Deborah Sandella

When we pay attention and listen instead of denying, suppressing, fearing, or disliking our spontaneous feelings, we gain great access to our natural intuition (knowing something without understanding how we know it)

We are born with three primal emotional states: curiosity, comfort, and discomfort. You can easily observe them in infants even though they cannot understand or verbalize their internal experience or thoughts. We come programmed with these neurological receptors

Growing up with a first-generation Italian father, my childhood experiences with raw anger were somewhat frightening. When I visited Italy in college, I witnessed angry outbursts frequently and began to understand my dad. The dramatic verbal expression of anger I saw there is common and fleeting; it is not necessarily personal or threatening. In fact, you frequently see it between people who are strangers on Italian streets. It is a dramatic acknowledgment that something has happened you did not expect and do not like. The speaker lets it be known in a passionate voice that there is a perceived offense, and then it is done. It is interesting to note that in stroke research anger did not increase the risk of stroke or ministroke, but hostility did. Anger like I saw in Italy is fleeting, whereas hostility is enduring. Furthermore, the incidence of stroke in southern Italy where my grandparents grew up is significantly lower than in other European countries.4 (Diet differences, however, were not considered in the study.)

Feelings of anger warn you something dangerous could happen and further investigation is indicated to determine if action is needed to stay safe

When we constantly assess our anger as a real violation without investigation, it snowballs into an attitude of anger or hostility, defined by researchers Siegman and Smith as a cynical and negative expectation of life.

Siegman and Smith further found that verbally sharing anger is positive and insightful

while an explosive, aggressive expression of anger is toxic to the heart. The research identifies the dangerous element to be aggressiveness, while Raymond A. DiGiuseppe, coauthor of the 2006 book Understanding Anger Disorders, finds revenge is the major driver of whether someone will behave in an aggressive way. He says it's hard to change such people with anger management classes because they feel justified in their feeling

If anger expresses first, it is important to get down to the hurt, and if hurt shows up first, it is important to get down to the anger. Whichever feeling initially surfaces is more comfortable, and the one underneath is less comfortable. Diving into what is less comfortable and surviving unharmed yield resilience and strength

experience of loss is indescribably painful—it's the realization that our life can change in a split second and we can lose what we have held close to keep us safe and happy. Grief shatters our illusion of control and involuntarily reveals feelings of helplessness

We both learned that love does not end with physical death.