The Disheartening Effects of Heart Disease

February is heart health month, and everyone is all a flutter with wellness tips for how to keep your heart strong and advocacy campaigns designed to raise awareness so that we can eradicate heart disease. But what about heart “dis-ease”? What about the emotional effects of heart disease?

Here’s some breaking news: Heart disease isn’t only deadly, it’s also disheartening. According to the Cleveland Clinic, 15-20 percent of cardiac patients suffer depression after a heart attack, or a diagnosis of heart disease. Likewise, Reuters reports that the risk for suicide tripled in the month following a heart attack, and remained elevated for at least five years. Then there is also the untold number who “go it alone” in fearful, sad silence not wanting the stigma of depression or the appearance of weakness.

Having said that, we don’t have to be clinically depressed to be emotionally distressed. For many of us, in fact for most of us, a diagnosis of heart disease, like any other disease or life challenge, plainly and simply leaves us dispirited: the shock of it stops us dead in our tracks and leaves us searching for a direction forward. Moreover, it shakes up our certainty about life and our place in it. Heart disease doesn’t merely challenge our mortality, but also our meaning, motivation, and momentum, and this can be equally as difficult.

So what are some heart-smart tips for dealing with the emotional effects of heart disease? Give these a shot; they worked for me in the wake of my heart attacks.

1. Ride the waves of emotion. Allow your feelings, whatever they may be, to come and go, monitoring both their duration and effects. Doing so will open you up, rather than keep you shutdown, and give you the time and safe space you need to shake off the shock and numbness often caused by a cardiac event or diagnosis of heart disease. Keep a diary of when you feel certain emotions. Record what percentage of your time is spent on each one, both the duration and frequency. Take note of what times of day, what places, and what contexts bring on negative emotions and positive emotions. Find activities that maximize the latter and minimize the former.
   

2. Struggle well. Do this by reaching out and letting others in when fear, worry or loneliness set in; don’t try to be the hero and go it alone. Likewise don’t demand answers — from life, a God, or even in some cases the medical community — when none are available or can satisfy; rather look for something meaningful in your situation, some “kernel of truth” in your experience that can carry you forward. Lastly, remind yourself that while you can’t control everything that happens in life, you always have a choice in how to respond to any given situation; you can take command of yourself in feeling, thought, and action.
   

3. Discover Your Growing Edge. It’s helpful when faced with some kind of challenge or health concern to ask yourself, “What is most at stake for me about this experience?” “How am I being asked to grow?” “What about this situation matters most to me, and how am I going to allow it to affect me today and going forward?” Asking these questions focuses your energy and leverages your emotions for good so that you can gain insight and identify your growing edge, and recommit yourself with confidence in a better tomorrow.
   

4. Monitor Yourself. If feelings of sadness, anxiety or loneliness persist; if you are being overcome by a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, have ongoing irritability, restlessness, tiredness or fatigue, or a persistent loss of energy; or if you notice a sustained change in appetite or sleeping patterns, then it might be time to seek professional care from your primary care physician or a mental health professional.

To be sure heart disease cuts to the heart of life, and it affects all areas of life. But while it may change our life, it doesn’t have to take away our ability to have a full life, everyday, come what may.