The Mental Challenge

Management of anger in diabetics

Persons with diabetes are often told that diabetic care is up to them. But it's easier said than done. Battling out with diet, medicines and other cares of day-to-day living can create a lot of stress. Although the benefits are greater if you stick to your plan of care, losing your drive will give way for denial, depression, and anger. Therefore it is important to learn to spot when these feelings are disrupting your self-care.

Diabetes is a condition, the onset of which can ignite an overwhelming response in a person, however cool the person may be otherwise. It is a ground where seeds of anger can grow. Diabetics may often feel, why they are the chosen ones to be punished by this condition. After they get to know the criticalities of diabetes, they may dwell on how unfair the condition is.

Why diabetics get angry

A reason why diabetes and anger so often go hand in hand, is that the condition can make the person suffering with it, feel threatened. Life with diabetes can seem full of dangers - insulin reactions or complications. When a diabetic begins to fear these threats, anger comes out as a defense mechanism.

Some Tips

Experts in the field of diabetic care have recommended some of these tips that could help a diabetic person manage anger in a better way.

1. Identification of what is making one angry. How is that anger affecting life? Keeping track of time, person, situation or event one was angry at. Each evening, thinking back over the day.
2. Going through the notes after several weeks, and observing patterns in it may give better ideas to manage anger.
3. Changing thoughts, physical responses, and actions that fuel one’s anger may help. When warning signs that anger is building up like, feeling tense, talking louder and faster are observed using the following techniques might help:

• talking slowly
• slowing breathing
• getting a drink of water
• sitting down
• leaning back
• being silent

These steps don’t mean a person with diabetes should stop feeling angry. They only mean that one is taking charge of one’s anger.

Making anger work for you

Although it's true that excessive anger can cause more harm than good, anger can also help one to assert and protect oneself. Anger can be put to better use if one can learn to come to terms with it.

Despite many self-management techniques, sometimes a person is not in a position to accept diabetes. Diabetics may in such cases, join social groups having diabetics as their members. Meeting other people with the same condition makes a diabetic feel less alone. Diabetes need not make any one less of a person.

The goal is not to get anger out of your life. Anger may be a signal that you need to take action. A few sessions with a skilled counselor might help.

Anger can be a force for action, change, and growth. The better one understands one’s anger, the better it can be put to use for good self-care.