Breathing Fire: Dealing with Anger as a Caregiver
During your caregiving career, have you ever wished you could turn off your emotional reactions to everything unpleasant?
Perhaps you tried your best to keep your calm when your client with dementia hits you for the tenth time while you change their incontinent pads.
You counted slowly from one to ten when an older patient threw their meal tray at you (again), barely missing your head.
Your colleague may have thrown too many negative remarks your way and you are already at your breaking point.
All these times, you did your best to be as calm as possible but you’re only human. So, then and there, you lost it. You yelled back or stormed out of the room, heart pounding fast and hands balled into fists.
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What you felt was anger, and it’s very normal when caring for patients or working in a stressful environment with colleagues.
Feeling angry is natural, but it's all about learning to control how you express your anger and deal with your emotions.
Let’s discuss why:
1. It makes relationships at work sour.
Getting angry at a patient, patient’s family member, or coworker may leave you bearing grudges against people, which further strains connections.
2. It endangers patients.
When your brain is busy processing your heightened emotions, you divert your focus away from your patient’s needs. You tend to commit mistakes and miss out on necessary tasks. Consequently, you put patients at risk.
3. It makes you stressed out and sick.
Unresolved anger is linked to high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression. You get an instant oversupply of stress hormones which could lower your immune system making you vulnerable to diseases and infections.
4. It hurts your reputation and good standing.
You’ve worked hard to be where you are, and angry outbursts that get out of hand can ruin the name you built for yourself. You'll probably get a nickname you won't like from your colleagues, and you'll be trending news in the nurse station and break room. You're also likely to get poor performance feedback.
5. It just gets worse each time.
You become more disruptive and destructive in every outburst. Anger can easily escalate to uncontrollable rage where you can also assault other people. You feed on negative thoughts that make you jump to conclusions which are not at all true, and you blow up at the slightest trigger.
Caregivers will often have many reasons to be angry, so it’s important to know how to manage your emotions.
What can you do to deal with your anger effectively?
1. The principle, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” applies.
To control your anger, you need to understand your triggers. What sets you off? Acknowledge that you have anger issues and identify your triggers. Then, avoid them if possible and begin working on ways to get through these situations as calmly as you can.
2. Don't deny its existence.
Accept the fact that you were upset. When you suppress your anger, you’re in for failure. Pent-up emotions do not make your feelings go away. This can backfire and cause depression, anxiety, or worse, suicidal thoughts, because you direct your anger against yourself.
Learn how to express your anger, which brings us to the next point . . .
3. Once you feel angry, pause, and think before you speak.
Hard to do, but it's all about making a conscious effort. Giving yourself time to cool down can give you enough clarity to engage with your patient or coworker professionally and productively.
4. After you calm down, discuss the matter with the other person.
Avoid making generalizations such as, “You’re always doing this.” Focus on the negative behavior and not on the person. Instead of saying, “You are so clumsy,” say, “You threw soup on the bed.” Of course, talking it out with the other person is not always possible, as in the case of patients with advanced dementia.
5. Forgive yourself.
Don’t take it personally. Guilt is not a helpful emotion and usually just eats you up. You also can't blame patients for being in pain or a coworker for being burnt out. You also can't change their attitude, so better be kind to yourself instead.
6. Ask for professional help.
When angry flare-ups become frequent, you need to seek anger management services for help.
Let’s be honest, dealing with anger is a challenge. It is not as easy as simply doing some deep breathing once in a while. But, anger issues must be dealt with or else you could endanger your patient, others, and yourself. Keep your emotions in check and give anger management a conscious effort.
