Why do I get angry when holding my arms above my head?

January 28, 2007 1:16 PM

Help me understand my feelings of anger when I am required to hold my arms above my head for any amount of time.

So both me and my girlfriend were wondering this today, while we were hanging some new artwork around the house. It seems that whenever we are forced to hold our arms above our head, and specifically above around ear level, and exert any type of force on anything, there is this mounting rage that we both experience.

We are both healthy people and work out and whatnot, so it's not simply muscle pain or soreness. It's this really strange feeling we both can only describe as anger, and we don't get that specific feeling in any other situation. Anyone have insight on this phenomenom? Are we crazy?

posted by lazaruslong to health & fitness (35 comments total)

I'm baffled, but my wife seems to understand. She describes it as irritation yet can't contribute any reasoning behind it.
posted by empyrean at 1:24 PM on January 28, 2007

Now that I think about it I do get really irritable doing that too. It certainly explains a lot of near breakups over where to put a simple plcture.
posted by fshgrl at 1:30 PM on January 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Loss of control. Somebody could come along and give your nuts a yank, and you can't do anything about it.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 1:33 PM on January 28, 2007 [6 favorites]

Perhaps in a previous lifetime you were robbed at gunpoint.

I spent many years coaching gymnasts and acrobats; though they are often holding their arms up for long periods of time, this particular issue never surfaced.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:38 PM on January 28, 2007

When I first read this I thought: "Hey! I also feel irritable in that position!" but on further reflection realized I feel irritable in any position which is uncomfortable for prolonged periods of time.

So I'll go with power of suggestion.
posted by vacapinta at 1:41 PM on January 28, 2007

Out of curiosity I just tried doing this, and it didn't make me angry. Anecdotally.
posted by amro at 1:41 PM on January 28, 2007

Is it fair to consider it "frustration"?

Like Saucy Intruder said, that it's a loss of control, a situation where seemingly simple everyday manipulation of objects becomes inordinately more difficult?

oneirodynia's anecdote would seem to suggest that it's the attempted task with your hands over your head, not the position itself, that leads to the anger.
posted by ibmcginty at 1:47 PM on January 28, 2007

I get that too. There is something about it, I always figured it was becaues my SO was slow with the hammer or something.
posted by stormygrey at 1:47 PM on January 28, 2007

Does it remind you of raising your hand in school to ask a question, and just waiting with your arm uncomfortably over your head?
posted by sophie at 1:47 PM on January 28, 2007

ibmcginty is right. whenever i have to change my light bulb (with the stepladder a few crucial inches short of a safe and comfortable reaching distance) i get very irritable and angry at the precariousness of the situation. same thing happened when i had to fix a window drape fixture-- the very slightest setback in this process made me throw the hammer across the room.
posted by milkdropcoronet at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2007

milkdropcoronet: How about when you are reaching down to try to reach a screw in an awkward place and cant make it happen? This only happens when you reach up?
posted by vacapinta at 1:52 PM on January 28, 2007

When I first read this I thought: "Hey! I also feel irritable in that position!" but on further reflection realized I feel irritable in any position which is uncomfortable for prolonged periods of time.

I think that's it. It's akin to mucking in a cramped space (under a sink, a crawlspace, etc.). Or for those that don't feel the same way, imagine you're five years old again and your father banging around in a crawlspace, swearing and carrying on while you listen nearby in wide-eyed amazement.

Perhaps in this case the irritability is of particular note because applying force at that level is especially difficult. You lose most of the leverage from your body weight if you're attempting to apply force forward, and the average person's arms tire extremely quickly when the blood is running out of them, meaning you won't have the control over your own body you expect to have; this can be an extremely frustrating experience in much the same way many people panic or get angry when they feel constricted (tangled up in something, etc.). Have you ever noticed this?

Also, if you've ever seen any of those EPSN World's Strongest Man competitions, there's always an event wherein the competitors are asked to hold something heavy at arm's length for as long as possible, which, as it turns out, is not nearly as long as they'd be able to otherwise carry the weight.

:@
posted by The God Complex at 1:55 PM on January 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I agree with Saucy Intruder. It's a vulnerable position. You can't put your dukes up if you are confronted.
posted by LoriFLA at 1:56 PM on January 28, 2007

milkdropcoronet: How about when you are reaching down to try to reach a screw in an awkward place and cant make it happen? This only happens when you reach up?

I find that up is far worse, probably owing to the "tiring/inaccuracy of physical command" thing that I mentioned. There's something infuriating about not being able to do something as simple as adjust as adjusting a light fixture because your body doesn't seem to be cooperating properly.

I recognized this some years ago and now make an effort to get myself in a positive frame of mind before attempting such delicate procedures ;)
posted by The God Complex at 1:58 PM on January 28, 2007

For me it's any sort of position where I'm trying to perform a physical task and can't exert my usual amount of force or lack the lateral muscle strength to keep myself stable. This includes being high on a ladder, squeezing into a tight spot, trying to get around something, or perching precariously while concentrating. I've always attributed it to fear of instability. Basically, very similar to what God Complex describes.
posted by migurski at 2:00 PM on January 28, 2007

It definitely doesn't happen when trying to screw something in lower than myself. I think it's the blood running out of the arms, or at least that's part of it.

Weirdly enough, the correlation to waving my arm above my head waiting to be called on in school triggered that same sort of sensory memory. I think we're on to something here.


Maybe it's a combination of the natural stress of trying to exert force, combined with the flow of blood out of the arms? Perhaps this also causes a change in blood flow to the brain? That would explain why my head gets "hot", which also happens when I get angry.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:00 PM on January 28, 2007

Is it also related to the instant, uncontrollable, there-and-gone flush of rage I feel when I hit the top of my head, against a cabinet or whatever?
posted by migurski at 2:02 PM on January 28, 2007

migurski: I seem to recall reading that head wounds bleed a lot, or cause a rush of blood to that area. Perhaps that could explain it? Maybe the blood flows out of the arms and into the brain, causing a simulation of a head wound? I may be stretching here, but something rings true there.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:03 PM on January 28, 2007

Lazarus: I'd think it's more likely that this is an evolutionary, behavioral adaptation - your head contains soft, valuable stuff, so it's a good idea to be ready to pounce when it is messed with. The arms thing, though, I dunno. A useful desire to get the hell out of situations where you're not physically in control?
posted by migurski at 2:09 PM on January 28, 2007

This in no way answers your question, but it made me recall that making us stand with both hands raised up straight was a popular physical punishment when I was in the early years of grade school. It hurt, a lot.
posted by agent99 at 2:10 PM on January 28, 2007

Here's another wild-ass guess: your heart has to work harder to pump blood all the way up to your hands when they're up there, and the body releases some epinepherine to make the heart beat faster - and epinepherine is adrenaline, so you get a jacked-up adrenaline feeling.

Also, it reminds me of warrior pose in yoga - arms straight up. It always made me feel kind of warrior-like.
posted by selfmedicating at 2:10 PM on January 28, 2007

Maybe, when you were a toddler, an older sibling got a big kick out of holding candy or toys just out of your reach. It should be a common enough experience. Or maybe an adult disciplined you that way.
posted by Huplescat at 2:24 PM on January 28, 2007

I'm guessing it's because getting angry is a shortcut way of raising blood pressure.

Ordinarily, you only need enough pressure to pump blood up to the top of your head and back (along with overcoming the resistance of the capillaries and all that, of course) and to your feet and back (I wonder if those normally balance), but when you raise your arms blood has to go as much as a couple of feet higher, which is getting along toward 6% of an atmosphere more, for a static column.

So you get angry and voila!-- enough pressure. Oneirodynia's answer is interesting; I would try to explain his observation by guessing his athletes had already raised their blood pressure high enough by their warm-ups, or had unconsciously learned to raise pressure in anticipation by less disruptive means.

On preview, what selfmedicating said.
posted by jamjam at 2:26 PM on January 28, 2007

Another angle is that when you're holding something up you're usually waiting for someone else to secure it somehow, to screw the cabinet into the wall or mount the shelf bracket or whatever. I find if the other person does anything other than that task, and as quickly as possible, I snap at him. Bad time to chat about the weather, in other words.

For me it's because my arms are getting tired and the pressure of not dropping the thing gets more and more intense as time passes.
posted by bink at 2:30 PM on January 28, 2007

Thanks for asking this question! It had never really occurred to me before to wonder why installing window blinds, in particular, is the one home improvement job that reliably makes me grumpy as hell. I'd been blaming the heat, but I've done several other jobs of comparable fiddliness in hot conditions with scarcely any swearing.

I'll be testing for correlation between arm-raising and grumpiness for the rest of the bathroom renovation process, and maybe going one rung higher on the stepladder.
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 PM on January 28, 2007

Could the anger be a consequence of increased blood pressure as opposed to a way of raising it? I know that I reliably get an unexplained foul mood if I eat more than a small meal at a fast food place.
posted by teleskiving at 2:42 PM on January 28, 2007

I vote for changing blood pressure and the other biochemical changes working to deal with that. I get the same hot uncomfortable feeling (particularly in my head) as the blood drains from my arms and my body tries to pump it back up, but I don't interpret it as anger. You're getting a physiological change occuring and your body is attaching emotions to it, a common enough occurance.

The lack of control or other frustrations probably makes it worse, but I don't think they're a cause. Trying to apply force or holding up a weight increases the change in blood pressure making it more likely to happen in these circumstances. While it feels emotional, it's just physiology.

(Sidenote: blood doesn't go into the brain as such, it's seperated by the blood brain barrier. Instead the brain is bathed in cerebrospinal fluid. Increasing blood pressure around the brain can increase pressure directly on the brain though, and can probably affect csf pressure and flow.)
posted by shelleycat at 2:59 PM on January 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've often wondered about this, and noticed it in many other people too. Maybe the frustration and vulnerability mentioned upthread are magnified by the comparitive lack of strength you have holding your arms up - you get tired and achey so much quicker than doing other kinds of manual tasks, it often takes you by surpise and can feel like a personal weakness, a feeling which makes many people insecure and uncomfortable, especially combined with the naturally vulnerable position.
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:01 PM on January 28, 2007

I think it's got to have something to do with the frustration - you feel so weak in that position, you can hardly muster the strength to twist a light bulb etc. I get incredibly grumpy when I have to work above my head. Couple it with dropping whatever I'm working with, and you're in proper trouble...
posted by sann1657 at 3:27 PM on January 28, 2007

Are your shoulders tight, or do you hold a lot of tension in your shoulders?

I went to a yoga class once while I had a minor crick in my neck. We started doing downward-facing dog, which requires you to make a teepee-shape with your body, so that most of your weight ends up on your arms and hands, with your head hanging between them (so, basically, I was halfway upside down, but my arms were over my head). We held the position for a long time, and I was getting more and more irritated and frustrated, to the point of mentally swearing at the teacher in rather creatively obscene ways.

Suddenly something in my shoulder shifted, the crick disappeared, and all the irritation completely dissolved.

I think it's just that if you hold (emotional) tension in your shoulders, physically engaging those muscles re-engages the emotional tension. Which is why things like massage relax us -- we work out the physical tension, which releases the emotional tension.
posted by occhiblu at 4:02 PM on January 28, 2007

Also to be considered is the precise nature of the work involved, the fact that it involve tools relatively unfamiliar to most of us (most of us don't swing hammers every day, or drill holes and anchor drywall mounts), the gentle but critical opinions of others ("no, it needs to be a bit higher"), the fact that most hanging mechanisms are pretty fiddly and imprecise (hooks with nails through them, wire that doesn't want to hook on said hooks, random notches that are almost impossible to find when putting the frame to the nail, etc., etc.). It's a recipe for frustration.

Another task you would expect to elicit this response if it was purely physiological would be painting. It's not much fun but I don't think painting over your head elicits as much anger or frustration.

Hanging pictures, curtains, etc. seems like it should be a quick and simple task. When it doesn't turn out to be, well, you're going to get frustrated. Painting, on the other hand, you know what it's like going in and despite your enthusiasm you're well on your way to wishing it was done after three rolls of the roller, leaving you with nothing to be angry at when it comes time to climb the ladder to cut in the top of the walls about 2000 roller swipes later.
posted by maxwelton at 4:30 PM on January 28, 2007

I noticed that find any uncomfortable position that severely affects blood flow to be particularly frustrating. Arms-above-the-head is the most common one.

(I mostly fixed the need to experience this by buying a taller stepladder.)
posted by desuetude at 4:40 PM on January 28, 2007

I don't get it. Sorry. I am not sure what you are experiencing is normal, which of course does not mean it is not real.
posted by caddis at 5:21 PM on January 28, 2007

house-painters are often in this position and presumably aren't gripped with rage. i would guess it is either specific to your physiology or psychologically based.
posted by jjsonp at 7:21 PM on January 28, 2007

You're two years old. Everything interesting is at adult height, above your head. Your parents, source of security and comfort, are above your head. You are continually trying to interact with the world above your head, and you can't.

It's incredibly frustrating. You begin to cry.
posted by bigbigdog at 7:57 PM on January 28, 2007 [1 favorite]