How Does Sleep Affect Anger?

Although you may consider yourself to be a calm and passive person, there are some circumstances that can try the patience of even the most placid of people. Certain situations or a chain of events may accumulate stress and tiredness in people and this can result in being short tempered.

Why Might Tiredness Increase Anger?

We all have days where we feel tired because of a bad night’s sleep and most of us will admit to being more irritable when we are tired. The reasons for this are because the body both mentally and physically are not able to cope with stress or emotional states and the easiest way of dealing with this is to become angry, usually at the stimuli that has caused the stress but also directed to someone totally unrelated.In actual fact to become angry can make us more tired than dealing with the situation calmly.

Why Does Anger Cause Tiredness?

Anger is known to cause tiredness or an inability to sleep for many reasons. Perhaps the anger stems from issues in the person’s past and they have been trying to cope with anger and repressing anger for many years which can cause exhaustion.More commonly the physical changes that occur when we are angry are quickly followed by a sharp fall in the chemical activity in the body which can leave us feeling lethargic.

Taking Steps To Remain In Control

The first step to regaining control of your anger is to realise that it has become a problem. Maybe you have noticed people giving you more space than usual or perhaps someone has mentioned that you seem more irritable than normal.

Secondly it is vital that you determine the reason why you are tired and cannot sleep or why your sleep is of poor quality. Maybe you have had a lot of emotional upheaval recently or have been very stressed over something in particular or as an accumulation. Some people find they are not ale to sleep properly because of family issues, or they are in pain or uncomfortable and on occasion there may even be a biological reason why you are unable to sleep.

If you feel anger rising take a step back and breathe deeply. This oxygenates the blood and therefore the organs and will help you think more clearly.In the long term are there any changes you can make in your lifestyle than can help you cope. Can you temporarily reduce your working week so that you can catch up on both home life and sleep? Maybe your friends or family can look after the children overnight so you can have a long bath and relax and unwind.

If however you feel your problems are preventing you from sleeping a visit to your doctor may result in either a referral to a trained counsellor or a short term prescription of sleep aids to get you over the worst.

What Not To Do

It can be tempting to carry on do nothing. This will eventually catch up with you and may result in significant social or physiological harm.Do not be tempted to self medicate and control or force sleep with substances such as alcohol or drugs as addiction, accidental overdose or bodily harm may occur.Try not to let your anger escalate into aggression and possible violence.

Anger and tiredness are linked by many issues; sometimes the tiredness can cause anger and often being angry makes us feel more tired.Both situations happen to most people at some point but it is how we deal with our anger that is important or to try and reduce anger if it occurs regularly.