“Of course I forgive her. She’s my mother. She was doing the best she could. You should hear what grandpa did to her!” “Carly” (a composite client) had just told me how her mother had beaten her. With very little emotion, she’d reported how her mom had used sticks, rulers, and bare hands on her …
Category Archives: anger
Kill the Killer?
“Forgive? I’ll never forgive.” Many years ago, responding to a crisis line call at 2:00 A.M., I had listened to a woman for half an hour as she raged against her brother’s murderer. After listening with compassion, I had ventured the possibility of forgiving the man who’d hurt her family. The vehemence of her response echoed in my ear. I’m …
Studying Anger
Last week, I talked about reading emotions, particularly anger. In fact, we need to do more than read our anger. We need to study. To study is to understand, to fit into an organized structure of information, to read and think and do experiments until we make sense of a subject. Libraries are written on …