Bottle Up Your Anger or Spill It?

By Gail Sheehy

By the time we reach this turning in the labyrinth, we are worn down, fed up, and angry enough to scream. One caregiver I talked to used gallows humor to release the anger: "After three strokes, my husband still refused to go to a nursing home, so I asked to take his bed."

Aster Evangelista was socialized as a Filipino woman not to permit herself to show anger. "I just bottle it up," she told me. "It takes me so much pushing to show my anger, I just become over emotional and clam up."

Aster had considered driving over a cliff, or into never-never land—anything was better than being a caregiver one more day for both her ungrateful husband and her debilitated mother. Her husband, too, unable to work or be the man of the house, was suffering. He told me, "I stopped dreaming already. Live only day to day."

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