Anger – One of the 5 Stages of Grief

According to Greif.com there are 5 stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

While I have read about these stages, and knew it to be true in many regards, I thought I was going to skip over the ANGER.

But SURPRISE. There it is. It attacks you when you least expect it.

Even though the experts say that Anger may be directed at God or even the person who you lost. I knew that I was not angry at my husband. It was not his fault he got cancer. I knew I was not angry at God. I am a firm believer after fighting cancer for 13 years that God did not give me, or my husband cancer. In fact several years ago I wrote about God being like an Architect.

When reading about grief and thinking about anger, I did not think it would apply to me. After all, I did not know where I would direct my anger. Ha, listen to me, I seem to think that I have control over this crazy thing called grief.

Today I realized that I am angry. I’m angry at the doctor who never diagnosed my husband’s disease even though he saw him many times over the course of a year. I’m angry at the Insurance company that denied him service at MD Anderson even though he was responding positively to the clinical trial. I’m angry at the Hospice situation that we went through (everyone tells me how great Hospice is, but that was NOT our experience). I’m angry at some other smaller things that really don’t amount to much individually, but when piled upon all of the other things make me crazy.

I have never been one that liked confrontation. I am a people pleaser. I like happiness and people to be happy around me. So how do I deal with this anger that I have suddenly identified?

I guess this post is the first step. I have now identified it. I’ve put a name to it (the doctor, the insurance company, Hospice, there are a couple of others but they are too hard to describe in a short blog post).

But I also know that the anger I have towards these identified entities has also caused me to be short with people and things that I have no reason to be angry with. A friend trying to be nice might say something that is meant to be encouraging but unknowingly rubs a nerve that I didn’t even know was exposed.

Next, I need to figure out the best way to release this anger. Some suggestions that I have found are:

• Drawing/painting (I’m not good at either of these things and that would just frustrate me further)
• Scribbling on paper and then tearing it up (I’m thinking more along the lines of scribbling and then burning the paper and the words)
• Counting to 10 and taking deep breaths (this may work for the smaller things, but not sure that it will release the anger with the entities)
• Exercise (while this has been a go to in the past, some of my anger that I’m noticing relates to the fact that I can’t exercise as easily as I used to due to my physical limitations from my hip surgery)
• Kicking, yelling, screaming (I may try this, at least the yelling and screaming – I know it helped when my physical pain was off the charts, so maybe it would help with the anger too).

Obviously, these all share the same outcome. Let the anger out. Don’t keep it in. It is time to let it go. And if and when it returns, recognize it and deal with it so I don’t have raw, exposed nerves.

My take away from all of this: Recognition is the first step to dealing with and healing from the pain associated with the anger.