Mesothelioma patients, their loved ones and caregivers experience a plethora of powerful emotions, but the one they most commonly share is anger. We will discuss how to better understand and manage feelings of anger at our September meeting. For more information, visit us at www.asbestos.com

1. Coping with Anger When You
(or a Loved One) Has Mesothelioma
Dana Nolan
Licensed Mental Health Counselor

2. What Is Anger?
Anger is a common and normal emotional state that
varies from mild irritation to fury and rage.
We all feel anger and it is usually accompanied by
physiological changes, including increased heart rate,
high blood pressure and raised levels of adrenaline.
Anger can be caused by internal or external
circumstances.
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3. What Is Anger? (cont.)
Anger can feel out of control and unpredictable.
The goal of this presentation is to help you
understand anger and gain some control over how
we manage this emotion.
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When anger gets out of control it
can become destructive to our work,
our families and our overall quality of
life.

4. Anger and Mesothelioma
Reasons why mesothelioma patients and their
caregivers may feel anger:
 Delay in specialist approval
 Occupational exposure
 Out-of-pocket medical
expenses
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 Delay in diagnosis or
misdiagnosis
 Incurability of
mesothelioma
 Delay in VA or Social
Security benefits

5. Coping with Anger
 The goal of anger management is
NOT to eliminate feelings of anger,
as this is simply impossible.
 The goal is to manage the
expression of anger in a healthy
way.
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6. Feeling Our Anger
 When we feel threatened, we respond
instinctively with anger and aggression. This
is an adaptive and natural response to a
threat.
 A certain amount of anger is necessary to
our survival so that we are able to fight and
defend ourselves if we feel threatened.
 However, uncontrolled anger leads to
hypertension, headaches, digestive
problems and insomnia.
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7. Healthy Strategies to Deal with Anger
We can’t get rid of or avoid all the things that
enrage us. We can’t change other people, traffic,
weather, economy or other things not in our
control.
But, we can learn to control our REACTIONS
to those things by:
 Expressing our anger
 Suppressing our anger
 Calming ourselves
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8. Expressing Our Anger
 Finding a way to assertively talk about
what is angering us to the appropriate
person is the healthiest way to manage
anger.
What are your needs exactly?
 How can I get them without hurting others?
What is respectful to myself and others?
 This is the best strategy when trying to manage a
people/organizational problem that has a solution.
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9. Suppressing Our Anger
 Suppressing our anger is what we do when we hold in
our anger and try to redirect it positively or
constructively.
 Situations that we cannot control, such as being stuck
in a traffic jam and a hurricane blowing the roof off our
home, may lead to anger. These situations respond
well to suppressing strategies.
 Redirecting our anger usually involves cognitive
restructuring, which means changing our thoughts
about these situations.
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10. Cognitive Structuring
Avoid catastrophizing an event that makes you
angry.
Avoid words like “always” and “never” which are
inaccurate and can make you feel like your anger at
a situation is justified and insolvable.
Use logic and problem-solving. Remind yourself
the world is not evil or out to ruin your life.
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11. Humor
 At times, use of humor will help diffuse the energy
of our anger.
 Being able to step back and see our anger from
another perspective can lead us to see how silly we
look blowing our lid over something insignificant.
 Watching something funny on TV or being around
someone who makes us laugh also diffuses our
anger.
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12. Calming
 In those situations where we can’t
communicate assertively with
anyone, suppress or redirect our
anger, the only thing left is to
acknowledge our anger and try to
physiologically calm ourselves
down.
 Deep breathing helps to lower our
heart rate and blood pressure and
diffuses our experience of anger.
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13. Calming (cont.)
 Music that we connect with can diffuse
our feelings of anger.
 Distracting our ourselves with hobbies:
Reading a book, scrapbooking, wood-work,
painting, going for a walk, doing a
puzzle, etc.
 All these things have calming effects and
allow us to de-escalate and have a clearer
mind to try and cope with the situation that
angered us.
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14. Taking Anger out on Our Loved Ones
 Sometimes patients and caregivers will become
irritable, verbally aggressive or demanding toward
their loved ones because of fear, stress and their
anger related to coping with mesothelioma.
 This is misplaced anger and usually is expressed
with people we feel will love us unconditionally.
 Misplaced anger is damaging to our closest
relationships and can have a detrimental effect on
our ability to get support from others when we need
it in the future.
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15. Take Home Messages
 There are many understandable reasons why people
affected by mesothelioma may feel higher-than-normal
levels of anger.
 Not managing anger appropriately leads to health
problems, relationship issues and poor quality of
life.
 Trying any of the these strategies are proven to help
diffuse our feelings of anger.
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16. Contact Information
1-800-615-2270
(800) 615-2270