Your Mental Health is a product of your life experiences—including the environments you live, work, and socialize in. As a result, these environments can be a source of support, fulfillment, comfort, motivation, stress, angst, sadness, irritability, fear, or anger.
The places, people, and things you surround yourself with in daily life play a key role in your overall mental and emotional wellness. Environmental stressors can contribute to overwhelming feelings of stress and anger. This, in turn, can lead to or exacerbate Mental Health Conditions such as Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Substance Abuse Disorders, Addictive Behaviors, marital discord, and more.
Understanding the environmental issues that can contribute to anger and stress grants insight into your own Mental Health and allows you to seek professional intervention from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Learn more about how these sources of stress and anger work in your life with this overview.
The Link Between Environment, Stress, and Anger
Stress and anger often intertwine with one another, making them difficult to distinguish from one another. Both can appear in response to real or perceived threats in your life. They can also both cause or exacerbate each other, leading to a vicious negative cycle of stress triggering anger, anger triggering stress, and so on.
Furthermore, stress and anger share many symptoms, such as muscle tension, fatigue, mood swings, and increased irritation or aggression. Without a clear cause—and without professional intervention—these symptoms become stressors in their own right, further exaggerating feelings of stress and anger.
Poor stress management and anger management make it more difficult to handle anger in a healthy way and vice versa. The longer an environmental stressor persists in your life, the harder it is to regulate your responses and maintain a healthy, productive mindset. This struggle can lead to escalated anger responses to the situations causing you stress.
Type of Environmental Stressors
Stress can come from anywhere. Even positive circumstances—such as an exciting new opportunity at work—can lead to stress. You cannot always prevent or change the environmental factors that cause stress and anger. However, being able to identify them as the source of your issues is the first step to altering your responses. With the appropriate interventions by a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, you can recognize environmental stressors in your life and create productive thought patterns and subsequent emotional reactions to them.
Below are a few common types of environmental stressors that might be behind poor anger and stress management in your life.
Aesthetics of the Space
The look and layout of the physical environment you are in can influence your stress levels. Picture an office space with hard, uncomfortable furniture, a messy desk, no natural light, and blank, lifeless décor. Now imagine an office where everything is tidy and organized, there are lush green plants and pleasing artwork decorating the space, and the furniture is comfortable and luxurious. Which setting would you rather work in? Which one would stress you out if you spent eight hours a day there?
Clean, tidy, and well-decorated spaces can create feelings of calm, safety, and steadiness. They help you feel secure and create a meaningful environment for you to work, socialize, or relax in. On the other hand, chaotic, cluttered, and dirty environments can increase feelings of anxiety, restlessness, and irritation—creating a source of stress, anxiety, angst, and irritability in your life.
Sensory Factors and Overstimulation
Your senses and your mind are intertwined. If your senses are overwhelmed, it is easy for your thoughts and emotions to become overwhelming and intolerable, as well. Sensory factors such as lighting, temperature, color, sounds, smells, and so on can create either a relaxing or stressful environment. Imagine standing on a busy street corner with the glaring lights of billboards, the chaotic sound of traffic, the smell of engine exhaust, and dozens of people talking loudly on their phones. These factors are overstimulating; they grate on the senses and overwhelm the brain, creating tension and discomfort.
Common examples of sensory-based stressors include feeling unmotivated while working beneath the harsh, artificial lights of an office or becoming agitated in response to loud, sudden noises.
People
People are also a common source of stress. From your spouse to the stranger you crossed paths with on the way to work, anyone in your life can create or exaggerate stress and anger. Factors such as arguments or conflicting goals and actions can lead to developing more sources of stress in your life. That stress intensifies if it stems from people you love and trust, such as your spouse, colleagues, partners, friends, or family members.
Familiarity and Associations
People, objects, and even circumstances can trigger memories of past experiences and emotions. These can be both positive and negative. When they are negative—such as seeing a stranger dressed the same way as someone who once hurt you—they become a source of significant stress. These associations can trigger traumatic responses and bring up feelings of fear, grief, anxiety, sadness, despair, rage, and anger.
Environmental Stress at Home
Different stressors can also revolve around certain areas of your life, making those areas and the way you feel in those situations more negative. Your home environment can be a source of stress due to the people you live with, the state of your home, or even the location you live in.
Climate and weather are among the most common environmental issues that can contribute to anger and stress management. For example, extreme temperatures affect your mood. Storms can be a source of worry or fear. Natural disasters are also a common source of trauma and pain, leading to more stress and anger in your life.
Other environmental stressors that exist in and around the home include discrimination in your area, neighborhood crime rates, pollution, and more.
Environmental Stress at Work
Environmental stress can also be specific to your work. Factors such as upcoming deadlines, annual reviews, or important presentations can create pressure, which leads to feelings of stress and anger. Major changes in your career—including changes in business operations, a promotion or career change, and major news in your industry—can also be a source of stress.
Additionally, issues such as not meeting work goals, facing disciplinary actions, contentious legal battles, employee burnout, hostile work environment, discrimination in the workplace, or a lack of value and respect can cause stress in your professional life. All these factors create tension, frustration, worry, and other negative experiences that can bleed into other aspects of your life, such as your home life or relationships.
Managing Anger and Stress With Blair Wellness Group
Environmental stressors do not have to hinder your mental and emotional well-being. If you are looking for a therapist for Anger Management in Los Angeles, Irvine, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Bel Air, Century City, Brentwood, Westwood, Huntington Beach, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, and the surrounding areas, contact Blair Wellness Group to see how evidence-based treatment plans from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist can help you.
