132 I Can Read You Like a Book E
tell-tale signs? By using a whole-body approach and narrowing to
the differences between anger and distraction or anger and fear,
for example, you can find the signs. Begin by understanding what
picture the canvas presents, and then look at the individual colors—
the hands, feet, eyes, lips, nose, and so on.
Anger involves an energy level so high that it seeps out, even
when a person tries to mask it. The angry person has a consuming
drive to deal with the cause. Direction is not an issue, either. This
individual has unity of purpose in body and mind: eliminate the cause
of his anger.
In men, the direction manifests itself in physical displays of
aggression, whether overt or masked. In women, this demonstration
can simply be a sharpening of the wit or more feminine behavior. The
commonality is hyper-demonstrative gender behavior. Women rarely
fistfight—they “catfight” instead. Similar to cats, they pose and growl
a lot, often with little contact other than the swipe of a claw.
Angry men have a decidedly external focus, in some cases
even to the detriment of the well-cultivated persona. The old Southern
gentleman can, indeed, be pushed to beat your ass in the parking
lot. In women, this focus is never quite so narrow until rage, the
next level of intensity, enters the picture. If men are prepared for
hand-to-hand combat early on, women are prepared to fence.
Women will typically focus on the cause, while keeping in mind the
preservation of species. By her very nature, a woman remains more
cognitive than a man during times of anger, if not as in control. The
root of this difference is the size of the amygdala, the brain struc-
ture associated with aggression. It’s larger in men than in women,
so while angry men move, angry women tend to observe and process.
