With the doctor’s appointments, the chemotherapy, and all the changes in our lives, both my husband and I seem to “blow up” at the smallest thing. How do we handle this?
Sometimes fluctuations in mood can result in “blow-ups.” This may be bickering with loved ones, over-reacting to daily hassles (e.g., traffic, your child spilling something, a jar not opening), and just yelling, feeling very angry, or crying abruptly for “no reason.” Most people do not have full insight into how their daily levels of stress, or distress, contribute to such behaviors. Think of stress as cumulative. It has a way of adding up. And this build-up of stress can make people react more strongly to a situation than they would have otherwise. Sometimes the situations do not seem particularly upsetting on the surface, but they bring out a strong emotional response.
Jack, a 57-year-old businessman, initially met with his hospital social worker to get help reducing his “hid-den” stress. He said: I thought that I was dealing with my cancer well—I did not let it get me down and I did not ever cry. I went through a lot, though. I had some complications after surgery, and then I found out that I needed chemo. After I started back to work and taking chemo once a week, I started to feel a little more “edgy,” is how I describe it; I was even losing sleep. However, I thought that I was still doing okay.
That is, until I found myself getting really annoyed at small things. And I knew that I wasn’t doing “okay” when I snapped at my young granddaughter for spilling her juice. This was totally out of character for me. I guess that my feelings were just building up, and they did come out, but not in a good way.
Jack later talked about how he really felt after his diagnosis and through his surgery and chemotherapy. Jack used denial to protect himself from overwhelming emotions at the time of his initial diagnosis when he was making important treatment decisions and when the reality of his cancer diagnosis did not yet seem real to him. However, his use of denial did not work well for him over the long haul, when the reality sank in and his suppressed emotions erupted.
He felt angry at having cancer, overwhelmed by the complications, treatment, and other responsibilities, and he felt guilty for having put his family through his medical problems. He believed that he was the provider and that he was not supposed to be the dependent one. He tried to maintain the “strong but silent” image to others. However, the pressure finally caught up with him, and his “trigger” happened to be his grandchild’s accidental spill.
If you and your loved one release emotions in a similar way, you may find stress-reduction counseling helpful, as well as other forms of counseling. Jack needed to meet with his social worker only a couple of times to gain insight into the role that stress and his feelings played in his life. He learned new coping techniques, which helped him gain better control over his reactions to these feelings. He also learned to focus on his love for his family and to use positive coping methods to help him focus on the good things in his life, which helped him cope with the negative experiences.
For some people, however, the management of anger or other potentially caustic emotions is a problem they have tried to deal with all their life. Although relaxation techniques and taking time-outs (i.e., actually removing yourself from the emotion-provoking person or situation) can be effective stop-gap measures, longer-term coping may require developing a better understanding of your emotions, and learning how to express them appropriately. People who are perpetually quick to anger may be that way because of certain patterns of thought that lead to emotional meltdowns.
They often turn the smallest problem into catastrophes, or take a single event or comment and generalize it for the person or the situation as a whole (“She forgot to call . . . She doesn’t care what happens to me . . . Nobody is helping me at all.”) In this case, repetitive talking about negative feelings or “venting” your negative emotions may make the problem worse. Without correction, you may be rein-forcing anger-provoking patterns of thought and making them all the more powerful.
Problem-solving, better communication, and other coping methods may help, but if your negative emotions really seem to be getting the better of you, speak with a mental health professional to discuss counseling. Counseling can be very effective at helping reduce “blow-ups.”