Today is a big day for you and your little ones. While your daughter has a ballet show, your son has his first maths test, and you have an important presentation at work that you’ve been preparing for all month.

As always, you’ve ensured that you and your children are fully prepared for these events, and you feel like you have everything under control. But this morning of all mornings, your little rascals aren’t cooperating with getting ready for school. They’re mucking around with their breakfast, throwing food, and arguing incessantly. Inside you start to feel an uncomfortably familiar feeling. Your heart starts to beat faster, your palms start to sweat, and you start to feel incredibly irritable and even a little bit angry.

What on earth is going on?

We’ve been talking a lot about the subject of anger, what happens in our brains when we get angry, and what we can do to control this anger. But what about the nervous system? What role does it have to play in all of this uncomfortable emotion?

What do our nervous systems have to do with our emotions?

The nervous system is as responsible for our anger as our brains. When it comes to feelings of anger, it’s easy to point to our brains as the source of this uncomfortable emotion. However, our nervous systems are equally as responsible, as they trigger the fight or flight response.

The nervous system activates the sympathetic nervous system. The fight or flight response kickstarts into action when our nervous system senses that something bad might be happening, or a threat might be near. It sends a signal to our limbic system, which consequently activates the sympathetic nervous system.

This, in turn, triggers physical reactions within the body. This means that the body is suddenly filled with stress hormones, which in turn triggers some physical (and often very uncomfortable) reactions. For example, the heart starts pounding, the blood pressure increases, breathing becomes harder and faster, muscles tighten up, the body starts trembling or shaking, and pupils can even dilate.

These reactions are designed to keep us safe. Although these reactions can be incredibly unnerving, they are actually designed to keep us safe by alerting us of danger, and preparing us to either fight, freeze, or run away from a threat. When humans first evolved, these reactions would have kept us safe from predators like the woolly mammoth or sabre-toothed tiger.

The sympathetic nervous system helps to divert energy to where it is most needed. As well as triggering physical reactions within the body, the sympathetic nervous system also helps to shut down any unnecessary systems in the body, this is so it can divert all attention and energy to where it is really needed in that moment. These ‘unnecessary’ systems happen to include the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps a person to think logically. This is why it’s so hard to think in a logical manner when you’re in a panicked state of fight or flight.

The nervous system is what helps a parent react quickly when their child needs them. Whether the reaction is to a piece of rope that could be perceived as a snake, or to the sight of your child climbing too high at the playground, the nervous system is what helps you react in a matter of seconds to perceived danger.

We have physical reactions to situations that don’t pose a physical threat. When we were cavemen, most of the threats we faced were physical, but in modern times we conversely face mainly psychological threats. For example, difficult colleagues, troublesome children, and intrusive in-laws. However, our brains haven’t yet learned how to deal with these types of threats, which is why we still have a physical response to them, even though they won’t harm us physically.

The nervous system needs to be exercised and taken care of. Just like the brain, the nervous system needs to be taken care of, because when we are well-rested, calm, fed, well-exercised etc, we are much less likely to be reactive and less vulnerable to having our buttons pushed.

The more often we are triggered, the closer we become to being more reactive to smaller things. For example, if your child asks you for chocolate over and over and over again, eventually it will start to annoy you. It will get to the point that as soon as they even utter the word ‘chocolate’ you are ready to lose your temper without even thinking about it.

What happens in our nervous systems when we get angry?

The fight-or-flight response is normal. Unii explains.