Anger is a common human experience in response to loss and change in our lives. When we struggle daily with pulmonary hypertension, it is to be expected that we would experience anger.
Anger reminds us that we can no longer do what we have always done. Anger pays attention to our losses and ratchets them up in our mind so we are confronted with the physical and emotional limitations of our illness.
Anger teams up with irritability and reminds us of how unfair life can be. Anger is a natural emotional consequence to mass change in our life; however we also need to pay attention to its dark side.
The dark side of anger says unequivocally: “You deserve to have an outburst; it is ok to shout or throw things at others because you are suffering.” It also says: “You have to have a meltdown in order for others to truly understand what you are going through.”
Anger, when it is dark, links up with self-righteousness and tells us that we are justified in our response: that we are the only ones battling with the impact of pulmonary hypertension and that we are all alone in our struggle.
If we are wise we can become more alert to the dark side of anger and undermine its temptations.
The next time we are angry we can take a “time out” so we don’t inflict our pain onto others in the moment. In the time out, we can write out a list of all of our feelings and thoughts expressing everything on paper and releasing anger’s poison so we can become more aware of what lies beneath the anger.
The next time we are angry we can take a “time out” so we don’t inflict our pain onto others in the moment. In the time out, we can write out a list of all of our feelings and thoughts expressing everything on paper and releasing anger’s poison so we can become more aware of what lies beneath the anger.
The most powerful way to think about anger is that it is the tip of the iceberg, and that a whole array of feelings lies beneath it. If we discover the feelings underneath anger, we have found an effective way to drain its power and release it.
Anger is a bit like an onion, we peel one layer and then another arises. Anger is often fuelled by all the losses we experience due to the impact of pulmonary hypertension on our lives.
Anger can provide a path to discover all of the emotional pain that we are enduring, and by discovering it, we can lighten our emotional load and move closer to experiencing moments of peace.