The Horrid "A" Word - Anger!

Anger is a natural emotion that affects everyone daily. Still, when we express our anger, people often suggest we need anger management or that the feeling is somehow misplaced. Yet few people try to look behind the expression of anger to find the cause, and most people take it at face value.

Anger is healthy; it is passion and resilience; it shows that we are alive and engaging in our surroundings. Anger is sometimes an ethical response to a situation. It can fuel creativity, but sometimes it can be misunderstood or interpreted. It is designed to protect us from danger but can have a dark side, which shows in violence and physical damage.

Anger signifies different things for different people at different times and for different reasons. There are many types of anger; research suggests six, which fall into three categories: passive, open, and assertive. However, three types stand out in my mind when it comes to diabetes: chronic anger, overwhelming anger, and self-abusive anger.

Anger is often a disguise or defence against far more elusive and painful feelings or situations we are dealing with. Many emotions fuel it, such as fear, anxiety, sadness, and stress.

We all experience anger in our lives, be it day-to-day or once-off. It stems from a need for control. The interesting thing about anger is that it tends to surface when you feel safe enough to know you will survive the outcome. However, it can be a very fatiguing emotion and alienate you if you don’t try to find the cause and a workable solution to the anger.

Anger is a healthy emotion, and we should not feel ashamed or insecure when we experience it. We need to listen to anger and be aware of how it manifests. Feelings can seep out in ways we don’t intend. For example, we can get sick with a bad cold or the flu. This is the body showing symptomatic expression of psychological distress and telling us to take a break.

When we experience anger, we need to try and find the cause of the anger. In this way, we can then work to find a workable solution to it. However, we need to realize that anger does not need to be logical or valid for us to experience it.

When living with a chronic illness such as diabetes, we experience anger more often than we would like. As mentioned, anger is a natural emotional reaction to what the mind and imagination are doing, and sometimes, like us, they argue. We can be angry with our doctors because they don’t have a cure or the answer as to why we have this condition; we may even find ourselves angry that they don’t have it, yet they are hard on us when our management of the condition is "off" to them.

Chronic anger develops slowly and can be used as psychological armour to protect ourselves from suffering, almost like a shield to hide behind. If it’s not worked through, it can have adverse effects on the body and the mind, leading to alcohol and drug abuse to avoid dealing with the reasons we are angry, leading to self-abusive anger.

Simply put, self-abusive anger, as the name suggests, is when we start to do damage to ourselves. This can either be physical or emotional damage and will most likely occur over time when we feel the most overwhelmed. Loss, envy, and frustration go hand in hand with anger. When the body experiences anger, it initiates the stress hormone and increases the blood pressure and heart rate. The stress hormone triggers the release of cortisol in the body, which increases sugar levels over time and harms the body. This can lead to more anger, resulting in overwhelmed anger, which, when living with a chronic illness, is something we will experience all too often.

There are many things to remember when looking at anger. Still, the main thing I like to keep in mind is: don’t let anyone diminish the importance of feeling angry, and don’t let anyone criticize your anger, not even yourself.

You need to ask yourself: What do you need when angry? To be left alone, someone to see things from your point of view, support, to be believed, a drink? What do you need at that moment?

Maybe it's simply to be heard, have your feelings validated, and remember that whatever you feel is completely fine.

Ask yourself, Is the anger giving me any advantage? If not, acknowledge it, see what can be causing it, and then look to resolve the issue. Sounds very simple, and when we are angry, we tend to forget all rhyme and reason and just explode…

Again, it's ok; we just need to find a solution to the anger, which can be removing ourselves from the situation or even simply breathing and counting to ten. Whatever works to get you back to a calm space is the key. We would not be humans if we did not experience anger. The key is to try and control it, move through it, and not let it control us and lead to more physical and emotional damage.