Transforming Anger: The Heartmath Solution for Letting Go of Rage, Frustration, and Irritation [Paperback]

Doc Childre (Author), Deborah Rozman (Author), Matthew McKay (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2003

In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered that the heart has its own intelligence, a complex independent nervous system that is referred to as 'the brain in the heart.' Getting the heart into a positive rhythm can directly send a signal to the brain, allowing the two to synchronize and literally transform anger, frustration, and irritation into compassion, empathy, and calm.

From Transforming Anger, learn how thoughts and feelings get stored in the nervous system and create cellular triggers of irritation, frustration, and anger. Then find out how to get beyond the mechanical negative pull of these triggers. Discover how to control your heart rhythms using a 60-second 'freeze-frame' technique: an exercise that calms the mind, synchronizes the nervous system, and increases the level of internal coherence, so that you can clearly and quickly see the options for dealing with anger. This technique can be used anytime and anywhere, and puts you in a zone in which you are able to feel calm, compassionate feelings for yourself and for others. For lasting change, learn to build emotional assets, depersonalize the actions of others, identify resistance to change, and keep the practice going.

HeartMath is a registered trademark of the Institute of HeartMath.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Transforming Anger is an important book for our time. Using solid research, Childre and Rozman make it clear that when it comes to dealing with anger, our most powerful asset is our heart. By using their simple and fast-acting exercises, you’ll learn to respond to stressful life situations with clarity, intelligence, and maturity. This book is not only about transforming your anger, it’s about transforming your life!”
—Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time for your Life

“The relationship between anger, heart attacks, and other adverse health effects is well documented. Studies also suggest that individuals who are unable to express anger and ‘get things off their chest’ are at the greatest risk. This book shows not only how to defuse this deadly emotion, but how you can transform it into positive feelings that will make you more productive rather than self-destructive.”
—Paul Rosch, MD, president, The American Institute of Stress, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry, New York Medical College, author of The Doctor’s Guide to Instant Stress Relief, and editor of Stress Medicine

“This new book, Transforming Anger, is excellent. Refreshingly simple and easy to read, the book offers profound insights into the most critical issue of our day: our violence towards self, world, and other. Surely the work is pertinent to our times and fills a serious personal-social need.”
—Joseph Chilton Pearce, author, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, and The Biology of Transcendence

“In these days when both health professionals and the public are apt to turn to medication whenever anything goes wrong, Transforming Anger is a welcome breath of fresh air. Here is a technique and scientifically-based method for developing self-control that does not short-circuit normal biological regulatory processes.”
—Karl H. Pribram MD, Ph.D., (Hon. Multi), distinguished research professor, Georgetown and George Mason Universities; professor emeritus, Stanford and Radford Universities, author, Language of the Brain and Brain and Perception; and coauthor, Freud’s Project Reassessed and Plans and the Structure of Behavior

“Transforming Anger points out that this powerful negative emotion can not only affect our health, but also impair out ability to think and reason clearly. I have been teaching the tools discussed in this new book since 1997. These tools , proven effective in breaking the cycle of anger and all of its consequences, are extremely easy to learn and are based on elegant scientific research that has taught us how the heart and the brain communicate.”
—Bruce C. Wilson, MD, chairman, board of directors, Heart Hospital of Milwaukee, former director, University of Pittsburgh Heart Institute

“How much energy do you waste being angry during your average day? What effect does that have on those you care about? In Transforming Anger, Doc Childre and Rozman give you a series of easy-to-learn, highly effective tools and the science behind them, showing you how to prevent that loss of energy and heal those relationships. A much needed fix for our fast-paced, often overwhelming lives.”
—Lee Lipsenthal, MD, medical director, Lifestyle Advantage and The Dean Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease

About the Author

Doc Childre is the founder and chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Institute of HeartMath, the chairman of HeartMath LLC, and chairman and CEO of Quantum Intech. He is the author of seven books and a consultant to business leaders, scientists, educators and the entertainment industry on Intui-Technology. His HeartMath System and proprietary heart rhythm technology for coherence building, called the Freeze-Framer, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Harvard Business Review, Prevention magazine, Psychology Today, Army Times, New York Newsday, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and on NBC’s Today Show, ABC Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, CNN Headline News, CNN.com, as well as numerous other publications and television programs around the world

He and his coauthor Deborah Rozman, Ph.D., wrote Overcoming Emotional Chaos. He also wrote The How-To-Book of Teen Self-Discovery and coauthored The HeartMath Solution and From Chaos to Coherence.

Debora Rozman, Ph.D., is a psychologist and author with thirty years of experience as an educator and business executive. She is President of Quantum Intech, overseeing strategic alliances and the expansion of HeartMath technologies worldwide. Dr. Rozman is a key spokesperson for the HeartMath system, giving media interviews and keynote addresses on heart intelligence and Intui-Technologies for executives, scientists, and health professionals throughout the world. She is author of four books and is listed in Who’s Who in California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157224352X
• ISBN-13: 978-1572243521
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.4 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #78 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Mood Disorders

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No more raging maniac August 7, 2006

By Hope

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am so thankful that I found this book. I had fallen into a terrible pattern of screaming uncontrollably at my kids and then later having to apologize. My kids were afraid of me and how I would react. This book made sense to me from page one. Every page has been an "Ah-ha" moment of how I have conditioned my heart and mind to respond with anger. It has been so worth the money. I am now using the teachniques and ideas from the book to recondition my heart and mind to respond more calmly. My kids and husband have noticed a difference. And I definitely have. I feel so much better physically and mentally (less outburts mean less guilt and shame for how my anger was affecting my kids). I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking for real and doable ways to reduce your anger. Good luck!

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely exploration of mind-body emotional health June 23, 2004

By Jed Shlackman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This book builds on the most recent research from the Institute of HeartMath about the connections between the heart, nervous system, and emotional processing. It promotes a type of biofeedback application called FreezeFrame which uses heart rhythm coherence monitoring with emotional skill-building techniques to help handle anger, anxiety, and other negative emotional reactions. By integrating the body (especially the heart and nervous system) with subconscious emotional processing and conscious awareness a holistic model of resolving emotional issues is outlined. This approach is quite valuable, and both experimental and clinical evidence are increasingly showing the superiority of mind-body approaches as compared to drugs and talk-oriented therapies. A new book by a University of Pittsburgh doctor called "Instinct To Heal" discusses this trend further. In fact, my own clinical observations lead me to conclude that medications tend to perpetuate psychological difficulties, as they merely repress natural symptoms produced by the mind-body feedback system and often trigger further impairment of internal balancing mechanisms. Just as people can feel "better" while they are taking alcohol and other recreational drugs [especially when they have ongoing access to drugs to avoid the withdrawal phase], people will often feel better under the influence of prescribed psychotropics, not realizing that they are just suppressing a natural feedback system and temporarily escaping from an opportunity for healing and integration. Once the drugs wear off you can have major problems in addition to any immediate adverse effects that may have been triggered by drug use. Fortunately, HeartMath techniques can be used with or without medications or any other types of therapies and interventions, and I suspect that they would be very useful in helping people wean themselves from drugs by helping restore the body's natural coherence and regulatory abilities. The HeartMath approach can provide lasting emotional healing and is supported by solid research, some of which has significant implications about the nature of consciousness and reality that challenge status quo beliefs in the healing arts and sciences. This book explains the HeartMath research and therapeutic approach clearly, and anyone seeking more information about the technology and software can visit the Institute's web site.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't Get Mad. Don't Get Even, Either. April 14, 2012

By MoseyOn

Format:Paperback

Because angry words or actions are triggered by genuine emotion, stopping them can be very difficult. Somehow, the trick is to interrupt the automatic link between emotion and action. Angry words follow their triggering emotion as easily as laughter or kindness follow theirs. How to disrupt that sequence, when there is usually so little time to think about your reaction? Isn't the reaction simply the brain's easiest response to a given stimulus? Yes . . . but. That seems to be the answer for the authors of this psycho-physiological approach to anger and its management. And they may well be right, but it is much easier said than done. There are two basic principles behind the book: 1) there is a close connection between the heart and the brain; 2) the person trying to overcome the negative effects of anger should focus on learning techniques for smoothing heart rhythms before anger's negative manifestations take over. The book attempts to teach those techniques. The techniques themselves do not come across as very complicated. The most difficult part is that to be effective, they must be applied at the most difficult moment--right when anger is being triggered, right when frustration is highest, right when reason and conscious control are not guiding action. So it's not as easy as it sounds. Not easy at all, in fact. Effective? I don't know--too early to tell. Holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl described the space between stimulus and response as the place where we choose, a place where we have freedom of action. But exercising that freedom can be enormously difficult, because you may not know you have it until the moment has passed and you reflect with regret on yet another angry reaction you wish you could take back. I can report modest results, but modest results are not a transformation. There is much about the book that makes sense, but also much about it that makes me skeptical. Listening to the heart, recalling the feelings associated with loved ones or meaningful places, trying to lock in those feelings so that they are available at moments of stress, and so on--some of it makes me think I'm reading the kind of pop psychology that has contributed to the rise of the massive self-help industry. Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe I just need to shed some of my skepticism and give heart-focus a chance. Anything is better than letting anger drive action. There is far too much of that in the world.