Discovering Anger in the Healing Process

“What’s it feel like to cry,” my husband asked.  We were driving home from the gym and he had just listened to me cry then completely break down sobbing after discussing how my yoga class had gone. 

I realized what a great question that was coming from someone that didn’t cry.  The most I had ever seen from him were a few tear drops during an exceptionally sad moment in a movie.  If you have never really let loose and cry it must be curious to witness someone sobbing.  How do you begin to describe what that feels like when you are welling up for a cry, while you are in the midst of a good cry, or the aftermath?

But before we get into that . . . let’s step back

The end of March ushered in some new challenges.  After weeks of improvement verified by my neurologist, life circumstances changed.  A good friend from high school, who had spent several decades working with the landmark Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study, told me recently that the two big enemies of Parkinson’s were stress and poor sleep.   I mean, stress and poor sleep will affect anyone but with this disease, you can multiply those negative effects by ten.

So I knew I was headed for some health challenges due to the stress.  In the 80’s I ran a corporate wellness program for General Dynamics Corporation in San Diego.  At General Dynamics, I used the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory to educate employees about stress and its effect on your health.  It’s a good, quick way for people to get an idea of the amount of stress they might be handling and the risk to their health.  To use it, you simply check off the stresses you are experiencing then total up the value for each to get your score.  If you have 150 points or less, you have a low chance of experiencing a stress-related health problem.  If you score between 150-300, you have a 50% chance of a health problem in the next 2 years.  And if your score is over 300, the risk of a health problem goes up to 80%!

Without even looking at the Inventory I knew that I was in the high risk category.  Life events just weren’t going to support good health for a while.  So I began to think of what I could do pro-actively to help ease the stress over the upcoming months. 

HBOT

I decided it was time to try a therapy that I have been holding off on – Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT).   HBOT is not a cure for Parkinson’s.  But from the research and reports I read, I believed HBOT had the potential to improve my symptoms.  At best, it might improve my condition temporarily and support me through the stressful stretch I was navigating.

I opted initially for 10 sessions to see how the therapy went.  Standard protocol for neurological issues was 40 sessions.  But HBOT is time consuming and expensive.  So unless I saw results, I didn’t want to commit the full time.  After the first session to confirm I didn’t have problems with the treatment, I signed up for 10 sessions, and went daily from Monday through Friday for 2 weeks.

My first few days of HBOT were not eventful.  I felt the same.  But then after 3-4 days, I began to feel different!  Movement was easy!  And my tremors were reduced.  And surprisingly, my mood was elevated.  I honestly hadn’t expected that.  If you recall, I stopped anti-depressants last September and with stressors mounting, I had recently become concerned about relapsing and needing anti-depressants again.  But now, after only a few sessions, I felt great!   And so, I began to feel hopeful.

But sadly, it didn’t last.  Nothing lasted.

Remember how my high school friend identified that stress and a poor night’s sleep are Parkinson’s enemies?  Well, that night I couldn’t stay asleep.  So after 10 days of growing optimism over the hyperbaric oxygen therapy I started mid-April, I had one long night of continually interrupted sleep which caused my body to degenerate and crash.  All the benefits I had worked hard to achieve over the past few months and the recent improvement from HBOT were gone in an evening.  It was disheartening.  No.  More than that.  It was crushing!

What was so hard was that I had been doing so well!!!  Honestly, I didn’t know what the f*** was happening or why.  It seemed inconceivable that one night’s sleep could abolish all the improvements I had made over weeks/months!  By morning, I was depressed and confused.  I couldn’t explain this crash in my health in such a short period of time.  My emotions spun from sadness, to depression, to panic and fear, and from curiosity to serious concern. 

The long night had hit me emotionally as much as it affected me physically.  Before I even got out of bed, I was sobbing.  I was tired, not only from the lack of sleep, but from the daily effort I had put into getting better.  Instead of fighting the feeling, I let myself connect to the overwhelm I felt and I cried.

Long time to recover

It took a long time to recover after that debilitating night without sleep.  The next morning, I woke and experienced difficulty moving.  The bradykinesia was awful.  It (bradykinesia) is such a hard thing to explain to people that don’t have it.  Words don’t really help.  I try to explain that it’s hard to move.  But it’s not hard like picking up a 100 lb. box might be hard.  It’s hard because I have to focus and it feels like I can’t move quickly, like something is interfering with the communication to my muscles.  So I end up moving slowly and deliberately to make things happen.

So it was one of those days.  I felt like I had slipped backwards and was where I had been months ago, early in my diagnosis.  All the effort, time, and money I had spent to get better felt wasted.  And that thinking – that it was all a waste – is enough to start a cycle of depression .  I quickly recognized where this type of thinking might go and I knew I needed to stop it.

I knew that I needed to head to the gym.  Movement for me is like putting oil into a car.  Things just run smoother after I force myself to move – it’s like it clears out the cobwebs and there is less friction at a cellular level. 

And it worked.  My body started responding better. 

My husband had gone to the gym with me that morning.  He met me after the work out and we hopped into the car to go home.  After the workout I was pleased that my body was responding better, but I was still feeling the weight of depression in my heart.  We were chatting about insignificant things, but my focus wasn’t with him.  Instead I found myself welling up and wanting to cry.  Then rather than suppressing my sadness, I just let go and cried.

That’s when he asked me what it felt like. 

The fact is emotions are messy.   And I’ll admit, I’m still working at being completely comfortable crying in some situations.  There’s snot and tears and puffy eyes and a red face to contend with.  But I’ve learned to appreciate the way I feel after a good cry.

The truth is that crying can be good for you.  It can help regulate emotions by activating the parasympathetic nervous system which helps you relax.  It also releases oxytocin and endorphins which make you feel better and can help your body recover from various strong, complex emotions.

I had recently done some Transformational Breathwork (TB) too that had helped me let go and cry.  I’ve learned that sometimes I suppress painful emotions without realizing it and crying can help me notice that something is wrong and needs more of my awareness.  (I hope to come back to TB and my experience with Mary Stockton more fully at some later date.  It was fascinating!)

So what does it feel like to cry?

I tried to explain to my husband the buildup in my body that I feel that signals to me that I want to cry.  And then what it feels like to give into that urge and let it take over your body and wrack it physically, like it is trying to literally shake and spew out the emotions contained in the very fiber of your being.  How do you describe that wracking emotion?  Or the calm after the storm, once all the emotion is exorcised from my body and released into thin air?

I did my best to describe what it felt like to cry, feeling suddenly sad for my husband that he didn’t  know the transformational feeling that comes from a good cry.

Later in the day I thought I might try tapping as a way to help with the depressing emotions I felt.  I pulled out my phone and opened the Tapping Solutions app.  I searched under “depression” and found a 5-part tapping program.  “Perfect,” I thought!   I decided to begin with was a session for Day 3 on Releasing Stuck Emotion in your Body. 

But what happened next was more than I counted on! 

The first part of the tapping session was spent simply connecting to the depressive emotions I was feeling.  The facilitator, Dr. Damon Silas, then shifted my focus to sensations in my body.    He instructs us that our bodies send us messages through sensations that we typically ignore.  And just by slowing down and paying attention to the messages our bodies are giving us, we can get valuable information about what we are really feeling. 

So he led me through a somatic strategy I had used before in the equine work I do.  First I turned my attention inward and began to scan my body to notice physical sensations and where I might be experiencing pain, tension or heaviness in my body.  Then I tried to label what emotion the sensation might be.  I remember fumbling around a bit, thinking it was sadness, but noticing that the label didn’t stick. As I was asked to give the sensation a color, a shape, and a density, something else was bubbling up for me.  I stumbled around trying to label the sensation until it started to become clear.  What ended up sticking was that the sensation had a prickly shape.  It was dark.  And it was really hard. 

Then rather suddenly I realized to my surprise that what I was feeling wasn’t sadness at all.  Sadness didn’t feel prickly or hard like that.  And then it became quite clear!  I was angry!  Anger was the prickly, dark and hard sensation I was feeling!

I can’t tell you what a huge revelation that was!  My body was telling me I was angry!  How could I not know that?  But once I finally got clear on the emotion, I could really feel it!  It was an ah-ha moment.  There was clarity.  There was connection.  And in a very strange way, I felt relieved because I was consciously reunited with my anger. 

It was then that I started realizing all the anger I had about being sick.  It felt good to acknowledge it and just accept it.  To not fight it or try to change it; to just to sit with it and not judge it.  Instead, I just acknowledged it and honored the painful anger that needed to be heard.

In the tapping session, I was guided to notice if the sensations changed.  And slowly I began to notice my feelings begin to soften.   I found myself becoming strangely more at peace.  I was guided to send compassion to the area of my body affected and repeat, “it is safe for me to feel my feelings.  I’ve been doing the best I can with the resources I’ve been given.  My body and brain are simply trying to keep me safe and when life feels like too much, it can feel easier to push down the pain, fear and anger.” 

The facilitator continued guiding me further to feel more space, more compassion and ease.  It was a truly remarkable experience.  I’ve done similar work on my body sensations, but never before had I connected in such a way.  I had never discovered hidden anger before.

Immediately afterward I felt better.  In my experience that is often the case with tapping – that I will feel better immediately.  But I was still somewhat surprised at how released from depression I felt after this session.  Something had clicked.  Something had shifted.  I have long suspected that I don’t express anger well and that I resist it and push it down and deny it or try to change it and make it go away.  This was different.  This time it was okay and I welcomed reuniting with this part of me.  I felt whole.

The next day with some distance and perspective on the session, I realized that something really did shift with that tapping session.  My depression was gone.  I woke feeling good!  And not just mentally.  Yes, the depression was gone, but I was also noticing how I felt changed physically.  My tremors were slight – almost non-existent.  And the bradykinesia wasn’t present.  I could easily roll out of bed and begin my day!

Something had definitely changed.

It’s now more than week after that tapping session and again I can report that something definitely shifted during that tapping session.  The depressive emotions I was beginning to feel have lifted.  And physically, I am improved. 

I mentioned in another post last year that my healing wasn’t a linear process.   And these past few months continue to underscore that observation.  What this latest experience with tapping has done for me is to reinforce my belief that healing is often found in deep, emotional work.  My sense is that this new awareness of anger was a good step forward in my healing process. And furthermore, I suspect there is more work ahead as I learn to become more comfortable with anger.