A-Z of Blogging: A is for Anger #AtoZChallenge
26 posts. 26 days. 26 letters of the alphabet, one blog post beginning with each letter.
As I mentioned in my weekly round-up, thanks to JoAnn for alerting me to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I’m jumping into things a week late, but I’m excited to join in and that’s what counts.
A is for Anger
Feelings of anger are difficult to avoid on the cancer path. It’s a perfectly normal response to the crap you are going through.
Anger at the diagnosis and how it has interrupted your life.
Anger at how your body will never look the same again.
Anger at the pain in your body, nausea from chemo, the neuropathy in your fingers and toes… the list goes on and on.
My greatest anger is focused on the fact that we’ve lost so many beautiful women in this community. I’m so angry at this disease for taking them from their friends and families and leaving a huge hole in the world.
I’m angry at the brain tumor that stole my Mum away from me like a thief in the night; and the medical team that misdiagnosed that tumor stealing precious time from her family.
I’m angry that my oncologist never told me about chemo-induced fertility; that I had a brief window of time in which to preserve fertility before treatment begins. And because he never told me, I live with the pain of infertility every day.
So much anger.
And yet underneath all this anger, I know there is grief and an ocean of sadness.
How do you cope with cancer anger?
I wanted to be able to finish this post by sharing some wisdom about how to handle cancer anger, but honestly, I don’t have anything wise to say beyond knowing that anger is a perfectly valid response and the first step is to acknowledge this. So I’m turning it over to you. How do you cope with cancer anger?
Can you share any advice with readers today?
Thank you for being so open and honest about your cancer anger, Marie.
I’ve never been one who does Anger very well… According to the 5 Stages of Grief, we all go through an Anger stage – but I think I fairly quickly work my way through the stages to reach Acceptance. Either that, or perhaps I’m stuck in Denial…
As you say, anger is a valid response. However, if anger is allowed to continue long-term, it can become destructive.
One thing I’ve noticed: when people display anger while talking about something that happened in the past, it’s like they’re re-living the event as if it were happening now, rather than describing the event from a viewpoint that’s separated by time.
I think that’s where Acceptance is important.
Accepting what happened doesn’t mean that you’ve forgotten about it, or that it somehow seems “fair” now. It’s simply a detachment from the pain and anger that you felt at the time – as if you were looking down on the event from a distant point in outer space, without being emotionally attached to it.
[This is a method that’s used in Time Line Therapy – a branch of Neuro Linguistic Programming. It can be very effective]
I hope that makes sense and is in some way helpful. x
(P.S. I’m tempted to have a go at the A-Z blog challenge – not sure I’d manage to post every day during April, though!!)
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Thank you so much Julia for taking the time to leave such a helpful comment. You’ve really helped me today with your wise words. As for the A-Z challenge, do join in. I think I may struggle a bit with posting every day – but that’s ok, no one said we had do this perfectly 😉
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Anger needs to be called out for its destructive nature because, at its worst, when it turns to rage, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, as do your levels of adrenaline.
Unfortunately anger can also be both a mask for blame and an abandonment of personal responsibility. And being angry about a disease is a most ineffective and negative way of dealing with it.
This is one emotion I use only as a last resort!
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Rod what a wonderfully insightful comment. I am really struck by what you say about anger being both a mask for blame and an abandonment of personal responsibility – food for thought indeed!
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Hi Marie. Yes, anger. I totally relate to everything you wrote on this excellent post. As you know, I had to struggle with infertility, too, and I was never told about that window of time when I could’ve harvested my eggs. I love your 26 letter blog posts. I’ve been away from the blogosphere due to a major lack of time and feeling pretty depressed. Maybe writing will help lift it. You are a role model and a mentor to me, Marie. This series of posts inspire me to perhaps begin writing again.
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Oh please do start writing again – we miss you in the blogosphere. Why not take this challenge as a starting point – it doesn’t matter when you start, just jump right on in – and don’t feel you have to go from AtoZ – jump in to whichever letter calls to you Beth xxxx
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Oh yes, I totally agree. I have a LOT of anger too. And sometimes it comes out aka boils over at inopportune times. Thank you for sharing!!
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Abigail, it’s lovely to “meet” you. Nancy Stordahl recommended you to me and I am looking forward to getting to you better.
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Wonderful!!
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I can’t really speak to this, except that at one point I was misdiagnosed with cancer. I spent the next two weeks living in sheer terror, but all the follow up tests came back negative. My doctor tried to crack a joke about the whole thing, and that… that was the part that really made me angry.
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How awful. I can imagine just how angry that made you – it would upset me greatly too.
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