(Continued from previous post.)

I went to a psychologist to help me with anger management, but it wasn’t he who changed me. Another person cannot change you. Only you can change you.

I changed because I decided I was going to change, because I knew Mary was too good of a person to be hurt by the likes of me, because I didn’t want to die all alone, without friends or anybody who gave a damn about me, because I didn’t LIKE being a mean and hurtful man.

There were no excuses for my past actions.

None.

Was I an abused child? Yes.

Was I a victim of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? Absolutely!

Did I suffer through a bad first marriage? Yes. I did.

Did my father reject me because I wasn’t the super-jock son that he wanted, while my younger brother was Mr. Joe Athlete and the apple of my father’s eye? Yes.

All of these were true, and NOT ONE OF THEM was a good excuse for my bad behavior and my explosive temper.

Not one.

Absolutely not.

To my way of thinking, there is no excuse for bad behavior and mean temper in anybody. Nobody on the planet has had a perfect life. Therefore, there ARE no excuses.

There are some people who would like us all to believe that they are victims – of their parents, of poverty, of society, of life itself. If that is the case, then we are ALL victims.

If this is so, then we can ALL live our lives blaming others for our misery. Then, we will never progress, and we will wallow in our self-pity until the day we all die.

Well, I realized that all the self-pity in the world would not change what happened to me a child. It wouldn’t change my OCD. And it damned sure wouldn’t change my mother.

I had to come to the understanding that I was not responsible for what others did to me in the past.

I also had to come to know that only I was responsible for how I dealt with those incidents, and only I was responsible for how I treated myself and how I treated others.

I used to say that I couldn’t help myself. That my hair-trigger temper would just suddenly explode. I had no warning when it would occur, and I had no control over it.

That, of course, was not the case.

When I said that to my shrink, Dr. Jerry, he told me that that was bullshit. (That’s the word he used – "BULLSHIT.") Then he gave me these two scenarios to ponder:

Scene 1: I’m in a pub and standing at the bar with a full beer in front of me. Suddenly, somebody crashes into my back so hard that it sends me sprawling into the bar, and my beer goes flying. I gather myself up, turn around and find this little pipsqueak standing there looking at me. My hair trigger takes over, and I explode with a verbal barrage against this fellow that would melt glass. I can’t help it. My temper is uncontrollable.

 

Scene 2: I’m in a pub and standing at the bar with a full beer in front of me. Suddenly, somebody crashes into my back so hard that it sends me sprawling into the bar, and my beer goes flying. I gather myself up, turn around and find a big, burly Hell’s Angels biker standing behind me. Do I explode on him?…Probably not.

Why not? It’s the exact same chain of events as the first scene. The only thing that is different is the perpetrator.

I don’t blow my stack at the big, bad biker, and that proves that my temper is not uncontrollable. I just CHOSE not to control it sometimes.

There is no excuse for acting badly. None.

Is having a temper a learned activity?

Yes.

Is it a learned way of dealing with situations?

Yes.

Can it be changed?

Yes. But I had to want to change it.

 
It was then that I knew that I was the only one who responsible for my own actions, and I was the only one who could change me.

(STILL more to come!)