My son hates asthma.
I know this because he told me this recently while he was telling me how much he hates dealing with glasses and contacts. It was an interesting moment because I thought I had come to terms with my feelings toward asthma back when he was diagnosed 10 years ago. (Note: coming to terms does not mean the hate or anger has gone away, but rather, merely accepting it and not letting it rule my life-two very difficult tasks.) What struck me most at that moment was that I had never considered how HE felt toward his asthma. I guess in my coming to terms I had left out the key element of his feelings. It sent me back to square one.
Not only was I now filled my anger toward a disease that puts limits on how he lives his life, affects how people perceive him and could take his life, but now I was also angry that he had to feel the same ugly emotions I had been feeling for so long. Anger times two. I had to re-learn to deal with my hatred and how to deal with his. As a parent of a teenager, I realized that this was NOT the time to leave him to his own emotions while I wallow in my own.
Now what? Anger is a powerful emotion. Left unchecked, it can move us to do things that shock even ourselves. Ironically, love, hate and anger's ultimate opposite, has the same affect. How many times have we learned of parents running into burning buildings to save their children? In an instant, their love for their child supersedes their own need for self-preservation.
Hate and anger can move us in similar ways. In the extreme, look at the events of 9-11. The terrorists' hatred for the United States and what we stand for moved them to kill thousands of innocent people. Shortly afterward, anger moved neighbors to turn against neighbors in a misguided need for revenge. Frightening. That was not a path I wanted my son to walk down.
The best I could do for Matt was to show him safe ways of dealing with his anger. Like a volcano, anger is a volatile emotion and the lava is going to flow at some time or another. It's best to find a way to let it trickle out in a controlled flow, than deal with a pyroclastic event.
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