Hello and welcome to the Being Well Podcast, I'm Forrest Hanson.

In our last episode we talked about one of the central human experiences, feelings of fear and how to manage them.

Over the next two weeks we're going to conclude the strength of calm with a series of episodes

dedicated to another of the primary emotions.

Anger.

Anger is a natural response to pain, frustration, attack, and injustice.

Experiencing and expressing anger can be an important way to accept and stand up for ourselves.

There's a long history of different individuals and groups having their justifiable anger brushed aside, explained away, or attacked.

Anger can mobilize energy and shines a bright light on whatever is that issue.

But, nonetheless, anger comes with major costs, both physical and interpersonal.

It's an extremely forceful even seductive emotion

that's very easy to get swept up by or turn into a habit. In order to become

skillful in working with the mind, we have to learn how to manage our anger effectively.

So to help us do that, I'm joined today by Dr. Rick Hansen.

Why you think I'm some kind of expert on anger?

What?

Well, I just hope you're not that angry at me during the course of this episode.

So just to kind of like set us up a little bit here, could you explain some of the physical

costs of anger and why it's such an important emotion to exercise a lot of care with.

Yeah, so first acknowledging the benefits of anger that said it's interesting that

the research on the so-called Tai A personality has a risk for cardiovascular disease.

A lot of what that risk boiled down to was not so much being driven and ambitious and hardworking and intense in terms of aspects of the so-called

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