Radford Words: Adolescents Need Help to Defuse Anger Adolescents
Need Help to Defuse Anger In heavy traffic, the driver of
another car darts into your lane, then stops short in front of
you. You break hard and just miss rear-ending the car. Then you
lay on the horn. Why? It's too late for the horn to be a
warning. What happened here? A sudden danger presented itself.
You reacted in a way that protected you and your passengers. At
the same time, your brain released a chemical producing an
emotion and a burst of physical energy. With the danger over,
you interpreted the emotion as anger and released the energy by
blowing the horn. But was the emotion you felt really anger?
Perhaps it was fear, desperation or protectiveness. If you, a
reasonable adult, can be tricked by your own emotions, imagine
the dilemma of a 12-year-old boy, whose amygdala, the part of
the brain that regulates emotions such as fear, rage and other
"gut" reactions, dominates the prefrontal cortex, the seat of
reason and the slowest part of t