ANJANEE Sharma was 18 when she learned what anger could do to a body. The lesson didn’t come from a classroom, a textbook or a psychology lecture; it came from her grandmother.
The family argument that day was nothing unusual – tempers rising, voices overlapping, the kind of dispute most families have and forget. But this one didn’t end the way arguments usually do.
In its immediate aftermath, her grandmother had a stroke. She survived it but the five years that followed were spent largely bedridden.
Anjanee, still a teenager, watched it happen – and watched what came after. She said it was something she carried through life that did not come from a psychology textbook or a scientific study while she pursued her academic studies at a university. It came from her grandmother.
Born in Bangkok and now based in Kuala Lumpur, Anjanee left home for boarding school at six, an education that would eventually take her through India, the United Kingdom and Australia.
It was an unusually itinerant childhood and it left its mark: a lasting curiosity about people, culture and how the mind and the body respond to what we feel.
Stroke experience
At 18, she could not have known how deeply her grandmother’s stroke experience would shape her life.
Years later, after studying psychology and entering the field of mental health, she began to see her grandmother’s experience through another lens.
She came to understand that the mind does not exist in isolation. What happens in the mind can have real effects on the body. And the body, in its own quiet way, is listening.
That understanding eventually helped pave the way for her to become a professional therapist, certified trainer and mental health coach working with individuals and corporate organisations.
Her journey has since brought together two worlds that are often discussed separately: the language of modern science and the enduring insights of wisdom traditions.
Recently, she gave a talk, “Where modern science meets wisdom”, at the Brahma Kumaris on Lorong Maarof in Kuala Lumpur. At the heart of the discussion was a deceptively simple question: What does science tell us about anger?
The body remembers
Anger is a human emotion. It is neither inherently good nor bad. But when anger becomes intense, something happens beneath the surface.
Anjanee said the body prepares itself for what it perceives as a threat. Heart rate can accelerate. Blood pressure can rise. Stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, can be released. The cardiovascular system can suddenly work harder.
Research has begun to quantify that biological response. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the European Heart Journal examined cardiovascular events following episodes of anger.
Researchers reported that during the two hours following an angry outburst, the rate of heart attack or acute coronary syndrome was approximately 4.7 times higher while the rate of stroke was approximately 3.6 times higher than during other periods.
The numbers are striking
But she is careful about what they do and what they don’t.
She said this does not mean that every episode of anger will cause a heart attack or stroke. For most people, the absolute risk from a single episode remains small and many other medical factors contribute to cardiovascular disease.
If anger can place the body under such intense pressure, is holding on to anger really worth the cost?
For her, however, the most fascinating part of anger is not always the moment when it erupts. Sometimes, it is what happens afterwards.
For example, an argument that ends at 10 in the morning. The voices stop. The other person walks away. The room becomes quiet. Life moves on. But inside our own heads, the argument may continue.
She said at 10 o’clock at night, we can still be having the same argument alone. We replay what was said, think about what we should have said, reconstruct the other person’s expression, repeat their words, rewrite our response and imagine another ending.
The other person may be sitting peacefully somewhere, eating dinner, unaware that the argument has been replaying all day.
This, she suggests, is where modern science and ancient wisdom begin to converge. Science helps explain the body’s stress response. Wisdom asks us to examine why we continue feeding the thought. Time to go within.
The two approaches may use different languages but they arrive at a similar invitation: pause and become aware of what is happening within us.
What’s the solution to anger?
Anjanee believes the answer may begin with something remarkably ordinary. She said we cannot control every person, circumstance or event around us.
The solution to tackling anger is in learning to pause between what happens and how we respond. That pause can be small – sometimes it only takes a few seconds of deep breathing. Those seconds can matter. Instead of responding immediately to anger, slow down the breath, inhale gently for four counts and exhale slowly for six counts.
The exercise isn’t meant to make anger disappear, nor is it an invitation to suppress difficult emotions or pretend something hurtful didn’t happen. It is about creating enough space to choose – between the event and the reaction.
There can be a moment of awareness and within that moment lies an opportunity. We simply have to avoid allowing emotions to make the decision for us.
Sometimes, wisdom does not arrive as a grand revelation. Sometimes it arrives quietly, between one breath and the next.
Practise a few seconds of silence (meditation) with slower exhalation.
This is the lesson she has carried since she was 18: Emotions do not always end when the argument ends. Long after the voices fall silent, we may continue replaying the anger within ourselves.
Her grandmother’s stroke became a moment she would never forget – a reminder of how suddenly life can change and of why learning to pause matters.
We may not be able to control what someone says to us, what happens around us or what life places in our path. But before anger speaks for us, we often have a small window to choose differently.
One pause. One breath. One moment of silence. Because sometimes, the most powerful response to anger is not another word – it is the wisdom to remain silent.
M. Krishnamoorthy is a freelance writer, media coach and former associate professor and undercover journalist. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com