Q: I think that I need some help controlling my anger. It is getting out of hand and has been so for quite some time.
I seem to be screaming and shouting a lot to just about everyone in my family. I have never hit or physically hurt anyone but you know, as I do, that verbal abuse is just as damaging emotionally within its own right.
My first wife left because of my temper and my present wife is starting to look uneasy around me. Even my kids are reacting to me and that is the part that really hurts. I hate it when I see them avoiding me.
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So, what can I do?
A: I think that the starting point with you is with your family physician.
You and your doctor can look at medication that might help you while checking in with her consulting psychiatrist to make sure that the two of you have got it right.
Of course, I hope that you do not stop there. My guess is that you could benefit from a number of sessions with a counselling psychologist. Make sure that your psychologist is comfortable dealing with either anger management or something called emotional intelligence.
Until you get a moment to check in with your doctor and make appointments with a psychologist, I would like to share a few of my own thoughts with you.
The way that I see it, anger is not something that springs from nowhere. Neither is it necessarily something that we can blame on our parents. Most of us probably blame our parents for too many of our shortcomings. Maybe we can let them off the hook for a moment, and look within ourselves when we are talking about anger.
Deep within ourselves we might find something called fear, building the foundation for all of our shared miseries.
When you are mad you don’t think about your fears and most of us would rather not admit to feeling afraid at the best of times. But our fears are real drivers within us and like that Marvel comic creature the Hulk, who becomes an unstoppable monster when his alter ego Bruce Banner is afraid, your anger is a camouflage to being scared. You might best fix it by facing your fears.
A group of people called existentialists tell us that all of us have three basic fears. These are the fear of social or personal rejection, the fear of failure and the fear of dying. We cannot get rid of those fears.
They are normal and natural drives within all of us. Neither can we hide them, nor can we hide from them. The more that we try to avoid our fears, the more likely it is that we will end up withdrawing to the closet and hiding. Or we might, as in your case, get impatient with those whom we love and damage our interpersonal relationships. If you try admitting to your fears and accepting that they too are part of that wonderful package woven through your neurological structure making you who you are, you might find yourself more relaxed around your family.
Wouldn’t you prefer to be giggling with your kids rather than bellowing at them and your wife every time they prove that to err is to be human?
