Blogpost #5: Fear and Anger

Ahhh. A huge opposite attraction to both emotion. Well I have my experiences. Like there's one time that I got mad at someone but it turns out that I'm in a confused stage of uniqueness which defines a confusion. It's so hard to understand. So about this post I'm gonna be telling on how fear is different to anger and how they works in their own ways and what is the possibilities of the weird attraction.

And I have read an article at psychosomaticmedicine.org written by ALBERT F. AX with the title "The Physiological Differentiation between Fear and Anger in Humans"


Forty-three subjects were stimulated in the laboratory to "fear" and "anger," during which the following physiological reactions were recorded: (1) heart rate, (2) ballistocardiogram, (3) respiration rate, (4) face temperature, (5) hand temperature, (6) skin conductance, and (7) integrated muscle potential. The scores used were the maximum rise and maximum fall from the preceding resting level and the number of responses of a critical value per unit time. Of the 14 scores thus obtained, 7 showed significant discrimination between anger and fear. Diastolic blood pressure rises, heart rate falls, number of rises in skin conductance, and muscle potential increases, were greater for anger than for fear, whereas skin conductance increases, number of muscle potential increases, and respiration rate increases were greater for fear than for anger. Profile difference scores, computed from appropriate combinations of these differences, were found to be greater than zero in 42 of the 43 cases and to have a mean which deviated very significantly from zero, which rejects the null hypothesis that there is no difference in physiological reaction between anger and fear.

That biology understanding tells me that those are the significance of Anger to Fear and Fear to Anger. If something reacts to our body is it our physical appearance that shows our self-control to anger and fear. Fear and Anger are the same mind state.  It's kind of like an opposite energy of clinging, but with a similar base.
We think if we can fight enough, struggle enough, and push away enough then whatever has come up will not have come up and we will be able to be in control of the unfolding of events. But look at what we get angry at, all these things that we cannot control, what arises in our minds. We get so frustrated, thinking, "I don't know, I've worked so hard, I've been meditating for six months, ten years, whatever. This stuff still comes up. It's bad. It's wrong. I'm a failure" or "I've been in psychotherapy all this time and anger still comes up. I'm bad. I'm wrong. I'm a failure." Yet, can we ever fully control what  arises in our mind?