How do I know all the things I am telling you in this book?  I lived em.  I was a man with a big anger problem and so when things didn't go just as I had planned in my down-to-the-second life, I would be upset, and I could be explosive.

That put a lot of pressure on my wife.  She would be afraid of me, and try to calm and soothe me and get me back on track when some little thing happened and I treated it like a catastrophe, rather than the little bump in the road that it really was.

Well that was a lot of years ago.  In ways I have mentioned to you here and there, it (finally!) sunk in for me that I was way across the line, way too reactive and very unpleasant to be with.  So now when I do silly things, or when inconveniences cut across my path I contain and control myself much better than I used to.  I am not finished product yet, but I am miles ahead of where I used to be.

When I was a fire-breathing rageaholic, there wasn't room for anyone else to be angry.  Just me.  That backed my son and my wife into the roles of Appeaser and Pleaser—at least early in our family life.  There was this unspoken agreement that hung in the air.  Boiled down, we all agreed that, "Dad gets to be angry, and we get to soothe him.  And since his anger is so big and important, we aren't allowed to get angry.  If we do start to show anger or upsetness, then he will become angry at us, overshadowing our anger with his Much More Important Indignation."  See?

So let me tell you what happened in our home a few minutes ago.   My wife was doing some home decorating and she tipped over an end table.  A big vase of flowers fell and was flattened.  Several dear little pottery items that had been given to us over the years slid off and smashed on the floor.  These things were dear to us because they had been brought from far away by people who love us.  Big little mess.

And I hear my wife yell out a word she ordinarily doesn't use.  And I scurried into the room to see what had happened and if she was hurt.  I instantly stepped into the old Calmer role, while she played out the role of Old Dave

In a few moments we caught ourselves and marveled at how she became me and I became her.   I held back a little to let her finish what was welling up inside of her.  I shut up and let this be her time to be disappointed, frustrated and angry.  It was better that way.  And in a short time she—and then we—righted ourselves.  We were still sad at the accident and the clean-up and the loss of our little collection, but that was all.

When each of us is internally balanced, not using up all the air in the room with our own huge displays of emotion, we allow time space for others to experience and express their full range of emotions.  We don't overwhelm them, or upstage them with a bigger response that shuts them down.  We take our turn, and we allow them their turn.

1      Hmm.  Maybe there is something for me here, too.  In our
family I tend to express much or most of these feelings:

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2      In our family the Designated Angry Person is:

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3      That leaves the job of Soother and Peacemaker to:

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