Anger and Grief, or Anger as Grief
Of all the stages of grief, I find the one I have the most difficulty with is anger. Similarly, others around me seem confounded with the anger. I can appreciate denial, depression, bargaining, and acceptance as natural stages in which it is reasonable to experience without any need to seek a resolution. Anger is a different animal, however.
At its best, anger acts as an emotion or state of mind that responds reasonably to injustice, injury, or simply to things not being right. Anger often moves us to seek solutions to the problems we see. And there lies my difficulty with my anger in my grief. I’ve found myself entering cycles where I am furious at God, Death, or just the fact that my father is dead and then I am mad at myself for being so angry because the thing I want so much is impossible. What solution can come in my angry that will satisfy me? Can I bring my father back to life? I also find myself on edge and in a general state of anger. Little things that normally wouldn’t bother me or might mildly annoy me set me off on tirades.
I’m trying to learn to accept my anger—and anger without resolution in this case—as reasonable. I’m trying not to beat myself up because I want the impossible, as if I would feel better if I only didn’t want my father to come back from the dead. I come from a long line of people who bottle their emotions and so it is difficult to express my anger. Generally, I’m better at distracting myself than with dealing with my anger in the moment. Grief, however, doesn’t allow itself to be ignored.
I know I speak of the stages of grief often and please don’t read into it that I’m trying to compartmentalize mourning—I simply find the stages a helpful matrix to locate myself from time to time.
It seems that anger itself is subject to the five stages. There’s a denial of the extent or existence of anger that comes in distracting oneself, a bargaining in wanting not to feel the anger if only you didn’t want your father to come back, depression in beating yourself up, and the desire to accept your anger. An interesting thing is that anger turns back on itself: anger about anger. Although my struggle with anger is peanuts, I’ve encountered this and it’s frightening. You expect to get angry, but you don’t expect to get that angry. As you said, little things set you off, and the fact that you get angry about them makes you that much more angry—at yourself for not being able to remain calm, at the whole state of affairs for being so very Fubar, at God for messing with your life. It’s almost as though really there are ten stages, and you must go through the first five about anger, accept anger, and then you will be in more of a position to work through your grief as the stages fluctuate. This is all speculation on my part, of course, though I hope you know that you are in my prayers, and that I’m there for you if you need to talk, go bowling, beat the holy shit out of a pinata, or just hang out and watch a movie.
Comment by Timbo — May 2, 2008 @ 8:05 am
Timbo, I think you’re right, though the original argument was that denial is the first stage. Now psychologists say the order is up for grabs. Learning to accept my anger is similar to accepting my grief and accepting my father’s death in general. I think one can almost say each stage has its own five stages, but that would be one crazy matrix.
Comment by Tyler Watson — May 2, 2008 @ 3:38 pm