the 9 to 5 world. There are power
struggles to determine who is the alpha dog (which can
be confounded in marriage if there actually is a dog),
budget cuts, people behaving like children (they may,
in the case of marriage, BE children), changes in
management, walk-outs, etc. There isn't a married
person in the world who hasn't dreamed of not clocking
in for a day (or a week or a month).

Why is it then that with all their similarities that
when someone decides to change jobs, we admire their
ambition and encourage them to follow their bliss, but
if someone makes the same choice about a spouse, we
feel sad and disappointed? Why do we say "failed
marriage" but not "failed occupation?"

I'm not talking about quickie jobs and divorces, but
those things we've poured ourselves into, learned our
lessons, and decided to move on from. Jobs and
marriages are ways of learning about ourselves and our
needs.

I myself have had three occupations and three husbands
(in both cases, I still have the third). My first job
out of college, I was an "Economic Analyst" for a bank
corporation. I know that sound so 80's and it was. But
the fancy title was cover for the fact that I was
basically just an underpaid researcher who had to run
computer models before the actual invention of
computer. Okay, the computer had been invented, but at
the bank we were still using the abacus and slide
rule.

I managed to stay at this job for eighteen months, and
during that time I learned a few things about myself:
(1) I didn't enjoy working for people who take credit
for my work, (2) I really hate wearing panty hose and
heels every day, and (3) Bosses who criticize your job
performance in their office then feel you up in the
elevator are fairly easy to get a good letter of
references from, especially if you know the guys who
run the elevator video camera (yes, the bank did have
those).

lasted ten years in my first marriage. We met in high
school, married right out of college and moved across
country twice. I quit work and went to grad school. He
quit work and formed his own computer company, making
$100 an hour, which was real money in the 80s. I was
making about $6 an hour. I learned from my first
marriage job that anyone who values me based on my
income isn't someone I can sleep with for more than a
decade. Hey, I have a long learning curve.

Job number two, I was a health educator who eventually
ran a wellness program for a major university. There
were things about the job I just loved and other
things that made me want to spit in someone's food.
Unfortunately, that wasn't a perk of the job. This is
the job that taught me to be self-reliant,
independent, capable of doing a lot with very little,
and to value outrageousness in myself and others.

Husband number two was twenty-three when I met him in
a bar. I was thirty-two. Did I mention the
outrageousness factor? I made more money than he did,
had had more sex than he'd had, and weighed more than
he did. None of those turned out to be good things. I
learned from him that I prefer to be the girl in the
relationship at least half the time.

So I'm three for three now. I write and perform
comedy. No one tells me when to get up or what to
wear. No one feels me up on the job, not even the UPS
man, not even when I beg. My co-workers are dogs, so
the back-biting is literal instead of figurative. I
like that. My current husband is slightly older and
grayer than me, weighs more, and spends a lot of time
sleeping, especially if there's nothing good on TV or
I've dared to serve him a meatless entrée again in
order to reduce his cholesterol.

Life goes on. And as long as you're learning
something... anything... your job and your marriage
probably still have a few good years in them. But it
never hurts to keep your resume polished.

By:Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant
www.articles-hub.com/index.ph?article=90016&highlite=marriage

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How We Sabotage Ourselves and What to Do About it

Everyone wants to be beautiful, young, healthy and fit. There is no end to the diets, workouts and health plans. Yet the most important diet of all has been overlooked. This is a diet that releases stress, relaxes muscles, offers sound sleep, diminishes appetite, and makes you look and feel younger; it brings you new friends, a happy work environment, good relationships, and adds years to your life.

This is the diet from anger– one of the worst plagues facing our nation.Anger is a serious problem for one in every five Americans. Road rage, workplace violence, school shootings, domestic abuse and addiction are just a few of its many outlets.

The reason such a huge proportion of our nation is on anti-depressants, involved in alcohol, and drug addiction, overweight, in broken relationships and involved in all kinds of destructive behavior, can be directly traced back to the effects of anger, particularly the hidden kind.

It has also been well documented that anger strongly affects physical health and is directly related to heart attacks, blood pressure, back pain and many other physical disorders. This is called symptom substitution.

We also turn our anger against ourselves in other ways. We become depressed or experience mood disorders, hopelessness, passive aggressive behavior, promiscuity, domestic abuse and many other forms of general misery. Sometimes anger converts itself into obsessive-compulsive disorders and individuals become unable to make decisions or choices about their lives.

Anger is ruthless in the course it takes, attacking and disrupting our body, minds and spirits. As school and workplace shootings rise, the divorce rate climbs, people are on increasing anti-depressants.

It is clear that anger is a societal problem, which is only growing worse. It is time we paid attention to the #1 terrorist we face: the anger we live with every day.

At the present time many of individuals in our society are dependent upon medication of all kinds. Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, weight loss supplements, low blood pressure medication, blood thinners and antibiotics of many kinds are taken to ease the many symptoms of unhappiness, unbalance and disease we suffer from.

On the face of it the symptoms seem to differ from one another. If we look a little deeper, however, we can see that beneath the various forms of distress that appear, anger is quietly smoldering.

Today we fear many external enemies. It is not so easy to realize, however, that the worst enemy we face is this anger that resides within, the terror it causes us, and the ways in which this poison dictates so much of our lives.

Anger has many faces. It appears in many forms and creates different consequences. Anger that is overt and clear cut is the simplest to deal with and understand. When we or someone we know is openly angry, we know what we are up against and can directly address the cause.

Most anger lurks beneath the surface, however. It often does not even come to our awareness and manifests in endless, hidden ways - as depression, anxiety, apathy, hopelessness, and in many, many other forms.

It is crucial that we recognize anger for what it is, realize when it is appearing and notice the devastation it creates. Then we have an opportunity to root out this underground stream feeds our misery, and the misery we cause others. When anger is allowed to remain camouflaged it holds us in its grip and easily erodes the entire quality of our lives.

What To Do:

Just as we work out daily in the gym to strengthen muscles and attain flexibility, it is necessary to work out and strengthen the parts of ourselves that can recognize and release anger easily.

We must learn to give up the various forms of anger and replace them with a healthy antidote. Some healthy antidotes to anger include: letting go of blame, forgiveness, generosity, seeing the best in others, letting the other be right, (just for today), giving others the benefit of the doubt.

Choose one antidote and work with it for an entire day. Then choose another. You will begin to feel so good, you won’t want to go back to the old ways.

As we daily eliminate the toxicity anger provides to our systems, not only will the results be reflected in our mental and emotional well-being, but in our environment and physical health as well. Eventually it will become impossible for anger to maintain the hold it once had upon them.

All teachings encourage us to be forgiving, but there is little actual instruction on how to accomplish this. Each of the antidotes listed above will help you along the way. Anger is the great impediment to forgiveness. When anger is rooted out, love and forgiveness arise naturally. Our lives and the lives of those around us then become hallowed and become all they are meant to be.

http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/brenda-shoshanna/20471.htm

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Ten Steps to An Ideal Relationship

Here are ten important steps to a successful relationship.

These are ten tings you can do to create the ideal relationship. 1. Do your own personal emotional work first. It is necessary for each individual to become aware of and release the negative unconsciously stored self sabotaging relationship patterns they acquired during their childhoods. Unfortunately most individuals never do this and only find out about them after a failed relationship or an acrimonious divorce. 2. Nurture your own self esteem, self confidence and self worth. Too many individuals neglect themselves and thus wind up feeling very needy. This neediness then lures them into the unconscious belief that a relationship will help fill such needs. This is a recipe for disaster as it sets up unstable and often abusive co-dependent relationships that lead no where.

3. Nurture Self Awareness.

It is only through self awareness that you will be able to achieve mastery over your own thoughts, emotions, perceptions and behaviors. Anything less means that you are not fully in control of yourself and are vulnerable to making bad choices.

4. Know how to assess the maturity of others.

Most individuals become attracted to each other on the basis of appearance, mutual needs or by the fact that they represent unconscious parental figures. As a result the level of emotional maturity (see my article on the Emotional Maturity Quotient in this ezine) of the other person is completely ignored.

5. Maintain personal honesty as one of your highest priorities.

If you are honest with yourself and with others you will always maintain your personal integrity, self esteem, and self worth and in spite of what ever happens you will feel more resilient. This will also attract individuals who also uphold this as an important value.

6. Be courageous in all your communications.

It is important that when something is to be said that it is said in a respectful and truthful manner. Holding things back can cause them to be pushed into the unconscious where they will "ferment" into feelings of anger, negative behaviors, and abuse and so on.

7. Always look after your health and well being.

Without a solid foundation of good health any relationship will flounder. Your health is your responsibility and not anyone else?s.

8. Don''t act like a victim and don''t attempt to rescue victim like behaviors.

There is a tendency for immature needy individuals to take a victim role in order to manipulate others into rescuing or caring for them. This is irresponsible behavior which undermines some of the principles I mentioned above. When one engages or attempts to rescue victim like behaviors this fractures the trust in a relationship and irreversibly destroys it.

9. Always strive for greater emotional and sexual intimacy.

To know and experience each other fully is the most effective way to keep the bonds of understanding, love and empathy strong. This is the glue that keeps a relationship intact. Without it, it will eventually fall apart.

10. Always strive for personal growth.

A relationship will grow stagnant if either of the partners stops growing emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. In the same way that you would nurture a child''s growth one must continually nurture one''s own.

http://www.telecoaching4u.com/IntroConsult.htm

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Stress in your marriage

Have you been married more than five years? Do you find that the tension between you and your spouse has been on the rise? Stress in the marriage is more common than most will think, or want to believe, but you can put an end, or at least ease up on the stress in marriage by following a few common things. You want to work on how you think about things, how you come across in the marriage, and in what you say, and you want to change the time that the two of your spend together.

Change how you talk to lessen the stress in your marriage

Think before you blurt anything out in a marriage. You may feel very comfortable in your relationship, and you may feel you can say just about anything aloud, but the truth of the matter is when you call some one stupid, or idiot, even in a joking manner it is going to hurt the relationship. Take the stress out of your long-term relationship by thinking about what you are saying before you are saying it.

Change how you act, and how you are around your spouse

Remember back in a time when you were dating, you were happy to see your spouse? You were happy to spend time doing your hair, picking out your clothes and such? Put that feeling back into your life by thinking of how you are going to make your spouse fall in love with you again every day. This is going to put the spark back into your relationship and will take the stress out of your relationship.

A lot of stress involved in a relationship is the lack of trust. Stressing out about where your spouse is, why they are working late, or just where they are in general will eventually put a major strain on the relationship. Take the stress out of your relationship and out of the marriage by putting trust back into the equation. It is going to be difficult if not impossible to not trust your spouse. Trust is going to put all the strain and stress behind you so the two of you can work on being together for the rest of your lives.

Stress in your marriage is going to appear not only after you have been married for a few years, but also when children appear in the family, and when money matters are tight. Take your stress and focus your energies on something constructive in the situation. If you are find you are stressed about money, find ways to save money. If you are stressed about the children, find a sitter for the night and unwind a little bit. Every problem, every stressful situation does have an answer and you can work through it.


Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit - www.articleclick.com

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Discover How to Deal Patiently with Your Anger in a High Intense Situation

All of us have feelings as human beings. We can be sad, angry and happy. We go through experiences in life that creates these types of emotions in us. Be it at home, running a business, playing sports or at your workplace, we have to deal with situations that deal with our emotions.

We deal with challenges in life everyday. Some of us faced bigger and uphill challenges than others. When the situation gets tense in facing challenges, emotions run high. It can lead to anger in us and people around can be affected. But such situations can be a wonderful learning experience for us.

Let us take a look at the following about Pete handling his anger in a tense situation. Pete, a business owner, together with his partner had to attend to an important wedding event. As they were about to leave the house, he realized that he had misplaced his wallet.

He told his partner that he had misplaced the wallet. Pete was reprimanded for being so careless of losing his wallet that contains important documents. He was reprimanded continuously. Emotions were running high as he continued his search for the wallet.

Pete realized that being angry and responding to the remarks about his carelessness in losing his wallet will not solve his solutions to the problems. Through his business experiences, he had learn to control his emotions. He decided to take a deep breath and told his partner firmly that he wish to focus on finding the solutions rather than focusing on the potential problems. He realized in such situations, he needs to focus on the solutions and think rationally to solve the problems. His partner did react to his comments and got angry initially. But after deep thoughts, agreed to Pete's point of focusing on the solutions.

He realized that he needs to be patient in his pursue of solving the problems. With clear thoughts, he tried to remember where he last placed his wallet. Once he was clear about the potential places where the wallet can be found, Pete continued his search. He faced failures in finding it initially but finally he found his wallet. With a smile, they then head for the wedding event. During the journey, they discussed and shared with each other on what they had learn from the experience.

From the story, we can learn that in handling such intense situations, it is important that we remain focus in the solutions rather than the problems and be patient in pursue of solving such problems or challenges.

http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/rauf-yusope/35419.htm
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