What Do You Do With Anger?

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban hates Prospero. Caliban, born savage and deformed by the witch who used to inhabit the island, is now a slave to Prospero, the new ruler and severe taskmaker. In this soliloquy Caliban holds nothing back:

All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall,
and make him By inch-meal a disease!

This is anger, in all its graphic, metaphoric brilliance. While we may not be as expressive as Shakespeare, illness can make us damn angry.

The ill partner can get rabidly angry at the illness that has so constricted her life. She can get angry at her well partner for still being able to go out into the world, unfettered by pain or weakness. She may also get exasperated at her well partner for making her wait until he finishes watching the baseball game to bring her food or help her to get to the bathroom. She may be silently enraged at him for all the things he can still do that she cannot.

The well partner may be furious at his ill partner for changing the relationship contract without prior approval by him. He didn't sign up for years of caretaking and even less for losing the strong woman he hoped to travel the world with.

Both partners are bound to get angry at the health care system for all the ways it makes them wait or feel insignificant or suffer unnecessary complications. This form of anger can become a full time job. Rage at the system can easily overwhelm the more fragile tenderness that both partners yearn for from each other.

How can both ill and well partner deal with these forms of anger, and others? Squashing or denying it doesn't make it disappear. It only condenses it into rock hard pellets that lodge deeper down inside the body and slip out unexpectedly to cause more piercing damage. Giving free reign to anger is like unleashing a perpetual tornado. For a moment it can seem magnificent, but it will ultimately destroy everything you value.

So, what is the middle ground between silence and vengeance? When you are in the grip of anger, all you want is to unleash it, maybe even to cause some damage to the person you feel has been damaging you. Or silence it with a heavy hand. But this will not get you what you want. What you want is validation, acceptance, understanding, and reparations. To get even some of that, you need to see your anger not as a lightening bolt you hurl at your partner, or as a fire that burns you from within, but as a bridge that needs to be rebuilt between the two of you. Something broke, and it needs to be mended, by both of you, together.

In the next post I will share some of the options I use.

What do you do with your anger?

The best ways to lower blood cholesterol

A natural way to lower cholesterol level and get a healthy body 
 weight is through the establishment of an exercise regimen. Exercise is an effective way to achieve healthy cholesterol levels. It sets off a series of enzymatic reactions in the body that increase HDL and lower triglycerides. Exercise - especially aerobic exercise done over a sustained period of 20 to 30 minutes or so at least 3 days per week - can raise the level of "good' HDL cholesterol by 5-10%. Another fact that has been known for a while is that exercise can lower levels of blood triglycerides. Therefore regular aerobic exercise, walking, jogging, biking, say 3 times per week for 30 minutes even at only 50% of aerobic maximum will burn up triglycerides while stimulating more HDL.
BlogCatalog

Grand Rounds

is up at Better Health. It's a good collection of this week's posts from the health care blog world.

My Mother, My Partner???

Usually when I write about couples and illness I refer to the two primary, romantic partners (with or without any romance). But when it comes to the ups and downs of my pain condition, my mother is still my main squeeze.

My mother spent the last five years largely laying down on the couch in her apartment, eating cottage cheese. Her main activities were going food shopping on Saturday nights and watching Law and Order and its derivatives. She moved into an assisted living facility a few weeks ago and, to our surprise and delight, has been reborn.

My mother listens to the daily live music that's played in her new home. And the same "gentleman" keeps asking her to dance. She's getting the reputation of being "the one who dances." Not bad as a new identity at age eight-three. And, not so coincidentally, my pain level, which peaked a few weeks ago when her anxiety over this transition was high, has now dropped.

I am a bit embarrassed that after so many years of meditation, milk thistle & co-enzyme Q10, psychotherapy, and disentanglement, my nervous system is still hard wired into my mother's emotional states. My head is leaking insights about our relationship and my historic role as her source of a good sense of self. I can kundalini breathe myself into a state of transcendence, but I can't seem to get beyond the slim fiber of umbilical cord that still ties us.

We are a dysfunctional couple. I love her. But had the choice been mine to make, I would have been her BFF and not her daughter.

Who are you entangled with? How does that affect your health or the health of your partner? And how have you tried to extricate yourself from knots that keep you tied down?

Grand Rounds

is up at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles. It's the weekly collection of posts from the health care world. It's always an interesting read

Ten usefull tips to stay healthy

The need to stay healthy the natural way is more and more important in todays world. Here are ten tips that should improve your health.

1.)  Make room for mini meditations through out your day, close the door at your office, hold your calls, and just relax for five minutes. Hubert Benson, the co-founder of Harvard’s Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine, recommends doing this a few times throughout the day. It allows you to turn everything off and recharge.
2.)  With states increasing cigarette taxes and cities banning smoking in bars and restaurants there has never been a better time to quit smoking. Many employers, faith groups, and even some local governments offer resources to help you stop smoking for good.
3.)  Make an effort to have a social life.  Getting bogged down in the stresses of daily life is easy to do. Make a promise to yourself to hang out with your friends at least once a week.
4.)  Be aware of your health. Get a physical this year, even if you had one last year you need to make it an annual event. Being proactive is the best way to maintain a healthy life.
5.)  Stay positive. It sounds simple, but if you try and keep a positive outlook on life you will find that you enjoy your work, family, and life in general a lot more.
6.)  Cut the calories back. This year instead of trying the next fad diet resolve to simply cut back your calorie intake.
7.)  Exercise daily. That doesn’t mean become a gym rat it means incorporate some kind of physical activity into your daily routine. It could be something as simple as going for a walk through the park every day, or going for daily bike rides.
8.)  Make “wellness” a verb. Don’t think of health and wellness as something to reach for, or something to achieve. Think of as the way you live your life.
9.)  Cut back the caffeine. Instead of drinking a pot of regular coffee every morning switch to a 50/50 coffee or caffeine free soft drinks.
10.)  Add a little “green” to your life. Mom really was right growing up, be sure to add fruits and vegetables to your meals every day.
These changes, for the most part, are easy to work into your daily life and maintain all year long.
Natural pain relief  Alternative therapy  New natural treatment

Heroism Continued: My Mother's Transition

Richard stayed in Florida for a week - completely being there for my mother, a woman who isn't his mother and who is very difficult to spend too much time with -- while I slowly climbed out of a pain relapse back home.

During that week, they visited three assisted living facilities. My mother truly liked one of them, and she does not like many things. Richard went back to the one she liked and asked the owner every question on every checklist I emailed him. He did all the financial maneuvering, including having them remove the carpet in her apartment and replace it with wooden floors. He got all the papers signed and helped her pack up her belongings.

Within six days after he arrived, my mother moved into the next phase of her life in an assisted living facility.

He did all this with no whining and while shielding me from descriptions of the worst of her behaviors. When I told him he was amazing or heroic, he said with utter sincerity, "I don't see what you're seeing, but thanks for the compliment."

He makes me want to be a better person.

Thank you for listening to my Richard admiration for two posts. I know not everyone has as supportive a partner, whether you're ill or not. And, honestly, we didn't always know how to be genuinely supportive to each other. It took love and several years of couples therapy to lower our issues and learn how to speak and listen to some hard truths.

And btw - my mother who barely left her condo for two years; who had no social contacts other than my father (who died six months ago) and her brother; whose main activities were watching Law & Order on TV and berating my ailing father for what she experienced as his attempts to control her -- spent her first evening in her new home listening to the live music that happens every evening, and dancing for a half hour with a "gentleman."

Help for heart disorders

Heart disease is one of the commonest causes of death in the western society. Natural ways your health can be improved is by using the herb Alpinia Galangal. This herb, which was brought to Europe in 1098 was used for a wide range of heart complaints, including angina. Modern followers of this herbal remedy suggest that Galangal tincture can be used to avert angina attacks.

Traditionally the herb is used as a warming digestive remedy and for travel sickness and is very similar to ginger.

Healing naturally  Healing people  The best superfoods


Natural Health Journals – Promoting Health and Happiness through Healthy Living and Natural Medicine.
Submit site - web site promotion - Directory

Heroism Doesn't Always Make it to the 6:00pm News

How's this for heroism?

My father died six months ago. Since then my mother has been living alone in their apartment and, until recently, has been enjoying the solitude. Recently she began having panic attacks and crying to me on the phone that she just can't stand being alone any more.

Now this may be a form of grief reaction or a realization of the great existential aloneness of being mortal. Whatever the roots, she simply does not want to live alone. She wants to move into assisted living.

The tangle is that my mother's neediness and my pain condition are wired into each other. The needier she is, the more ripples and burps I feel. Recently my pain has shot up from ripples to rip tides.

Richard and I have tickets to fly today to visit her and begin the process of finding suitable assisted living facilities. I am not in great shape, but she can't bear any postponement. Normally I would grit my teeth (after taking a double dose of pain meds) and soldier through.

But that's not heroism. That's stupidity. Here's the heroism.

Richard offered to go visit her solo, see assisted living facilities with her, and stay until she's feeling less panicky and more like there's a plan in place. She's not his mother, and while he loves her, he doesn't always like her. But he is willing to do this for her and for me.

To me, that's heroism.... and love.

Do you have stories of heroism you'd like to share?