My own style of managing anger and frustration

I was reading something from another blog about caring for the elderly. Someone brought up the issue of anger management. This person found that his anger would seep into his life unexpectedly and cause problems.

Managing anger and frustration is important throughout your life, but can be especially important when you are caring for elderly people, especially your parents. I am not caring for my parents any longer, but on occasion will take care of other people's parents. After years of caring for others, I found myself depressed, resentful and angry after a serious illness. Then, I was angry at myself for allowing this to happen to me. I finally realized that you can't just forget about the feelings you have. You need to deal with it somehow.

First of all, you have to know (deep inside yourself) that it really is OK to have feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, evil thoughts, etc., when you are in a care giving role. You don't need to feel guilty about this. It's natural. Adding guilt to the whole mess will only hurt you further. What counts is how you act upon these feelings. One thing you do not want to do is keep it buried within you. That negative energy will work on you and change you in ways you really don't want to think about. You need to find a preferrably physical outlet. Mental outlets, and distractions (like hobbies, social activities) are OK, but don't seem to work as well for most people.
Here is my current outlet:
After all these years, I am now lucky enough to live on the beach, so anger/frustration management for me is fairly simple.

I give it to the ocean.

You can cry, yell, scream, throw things, or simply stand with your feet in the water and close your eyes. The waves come in, you give all your negative energy, frustration, anger, whatever to them, and they leave with all that energy and it's gone. The ocean doesn't care. It will take anything you have to give it. All it leaves in return is a soothing spray of positively charged sodium ions that gently wash over you to soothe and nourish your wounded soul.

It's great. Wish you all could do it daily. But if you can't, find your own special bit of nature you can relate to. Then pour your heart out where only you, Mother Nature, and your Creator can hear you. You will be understood, and be uplifted. Be at peace.

Welcome to Pleasant Days for Elders

Like I always say, Pleasant Days for elders means Pleasant Days for their caregivers as well.

I worked in nursing homes for years as a management nurse. Yeah, one of the ones creating and implementing rules, and making sure the staff followed all the federal and state regulations. And let me tell you, there are thousands of them, thanks to the few nursing homes across the country that are considered "abusive."

After I "retired", I again found myself in a care giving role. This time, I wanted to do it "my way", because the nursing home industry, for all of society's good intentions, just doesn't have it right. With the help of my husband and daughter, we set out to create an elder "home" that would mold itself to the wishes and needs of it's clients, rather than the other way around.

Along the way somewhere, after trying to impose the "normal" rules of living in a care home upon the clients (because this is what I had done for so many years), I discovered that having pleasant days is really all everyone wants.

With this discovery came insight, one after the other. I want to share some of this, because elder care is very important, very needed, and very, very difficult.

This will also be a continuing discovery. I still care for elders here off and on. And they all teach me so much, mostly about myself. Hopefully I can be some small help to someone out there who is struggling with their care giving role.