Dude, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to know how you are coming across, and what effect you are having on your wife and children—and yes, even your pets. It is your job to listen to how loud you are and lower your volume when you are frightening your family. It is your job to filter out swearing or other put-downs. It is your job to be patient—and yes, even KIND—when things don't go as you had planned. It is your job to be flexible and reasonable. It is your job to stop and realize that it takes children time to learn new things. It is your job to recall that your teenagers are learning to individuate, to become who they are going to be, and not to overreact to this normal stage of life. It is your job to be the dad they can lean on as they mature.

It is completely your responsibility not to take out your work frustrations on your family. It is 100% your responsibility to treat your wife with respect and dignity. And it is your job to know and model for the rest of your household respectful, loving behavior.

Some men have thought that if no one objected to their language or behavior that it is okay. Not so! It is your job, AND YOUR JOB ONLY, to monitor yourself, to catch yourself heating up, to slow yourself down and retain control, to help your family retain control and even to apologize when you have stepped over the line. YOUR JOB—without anyone else doing it for you.

Your dad should have done these things for you. You deserved that. But if he didn't that is no reason for you to continue this pattern of abuse and pain. You can be the one who brings to an end an unhealthy behavior that goes back in your family for generations. You can give better than you got. Become the dad you would like your dad to have been for you.

In the short run you will give up that tough-guy feeling of being able to cause the family to cringe and cower. After a while they won't have that same over eagerness not to cross you. That's because they are no longer seeing you as a mad dog that could turn on them at any moment. Now they know that you are a self-controlled human who will not overreact. It's true, they don't fear you as much then. You are no longer dangerous. You are not even intimidating by then. They will relax around you more, have more genuine moments with you and, best of all, they will really admire and love you.

Here's an additional way you may get a glimpse of what it is like for your family in the crazy-making world you have created. Do they see you going out of your way to be gentle and considerate to people outside your family? And do they feel a definite pressure to smile and keep up the happy family image—despite how unhappy they may be at home?

Several families have reported that Dominating Dad might be raging and snorting and yelling and threatening around the house in a miserable way when the phone rings. Then, incredulously, they see him make an instant and complete change to a soft voice and answer as a controlled, reasonable, gentleman. And they wonder: How does he do that? Their nervous systems are all jangled and so overloaded that they are in a deep state of shock—and now suddenly HE'S MR. NICE GUY! If you are that big of a phony, isn't it time to get control of yourself?

Some Monster Dads who abuse their power at home also demonstrate a fawning, excessive desire to please when they are around other men. Dominators at home are typically very, very sensitive to their standing in relation to other men. Is that how you are? Are you overly afraid of offending men of power, and not considerate enough of those who are weaker than you? Are you happy with that portrait of yourself?

Yes, quite likely there is more to the story of your family's upset than your contribution. If you hadn't said it, I would have: there are ways that your wife and kids contribute to keeping this whole unhealthy interaction going. And we will get to that in the next chapter. But let's stay with your part for a little longer. Frankly you are the biggest offender, and you have the opportunity to bring the most good and the most healing to your family. Not many abusive men are honest and humble enough to admit what I am asking you to admit in this chapter. And even fewer men have the courage to see this journey of healing all the way through. Stay with it, please—for yourself, your wife, your kids, and for the generations to follow.

If you decide to be the one who ends this ancient pattern of intergenerational abuse, good for you! It would have been good if someone could have stopped it before now, so you would have been the beneficiary, but that just didn't happen. So now you can be the one. You can be the one who brings most of this legacy of abuse to its (long overdue!) end. You were hurt by it, and you started to pass it on to your kids, but you can see how destructive this pattern is and you can just STOP IT!

How do you start to stop all this pain and woundedness? It's not that hard, actually. First of all, JUST LISTEN TO YOURSELF. Pay attention to your word choice. Stop using vulgarity and stop calling names that belittle your family members. Treat your wife and children with respect and affection.

Do you get very intense when you speak? That is, do your words come out in an angry rush? Do you cut others off when they are speaking, or talk over them? Are you trying too hard to make your point when you feel you aren't being heard? If so, lower your intensity, and please do it NOW. Also, hold yourself responsible for listening to yourself and catching yourself when your intensity creeps up again. It is your job to notice and bring yourself back down to earth.

Pay attention to how loudly you are speaking. If you are using excessive volume, please lower it. You will be less intimidating and more pleasant to be around. Everyone will still hear you just fine. At first it may sound to you like you are whispering. That tells you how far across the line you were, Bud!

Does your voice take on a harsh, cutting edge—like a saw ripping through wood—or is it soft and non-threatening? You may ask your wife for a little help here. Ask her to give you a little immediate feedback, and listen to what she says. This is not the same as asking her to be The Language Police for you. You have to do that. But especially in the early going her occasional input may help you get and stay on track.

There are other things for you to notice, as well. Have you gotten into the habit of keeping your family in suspense by going silent on them? Or do you communicate your moodiness by banging things around and making grand sighs? These have to go, too. And while you are at it, how about getting rid of all those primitive ways you have of trying to get the others to tend to you emotionally. You are the dad. IT'S YOUR JOB TO TEND TO THEM, even if you don't feel that you got all the nurturing you needed to handle the job. Sir, that is what mature people do—they do the right thing, even when it is hard.

Some men do not hit their children, and do not swear at them. They may not resort to name-calling either. But we have to talk for a moment about emotional abuse—what it is, how it affects kids, and how to avoid it.

Emotional abuse results when we put way too much pressure on those around us. We are asking them to emotionally endure what they are not capable of enduring. There are no bruises that show but emotional abuse can be devastating to our kids. When a man rages in front of his kids they are terrified at where the rage may lead. When he threatens to hurt them, their mother or himself, they are scared to death. Even if the man would later insist, "I am just blowing off steam, I would never really do any of those things," the kids DON'T KNOW THAT. They are scared to death. Their young nervous systems are put on full alert, as if they were the children at scenes of massacres in Rwanda or where the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean. You may not realize it, but your children's nervous systems are reacting as if their very lives are in danger. This is damaging and exhausting to them, and it is cruel for you to put them through it.

Many children have been left with the idea that they caused their dad to rage. This is unfair, untrue, abusive and harmful to your kids. They grow up feeling "If he's so mad, I must be bad." Feeling horrible about themselves is a painful way to go through life—as you know. Time has shown that kids who feel such self-loathing often make a long string of self-destructive decisions, in a dismal downward spiral of despair. It's time to stop emotionally abusing your kids. Right now.

Obviously, you owe your wife and children a heartfelt, non-defensive, non-minimizing statement of responsibility, along with a full, deep, sincere apology. But don't expect the words to have that much impact. Not yet. If you have been abusive and over controlling to your family for a long time, they are going to need to see you try hard and be reasonably consistent for a period of time before they are convinced you are for real. After all, they have seen you calm at times in the past—they have even had some fun with you. They may also have been aware of times when you recognized you went too far and then felt bad about it. But so far you have always gone back to The Old You. Is this time REALLY going to be any different?

If you really see yourself as your family has seen and felt you, you are going to feel wretched about how bad you were to them. You are going to hurt at heart for hurting them so much. That may go on for months, but it is YOUR JOB TO FEEL AND CONTAIN THAT PAIN. That, too, is how you take responsibility for yourself and your actions.

If you really heal a lot in this area, and you convince your family that you have developed a true sense of their needs and not just your own, there may also be a time when they are angry with you. Remember, their anger has been there all along—you just weren't safe enough to show it to. If they do show anger now, be glad they are giving it to you—YOU WHO DESERVE IT—rather than displacing it onto their kids in the future. Be humble, and validate the pain you caused them. (A caution: you are still the dad and you still have to set limits, so be sure to do so. Don't let your guilt prompt you now to be too permissive after the years of being too tough. It may take you a little while to find this balance.)

Your reward for all your hard work is the honest love of your family. At that point they won't just fear you, they will truly RESPECT AND LOVE you. And you will have SELF-RESPECT. You know that you never felt good about your excesses before, you just didn't see how to stop. Now you see the need to stop, and you see how to stop, you see all the good that will come when you stop, and YOU ARE READY TO STOP. RIGHT NOW. Right?

If you turn away from this material and don't change now, will you ever? This is likely the best chance—or certainly one of the best chances—you will ever have in your life. You can minimize, you can delay, you can point at the things your wife and kids are doing wrong, you can have good intentions, you can blame your parents, you can feel sorry for yourself—there are many unhealthy things you can do to avoid the straight ahead work of bringing yourself under control.

Or you could take your show on the road. You could leave this wife and these kids and move on. There will always be someone else you can charm, and some other woman raised in an equally sick family who will fall for you. But you will still be you, and eventually you will do all the same things again, and have all the same results. It will take a while, and there will be some good times along the way, but is that really all the life you want? And is that the life you want to give to your children? I didn't think so.

If you are a man who has overused his power—at least in some areas of your family life—then this chapter may have really given you a lot to think about. I hope it has. And I hope you will stay with this new learning. Talk to your wife about what you have read, and be open to her honest answers. A close friend may also level with you in a supportive way (although guys like you only tend to be drawn to males who also overuse their power).

One thing I will assure you of: you haven't hid your abusive behavior as well as you think. People have seen more than you realize. At least some folks have your number. They have seen how mousy or fearful your family is, or how mean you have been at times. It's never hidden as well as the guy thinks. People may not be talking to YOU about it, but they see.

Read this chapter again. Then reread chapter 1 and do the exercises slowly. Much of your anger may be traced to a lack of love you have for yourself. Don't back away from looking at yourself honestly. Please don't let this opportunity slip away. If you want to get well you can. This has gone on long enough—no, too long. You can endure the pain and you can have the rewards. For your wife, your kids, your grandchildren and YOUR GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN—as well as for yourself—get busy and get healthy!




		(10 by 10 Workbook Chapter 5 continued) Are You Asking Your Wife and Kids to Parent You? When you fail to control your own emotions, becoming a temporary Infant/Tyrant, what does that do to your wife and kids? When you refuse to take full responsibility for how you react, what do they end up doing? Actually, when you act in an extreme way, they are pressured to be MORE STABLE THAN YOU to manage your outburst—right? YOU have a tantrum and THEY have to remain in control of themselves and keep perspective. At least for the short, intense time that you are gone into your trance of rage, you get to go insane and expect them to be sane enough for themselves and for you. You become the child, and you force them into the role of caretakers. For that time that they have to be in control while you are SO OUT OF CONTROL, a role reversal sets in. YOU become the child, expecting THEM to parent, contain and support you. And that has to stop. It's your job to control yourself. Your children are outraged and overwhelmed when you drop that much responsibility on them. They don't have the capacity. They can't do it. They can try, they can pretend—and if you don't stop yourself they will likely continue as best they can. They will somehow carry on and support you as best they can. And then they will take out THEIR rage on the next generation—on your grandchildren. Giving Better Than You Got It's your job, and yours only, to manage your own feelings, words and actions. That thought is a newsflash to many abusive men. Many are skilled at trying to shift the blame onto their wife or kids, and over the years they may have convinced the family to buy into their view of the world: "Nobody understands the pressure I'm under…" "These kids have to learn some respect." "They make those doors so cheap any more." "Nobody got hurt. You can't count the cat." All of these are familiar—and totally misguided—rationalizations. But some men have never stopped to consider how they are coming across: how loud, how scary, how red their face gets, how fearful it is for others. These guys, now starring in the role of Humiliator in the family play, have lost track of what is like for the rest of the family. He doesn't recall that each time he goes off on somebody, the rest don't know if he will be able to stop himself or not. When he is lost in a rage he cannot recall that the local sections of our newspapers carry stories every day about domestic violence—where a FAMILY MEMBER, not an armed stranger—caused injury or death to one they would say that they love.





			If Nobody Tells Me, Is It Still My Fault? Dude, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to know how you are coming across, and what effect you are having on your wife and children—and yes, even your pets. It is your job to listen to how loud you are and lower your volume when you are frightening your family. It is your job to filter out swearing or other put-downs. It is your job to be patient—and yes, even KIND—when things don't go as you had planned. It is your job to be flexible and reasonable. It is your job to stop and realize that it takes children time to learn new things. It is your job to recall that your teenagers are learning to individuate, to become who they are going to be, and not to overreact to this normal stage of life. It is your job to be the dad they can lean on as they mature. It is completely your responsibility not to take out your work frustrations on your family. It is 100% your responsibility to treat your wife with respect and dignity. And it is your job to know and model for the rest of your household respectful, loving behavior. Some men have thought that if no one objected to their language or behavior that it is okay. Not so! It is your job, AND YOUR JOB ONLY, to monitor yourself, to catch yourself heating up, to slow yourself down and retain control, to help your family retain control and even to apologize when you have stepped over the line. YOUR JOB—without anyone else doing it for you. Your dad should have done these things for you. You deserved that. But if he didn't that is no reason for you to continue this pattern of abuse and pain. You can be the one who brings to an end an unhealthy behavior that goes back in your family for generations. You can give better than you got. Become the dad you would like your dad to have been for you. In the short run you will give up that tough-guy feeling of being able to cause the family to cringe and cower. After a while they won't have that same over eagerness not to cross you. That's because they are no longer seeing you as a mad dog that could turn on them at any moment. Now they know that you are a self-controlled human who will not overreact. It's true, they don't fear you as much then. You are no longer dangerous. You are not even intimidating by then. They will relax around you more, have more genuine moments with you and, best of all, they will really admire and love you. Mr. Nice Guy to Everyone Else? Here's an additional way you may get a glimpse of what it is like for your family in the crazy-making world you have created. Do they see you going out of your way to be gentle and considerate to people outside your family? And do they feel a definite pressure to smile and keep up the happy family image—despite how unhappy they may be at home? Several families have reported that Dominating Dad might be raging and snorting and yelling and threatening around the house in a miserable way when the phone rings. Then, incredulously, they see him make an instant and complete change to a soft voice and answer as a controlled, reasonable, gentleman. And they wonder: How does he do that? Their nervous systems are all jangled and so overloaded that they are in a deep state of shock—and now suddenly HE'S MR. NICE GUY! If you are that big of a phony, isn't it time to get control of yourself? Some Monster Dads who abuse their power at home also demonstrate a fawning, excessive desire to please when they are around other men. Dominators at home are typically very, very sensitive to their standing in relation to other men. Is that how you are? Are you overly afraid of offending men of power, and not considerate enough of those who are weaker than you? Are you happy with that portrait of yourself? It's Not All My Fault. You Oughtta See What She Does TO ME! Yes, quite likely there is more to the story of your family's upset than your contribution. If you hadn't said it, I would have: there are ways that your wife and kids contribute to keeping this whole unhealthy interaction going. And we will get to that in the next chapter. But let's stay with your part for a little longer. Frankly you are the biggest offender, and you have the opportunity to bring the most good and the most healing to your family. Not many abusive men are honest and humble enough to admit what I am asking you to admit in this chapter. And even fewer men have the courage to see this journey of healing all the way through. Stay with it, please—for yourself, your wife, your kids, and for the generations to follow. I Don't Care Where It Started It's Stopping With Me If you decide to be the one who ends this ancient pattern of intergenerational abuse, good for you! It would have been good if someone could have stopped it before now, so you would have been the beneficiary, but that just didn't happen. So now you can be the one. You can be the one who brings most of this legacy of abuse to its (long overdue!) end. You were hurt by it, and you started to pass it on to your kids, but you can see how destructive this pattern is and you can just STOP IT! How do you start to stop all this pain and woundedness? It's not that hard, actually. First of all, JUST LISTEN TO YOURSELF. Pay attention to your word choice. Stop using vulgarity and stop calling names that belittle your family members. Treat your wife and children with respect and affection. Do you get very intense when you speak? That is, do your words come out in an angry rush? Do you cut others off when they are speaking, or talk over them? Are you trying too hard to make your point when you feel you aren't being heard? If so, lower your intensity, and please do it NOW. Also, hold yourself responsible for listening to yourself and catching yourself when your intensity creeps up again. It is your job to notice and bring yourself back down to earth. Pay attention to how loudly you are speaking. If you are using excessive volume, please lower it. You will be less intimidating and more pleasant to be around. Everyone will still hear you just fine. At first it may sound to you like you are whispering. That tells you how far across the line you were, Bud! Does your voice take on a harsh, cutting edge—like a saw ripping through wood—or is it soft and non-threatening? You may ask your wife for a little help here. Ask her to give you a little immediate feedback, and listen to what she says. This is not the same as asking her to be The Language Police for you. You have to do that. But especially in the early going her occasional input may help you get and stay on track. There are other things for you to notice, as well. Have you gotten into the habit of keeping your family in suspense by going silent on them? Or do you communicate your moodiness by banging things around and making grand sighs? These have to go, too. And while you are at it, how about getting rid of all those primitive ways you have of trying to get the others to tend to you emotionally. You are the dad. IT'S YOUR JOB TO TEND TO THEM, even if you don't feel that you got all the nurturing you needed to handle the job. Sir, that is what mature people do—they do the right thing, even when it is hard. Emotional Abuse Some men do not hit their children, and do not swear at them. They may not resort to name-calling either. But we have to talk for a moment about emotional abuse—what it is, how it affects kids, and how to avoid it. Emotional abuse results when we put way too much pressure on those around us. We are asking them to emotionally endure what they are not capable of enduring. There are no bruises that show but emotional abuse can be devastating to our kids. When a man rages in front of his kids they are terrified at where the rage may lead. When he threatens to hurt them, their mother or himself, they are scared to death. Even if the man would later insist, "I am just blowing off steam, I would never really do any of those things," the kids DON'T KNOW THAT. They are scared to death. Their young nervous systems are put on full alert, as if they were the children at scenes of massacres in Rwanda or where the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean. You may not realize it, but your children's nervous systems are reacting as if their very lives are in danger. This is damaging and exhausting to them, and it is cruel for you to put them through it. Many children have been left with the idea that they caused their dad to rage. This is unfair, untrue, abusive and harmful to your kids. They grow up feeling "If he's so mad, I must be bad." Feeling horrible about themselves is a painful way to go through life—as you know. Time has shown that kids who feel such self-loathing often make a long string of self-destructive decisions, in a dismal downward spiral of despair. It's time to stop emotionally abusing your kids. Right now. Making Believable Apologies Obviously, you owe your wife and children a heartfelt, non-defensive, non-minimizing statement of responsibility, along with a full, deep, sincere apology. But don't expect the words to have that much impact. Not yet. If you have been abusive and over controlling to your family for a long time, they are going to need to see you try hard and be reasonably consistent for a period of time before they are convinced you are for real. After all, they have seen you calm at times in the past—they have even had some fun with you. They may also have been aware of times when you recognized you went too far and then felt bad about it. But so far you have always gone back to The Old You. Is this time REALLY going to be any different? If you really see yourself as your family has seen and felt you, you are going to feel wretched about how bad you were to them. You are going to hurt at heart for hurting them so much. That may go on for months, but it is YOUR JOB TO FEEL AND CONTAIN THAT PAIN. That, too, is how you take responsibility for yourself and your actions. If you really heal a lot in this area, and you convince your family that you have developed a true sense of their needs and not just your own, there may also be a time when they are angry with you. Remember, their anger has been there all along—you just weren't safe enough to show it to. If they do show anger now, be glad they are giving it to you—YOU WHO DESERVE IT—rather than displacing it onto their kids in the future. Be humble, and validate the pain you caused them. (A caution: you are still the dad and you still have to set limits, so be sure to do so. Don't let your guilt prompt you now to be too permissive after the years of being too tough. It may take you a little while to find this balance.) Your reward for all your hard work is the honest love of your family. At that point they won't just fear you, they will truly RESPECT AND LOVE you. And you will have SELF-RESPECT. You know that you never felt good about your excesses before, you just didn't see how to stop. Now you see the need to stop, and you see how to stop, you see all the good that will come when you stop, and YOU ARE READY TO STOP. RIGHT NOW. Right? "Let Me Introduce You to My Fourth Wife, Tonya…" If you turn away from this material and don't change now, will you ever? This is likely the best chance—or certainly one of the best chances—you will ever have in your life. You can minimize, you can delay, you can point at the things your wife and kids are doing wrong, you can have good intentions, you can blame your parents, you can feel sorry for yourself—there are many unhealthy things you can do to avoid the straight ahead work of bringing yourself under control. Or you could take your show on the road. You could leave this wife and these kids and move on. There will always be someone else you can charm, and some other woman raised in an equally sick family who will fall for you. But you will still be you, and eventually you will do all the same things again, and have all the same results. It will take a while, and there will be some good times along the way, but is that really all the life you want? And is that the life you want to give to your children? I didn't think so. Into Control, Outta Control If you are a man who has overused his power—at least in some areas of your family life—then this chapter may have really given you a lot to think about. I hope it has. And I hope you will stay with this new learning. Talk to your wife about what you have read, and be open to her honest answers. A close friend may also level with you in a supportive way (although guys like you only tend to be drawn to males who also overuse their power). One thing I will assure you of: you haven't hid your abusive behavior as well as you think. People have seen more than you realize. At least some folks have your number. They have seen how mousy or fearful your family is, or how mean you have been at times. It's never hidden as well as the guy thinks. People may not be talking to YOU about it, but they see. Read this chapter again. Then reread chapter 1 and do the exercises slowly. Much of your anger may be traced to a lack of love you have for yourself. Don't back away from looking at yourself honestly. Please don't let this opportunity slip away. If you want to get well you can. This has gone on long enough—no, too long. You can endure the pain and you can have the rewards. For your wife, your kids, your grandchildren and YOUR GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN—as well as for yourself—get busy and get healthy!