Anger Management Workbook

Anger Busting Workbook

Page 149

Chapter 5

The Line In the Sand

She and Dan had been married for 15 years. They had four kids and a nice house and good jobs and a pretty good life. But Dan's horrible rage attacks, which had been a problem from the very beginning, had just gone from bad to worse. While they were dating it had only been really bad once. During the first five years of their marriage his Category 5 outbursts (a few years back, Liza started grading his attacks like tornados or hurricanes, on a scale of Category 1 through Category 5) gradually increased in frequency, going from one about every three months to about once a month. From then on he seemed to average two or three per month. But in the past six weeks she and the kids suffered through eight eruptions, all over stuff that was petty and ridiculous. She asked him to consider going with her to counseling. That triggered attack number four in the series, which pushed her into doing something she knew she should have done a long time ago: she went to counseling by herself even though when she did it triggered attack number five.

She and her counselor had agreed that Dan's anger was taking a terrible toll on her and the kids, and that the chances of his deciding to change voluntarily were extremely remote. He helped her develop a strategy for presenting Dan with an ultimatum, including very strict boundaries that she was prepared to enforce until he showed signs of making serious improvements. She had agonized long and hard over this; she had prayed and cried and looked for alternatives. There didn't seem to be any. She desperately wanted everyone in her family, including Dan, to find peace