Anger and Heart Disease

I Hate Being Sick. Okay, yes I have heart disease, but I’m not talking about that kind of sickness. I’m talking about the everyday kind of sick, like the common cold and the flu. The reason I hate being sick is that all the healthy lifestyle patterns that I’ve worked so hard to change seem to fall by the wayside. In its wake leaves a annoyed, angry person.

It seems as if I’ve been sick with some kind of virus for about a month and a half now, and I’m ready to lock myself in a padded cell until I’m no longer coughing, no longer feeling sorry for myself, no longer angry or annoyed with every little thing around me. I seem to swing the pendulum of wanting no one around me to wanting everyone to pamper me.

What’s going on? Is this a woman thing? Do we as women feel that if we take care of everyone and everything that others should do the same for us when we’re laid up on our backs? Do we expect others to take over all the tasks on our To Do lists? And, when we don’t get the nurturing we think we need, when others don’t live up to our expectations, we become these people from hell.

We can never take back the mean words we say. And saying you’re sorry seems so inadequate. But my heart is breaking because I let my mouth spout off without care. I hurt someone I love.

I know you don’t have to be physically sick to say things out of anger. People do that all the time. But if you think about it, anger is a sickness too. And for women with heart disease, anger can be deadly.

In the book The Heart Speaks, Dr. Mimi Guarneri, devotes an entire chapter to anger. She states some pretty startling statistics. “Recent studies suggest that hostility and other more subtle risk factors such as isolation and depression may be more predictive of coronary disease than more traditional factors such as smoking and high cholesterol.” Later in the chapter, she states: “Suppressed emotions, or ones we are unconscious of, don’t just simmer on the back burner indefinitely; they eventually manifest themselves on a physical level and are reflected in our bodies as physical symptoms. And if you lift up the veil of hostility and anger, you usually find some kind of emotional pain.”

So how do we get past the emotional pain and the physical symptoms? I know we’ve all heard this before, but it never hurts to repeat some good medicine. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Let go of expectations. Stay focused on the present moment. Forget about the past, it’s behind you and you can’t do anything to change it. Forget about the future, no one knows what will happen later today, tomorrow, next week, or next year. Focus on the positive things in your life. Keep a gratitude journal. Exercise your body to reduce stress. Eat healthy foods. Take care of your body, your mind, and your spirit, and it will take care of you. And the final words of wisdom – Don’t Forget to Breathe.

Ahh. I feel better already. :-)