His overcompensations manifest themselves as protestations of toughness, often followed by challenges on the part of other sufferers to prove same. These trials by combat often take the form of:

• Bar-room brawls
• Beer drinking contests
• Road Rage.
• Contests to see who can endure the most intense, excruciating, useless self-inflicted pain.

The tough guy syndrome is also characterized by:

1. The endless confusion of cooperation with submission;
2. The Bull-headed tendency to perceive his human faults and imperfections as weaknesses that are not to be admitted to anyone at any time, not even to himself;
3. The conviction that human feelings and emotions are for women and sissies, but not to be tolerated in Big, Strong, He Men like himself;
4. The lifelong inability to enjoy relationships with self-respecting human beings who refuse to join him in riding mechanical yaks to demonstrate their superior personhood;
5. The tendency to gravitate towards and dominate unself-respecting members of the same or opposite sex who submit to his nonsense in the mistaken conviction that they don’t deserve any better anyway.
6. A tendency to bet on sure things: Taking appropriate risks requires courage.
7. A tendency to confuse bravado with bravery;
8. A tendency to confuse overcompensatory arrogance with self-respect;
9. A tendency to confuse isolation with independence: “Ah don’t need nobody.”
10. A tendency to confuse interdependence with dependence;
11. A tendency to seek useless excitement to relieve the boredom of his tedious existence;
12. A tendency to confuse irresponsibility with freedom;
13. A tendency to confuse self-indulgence with happiness;
14. A predisposition to confuse the ability to retain baseball statistics with intelligence;
15. An inability to resist the temptation to withdraw from his inconvenient responsibilities into watching grown men bump into each other on television.

Antidote: For most sufferers, the antidote to their role as the tough guy, macho man is graduation from high school. They can’t throw those long passes any more. They are forced to find other, more appropriate and mature means of defining themselves as persons in the world. Many such alumni succeed in outgrowing these carryovers from their adolescent years and became self-respecting adults. Some don’t:

A. The Overdue Cowboy – He is still sitting tall in the saddle when his fraternity brothers. He cannot and will not give up his toughness. He is afraid of what everyone will see when he does. He does not know what will take its place. He has never head of self-respect, and wouldn’t settle for it if he had.

B. The Washed-Up Buckaroo – This is the individual who has failed to make the successful transition from overcompensatory phony roles to a real identity of his own. He has “never found himself.” He cannot go back to his old role and is not able to find a satisfactory replacement. He has fallen between the cracks. He may become a drifter, an alcoholic, a two-bit criminal, living in the past days of fictitious glory forever.

John was third generation tough guy. He and his father and grandfather could recall every football statistic in the book but they couldn’t remember their wive’s birthdays: “It’s not a guy thing.” No boys, it’s a people thing.

John reached a point where he was tired of seeing his wife, Becky, so unhappy. It was making him unhappy and he doesn’t like to be unhappy. He saw that his old ways of making himself happy were only self-indulgent kid stuff. He had suffered enough from this childishness. He was ready for the Big Time. He wanted to turn his marriage and his life around. He was prepared to assume appropriate responsibility for his own personal development. Harlow came in for counseling. Life was getting too short to play the role of the middle aged teenager. In counseling, he learned what self-respect really meant. He learned how to replace a childhood role with a mature identity by:

• basing his actions on mature judgments not immature impulses or attitudes
• cooperating with Becky as equal members of the human race
• managing his anger like a grownup instead of a schoolyard bully.

For example, he caught himself one night just about to take Becky’s anger at his sloppiness personally, as he always did. He chose to put his anger in its proper perspective. He wasn’t worthless, he was merely imperfect. He was just overdoing it. He chose to say, “I’m sorry I made you so angry,” and dumped a weeks worth of cigarette butts in the garbage can. It didn’t cost him his pride, or his manlihoodness. It cost him nothing. Instead of feeling like an inferior victim, as he feared he would, he felt like an equal member of the human race, assuming appropriate adult responsibility for his relationship. He felt like he belonged, not to Becky, or to the marriage, but to himself, which is a feeling that his old tricks and dodges never offered him. He had earned the right to feel self-respect. It took courage to risk being called rude names by his friends for “submitting” to a mere female, but he did it anyway. He regarded her as a worthwhile human being too, no more no less. It felt much better to be married to someone he actually respected on an appropriate basis. He didn’t change partners, he changed himself. And he outgrew his friends from the schoolyard.

John had put himself first in his own life. He was not merely reacting to stimuli or operating out of immature attitudes. He was taking the time to use his own judgment and validating his own accomplishments. He was not depending on others for his worth as a person, he was not playing cardboard roles in their scenarios, he was standing on his own two feet, not someone else’s. He did not feel less masculine, he felt a mature, independent masculinity in the present. His old overcompensations never relieved the pain of his self doubts in the past. There was no indication that they would ever succeed in doing so in the future. He wasn’t fighting these old machoistic tendencies. He was liberating himself from them, he was letting them go. He didn’t miss them when they left.

It was not selfish to put himself first. He cannot be cooperative, caring, or trusting in his relationship until he knows who it is that is doing it. That is identity, independence, integrity. These are all components of self respect. He could not be happy until he found out who it was that was experiencing the happiness in the present. A role cannot do that. A self-respecting person can.

About 3% to 6% of Americans have sexual addiction. And although the Internet provides an endless amount of valuable information, it has also become a dangerous pitfall for the estimated 2 million sexually addicted Internet users, both in and out of recovery. Often an individual seeks out sexual material out of curiosity. They will start to visit a sexual site more and more or other sites like it.

Pornography gives the user the illusion that each and every one of his or her addictive sexual compulsions can be met through fantasy. It can be described as an obsessive relationship with a fantasy. Pornography, like any other sex addiction, becomes the user’s fix. The user becomes so enraptured, they may end up destroying good relationships, spending hours and sometimes days cruising the Internet for porn and throwing out thousands of dollars on illusions.

Behaviors associated with sexual addiction include:
-Compulsive masturbation (self-stimulation)
-Multiple affairs (extra-marital affairs)
-Multiple or anonymous sexual partners and/or “one-night stands”
-Consistent use of pornography
-Unsafe sex
-Phone or computer sex (cybersex)
-Prostitution or use of prostitutes
-Obsessive dating through personal ads
-Voyeurism (watching others) and/or stalking

Sexual addiction can be associated with risk-taking. A person with a sexual addiction may engage in various forms of sexual activity, despite the potential for negative and/or dangerous consequences. The problem of sexual addiction may lead to feelings of guilt and shame. A sex addict may also feel a lack of control over the behavior, despite negative consequences (financial, health, social, and emotional).

At first it is almost impossible for someone caught up in a pornography addiction to believe that he or she can find real sexual enjoyment and better sexual pleasure with a person instead of a fantasy. However, with effective counseling, a genuine relationship does become the pornography addicted person’s preferred sexual interest.

Some pornography addicts believe they have the best of both worlds: their relationship and their addiction. Their belief is mistaken. In fact, they live with a severely limited relationship and a hidden addiction. One of the great rewards of overcoming a pornography addiction is the ability to be fully committed to another person in a loving way, having nothing to hide and enjoying great sex. Try the following suggestions to overcome this habit:

- Cultivate an alternative activity. Look at the circumstances of your life and how they may be contributing to your loneliness: Is it time to change living environments? Jobs? Join a social club or civic group? Attack a weight problem? Think of a hobby or activity that you have always wanted to try and commit to doing it in place of some of the hours spent currently on the Net.Take positive action in your own behalf and change your real life for the better. The more fun things you have in your life every day, the less you will miss the constant Internet buzz and give in to the craving to go back to it.

- Identify your usage pattern. What days of the week do you typically log on-line? What time of day do you usually begin? How long do you stay on during a typical session? Where do you usually use the computer? To begin to shake the habit, practice the opposite.

- Find external stoppers. Use the concrete things you need to do and places you need to go as prompters to remind you when to log off the Internet, and schedule your time on-line just before them. If this is not effective because you ignore them, use a real alarm clock to be set when you need to end the session. Keep it a few steps from the computer so you have to get up to shut it off.

- Be patient with yourself. Give recovery time. Real-life change takes longer than the instant intimacy and satisfaction you are used to from the Net. Give yourself credit for trying. It is natural to feel embarrassed or ashamed that you got hooked on the Internet and can’t seem to handle the problem overnight. Recovery is not a straight, perfect process; give yourself credit for the incremental steps you are taking. These are major accomplishments for which you can feel proud and good.

- Frequently Internet addicts have increasingly cut themselves off from their family, friends, social activities and hobby activities that they used to enjoy. Consequently, it is a good strategy for recovery to be intentional about reconnecting with loved ones and friends. They also are wise to seek out social opportunities and new experiences. To replace the camaraderie often experienced with on-line friends, addicts can seek out a social or support group to provide some of that support.

When children grow up mismanaging their anger in a context of self-contempt, it is because they have incorporated their family’s negative attitudes toward life, other people, happiness, success and responsibility. These acquired outlooks can shape their character and determine the scenario for the rest of their days on Earth. The children of self-respecting parents grow up respecting themselves and others. They are able to cooperate with others in an atmosphere of mutual respect. They are able to express their anger at everyday life appropriately, in the middle ground between exploding and suppressing.

In a family that lacks respect, there are many negative roles. There is the pleasing child who wouldn’t think of becoming independent for fear of displeasing his relatives. There is the rebel who leaves the family, but will re-enact the terrible pain of his childhood with his own family members when they come along. There is the abandoned child who stays home, not out of love and loyalty, but because he is more afraid of being alone and abandoned than he is of his parent’s abusive behavior. There is the martyr who can’t leave because then her suffering might stop. She would lose her identity and prove her parents wrong. She cannot allow such painful things to happen. They are inconsistent with her sense of self. There are many more such roles that make family living an ordeal instead of the joy it is supposed to be.

Such scenarios are not based on intelligent decision making. They are dynamics arising out of beliefs below our conscious awareness, beliefs towards loyalty, obedience, respect, belonging, responsibility, competence, and many more. If our roles exist in a context of self-respect, they will tend to be positive and constructive. If they exist in a context of self-contempt and self-anger, they can only be counter-productive and self-destructive. Roles, once formed in childhood tend to persist unchanged through the years into adulthood. People tend to maintain their consistency even if it is a negative consistency. It is the misery we prefer to the even worse misery of unknown chaos. Happiness has nothing to do with the process.

The goals is to help clients identify and replace the negative attitudes that bind them to their past with more constructive, liberating ones. They learn how to replace these roles with an independent, healthy identity of their own in the present. This process requires them to identify the carried-over anger at their parents, their siblings, other family members, and especially at themselves. We can then drain it out of their systems so the positive attitudes can come to the surface and their self-respect can emerge. To accomplish this transition from the old self to the new one, we give clients homework to do in their own behalf. As they succeed in these life tasks, their painful wounds begin to heal. They outgrow their unhealthy family members who prefer to dwell in a darkness that is consistent with their self-contempt. We help our clients to acquire the courage to do what reality requires them to do. It may be something displeasing to others, or something scary, but they have a choice now they didn’t have before: to do it or not!

Aren’t family members supposed to love each other? The parent striking his child for misbehavior may say, “I’m doing this because I love you.” His father said the same thing to him. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. They are doing it because they are angry and do not know how else to express it. I want to be clear, I am not “blaming your parents,” or the schools or the television sets for your family problems. It is not a matter of guilt, fault or blame. It is a matter of human imperfection, such as feelings of inadequacy to cope, lack of competent preparation, a negative family history and many other uncontrollable variables. Some parents have worse imperfections than others. It’s not their fault that they do! Where does such “faulting” get us? Nowhere. We have no time to waste on such dead ends.Let us identify the real problems so we can begin the difficult process of solving them on an informed basis.

Self-respecting people are not driven to love their kids, they are free to love them. They are free to replace their self-serving, destructive good intentions from the past with productive real intentions. The adult child may have grown up playing the role of scapegoat, pleaser or family victim. He or she is now seeking to outgrow these unhappy childhood roles, but their family members, individually or collectively, continue to perceive them as if they were still eight years old and they treat them accordingly. They don’t want him or her to outgrow their painful roles. Their brothers and sisters are afraid they might have to take their siblings place, and they wouldn’t want that to happen, would they? Their silent motto (attitude) is, “Better you than me, kid.”

The adult child, let’s call him Chad, has become tired of trying to “prove” to these people that he is a fully grown, taxpaying American citizen. He has come in for counseling to find out what his options are. He is ready to assume appropriate responsibility for his own well-being. This is not a good intention he has for himself. It is what we call a real intention.Reality requires him to go through this re-learning process. It does not require him to suffer in his negative roles forever.

Chad’s parents want him to continue playing his role as the dumping ground for their cares and woes. They want to continue solving their problems at his expense as long as they live. The harder he tries to assert his individuality, the more he prolongs his vulnerability to their provocative behavior. He bounces from the rebel to the pleasing victim role, all to no avail. They remain convinced he still is their “baby,” and he still “needs” them. Why wouldn’t they? Chad is still living on their self-serving terms instead of his own independent ones. He is trying to break away from them in ways that cannot work. He is meeting their unhealthy needs to be superior and in control at his own expense. They are always right and never wrong. They are eternally exempt from responsibility for their own foolishness.

Chad is a safe target. He is an outlet for their negative emotions, such as anger, discouragement, guilt and many more. He is keeping his parents sane at his expense. We point out to him that there is more to life than preventing emotional disaster to himself and others. Preventing is not living. It is a prescription for joyless stagnation. It does not solve the problem or even identify it. We call this good intention, preventation. It is an absurdly negative way of moving through life. It creates more problems than it will ever solve.

The reality is that Chad’s dependent parents and siblings do need him. He is maintaining the family continuity from the past to the present. He is an outlet for stresses and strains that his family members have no other way of relieving. He is their dumping ground. He plays all these roles without realizing it and without any recognition or appreciation for his contribution to their life. They take him for granted. That’s not fair. It makes him feel good for nothing. “Good for nothing” means “never good enough” which means “worthless.” That’s how he feels most of the time. It makes him angry at them and at himself for being such a chump. This unresolved anger at himself is a recipe for depression, anxiety and obsessive thinking. These are the big three of modern maladjustment. These are the qualities that keep him a prisoner in his own home.

Chad and his family members define their roles in the present as continuations of their roles in the past, which were inappropriate and destructive even then. The family members resist his efforts to outgrow his childhood roles because it would mean an inconvenient, perhaps unattainable readjustment of the foundations of their own shaky personhoods. It is much more convenient for people to maintain their status quo than to change it and grow up. They might fail if they tried. They don’t know what to change it to! Their fear is that they would be in more pain than they are in now. They are the prisoners of these anxiety-producing, immature attitudes that are below their conscious awareness. They have fought themselves to a standstill. But Chad has had enough. Part of him wants to make a move in his own behalf. We want to encourage and enlarge that part.

Our treatment goal is to replace this unhappy dynamic with a more gratifying one. We do it by replacing our client’s self-doubt with appropriate self-respect. We give our clients homework to do what will liberate them from these depressing scenarios. We reveal that they have opportunities to take risks, which often require the courage to be “displeasing.” Chad is reluctant to appear selfish and irresponsible in his loved one’s eyes. Chad’s departure from his assigned role in the family is not a crime and he is not guilty. These psychological impediments are not realities, they are appearances created in the formative stages of the family members’ own childhood. These misperceptions on our client’s part can be replaced by more realistic perceptions of his family members as imperfect human beings with overcompensatory strivings to relieve their own self-doubts at his expense.

We encourage Chad to set limits and restrict contact with his family of victimizers. When family victimizers call, Chad’s homework is to tell them, “I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later. I can’t talk now”. He used to say, “Stop calling me!” But it never worked. He learned that these people do not take orders from him. They do as they please. Now, when they ask him prying questions, Chad can make a conscious choice not to communicate to them anything they do not need to know. They have never used such information to improve their relationship, only to make things worse for him. Chad can choose to stop giving them information to use as ammunition against him. He has begun the process of cutting the cords that bind him to these unhappy, unlovingfamily members.

During this temporary period of abstinence from family contact, Chad is able to create an atmosphere of independence in which it is possible to experience himself as a separate entity in his own right. He is learning how to distinguish between healthy independence and lonesome dependence. He is learning how to make appropriate choices in his own behalf and carry them out in the real world. Each success in doing this homework strengthens his self-respect, courage and independence.

The family-free period provides Chad with an opportunity to experience attitudes and convictions about himself and his family that weren’t allowed to surface before. He is now choosing to assume appropriate responsibility for himself as an antidote to his family-induced super-responsibility. Since his parents and siblings are irresponsible and destructive, Chad had often felt that it was up to him to fill in the responsibility gap they were creating. His good intention was to save them from themselves, even when they had not asked him to do so, even when he did not know how to do so. He sees now that he was assuming more responsibility than reality required him to assume. He is trusting his adult judgment to tell him how much is too much. He has the courage to let go of the excess. He feels liberated from his old need to prove everything to everyone.

Every day, whether you’re pushing for a raise, wrestling with the kids over homework, or judging whether a friend really likes your latest redecorating spree, you’re reading other’s minds. Drawing on your observations, your databank of memories, your powers of reason, and your wellspring of emotion, you constantly make educated guesses about what another person is thinking and feeling. Throughout the most heated argument or the most lighthearted chat, you’re intently collecting clues to what’s on the other person’s mind at the moment.

No matter how much you try to control your body, you inevitably leak tiny bits of information, that if picked up read correctly by others will give your feelings away every time. Body language consists of communication through the use of facial expressions, eye behavior, gestures, posture, positioning, orientation, touch and the use of space. There are times you choose to express your emotions, needs, and attitudes through your body language and at other times your true feelings leak out accidentally, even sometimes contradicting the words you have spoken. In fact often most people find it easier to express how they are truly feeling by using their body language rather than their words. Over the centuries, many sayings have risen from what you have instinctively learned from watching others. Here are just a few:

BEADY LITTLE EYES: The pupils unconsciously constrict when someone is lying or being deceitful.

SHIFTY EYES: The eyes avert the gaze of when someone is lying, so the eyes shift around looking at anything and anyone but the recipient of the lie.

SPARKLE IN THE EYES: The pupils unconsciously dilate when someone is seeing something pleasurable; this action allows more light to be reflected off the back of the eye.

OPENING UP TO YOU: A physically open gesture, uncrossed arms and legs allowing more of you to be emotionally and physically vulnerable.

BITE YOUR LIP, TONGUE, LYING THROUGH YOUR TEETH, COVERING
UP: To stop you saying something inappropriate or lying you might bite your lip or cover your mouth as you tell the lie.

GUT FEELING, STOMACH CHURNING:
A physical feeling in the stomach indicating a dislike or uncertainty.

CHIN UP or OUT, SHOULDERS BACK:
Often said to people feeling a bit down, by raising the chin up and out with the shoulders back it causes physiological changes making you feel more positive.

FEET ON THE GROUND, STAND ON OWN TWO FEET: Refers back to the ancient Chinese custom of female foot binding, as those who had this done were usually Royalty and therefore could not or would not stand on their own two feet without causing pain.

STAND OFFISH: When people stand a just little to far away from you for comfort, outside your personal zone.

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE: When you don’t want someone to get to close to you, or into your personal zone.

PUSHY: Someone who invades the personal space of others will be often referred to as too pushy.

CLOSE, INTIMATE FRIENDS: Allowing someone into personal or intimate spatial zones.

PAIN IN THE NECK: A physical gesture when something is not to your liking.

GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF: Someone usually touch themselves for reassurance in times of stress; a tight grip on the upper arm is common.

UNDER THE THUMB: Controlled by another person, referring back to ancient Rome when the thumb turned downwards would almost certainly indicate death.

THUMBS UP: Generally a form of OK, Good or Yes, but be careful where you use this gesture, it can be highly offensive in some cultures.

MAKES MY SKIN CREEP, CRAWL, GETS UNDER MY SKIN: A physical sensation encountered when you are not comfortable in a particular persons company, conversation topic or tone. This is an expression mainly used by women, as women have been proven to be more sensitive to touch and are more aware of sensations than their male counterparts.

            The Cinderella understandably comes to believe that she is, somehow, “inferior” to her older stepsisters who enjoy advantages that she doesn’t have.  It seems logical to her that she doesn’t “deserve” to be as happy as those to whom she is “inferior.”  Since happiness seems to be “precluded,” all she has to look forward to is a life of drudgery and suffering.  She has become Allergic to Happiness.  That is a prescription for depression.

            She may also have learned early in life, that, if she suffers piteously enough, someone will pay attention to her.  She may even be able to get strong people to do her bidding.  We call this “using weakness as strength.”  Many Cinderellas have learned how to find and manipulate a Fairy God-Person through their own dramatically enhanced “suffering” so that they can obtain “advantages” that they could not have obtained on their own.  This attitude is called, “Suffering Pays.”  These scenarios set Cinderellas up to conclude that it doesn’t pay to draw upon or develop their own inner resources.  It’s so much cheaper and easier to give people the “pleasure” of helping them. They have become dependent.

            Unfortunately, the “advantages” that a Cinderella is able to extract in this irresponsible way turn out to be short-lived.  She has never learned how to enjoy these advantages on a mature basis.  She has never learned that she deserves to enjoy them as fully as others do.  She does not know how to parlay these short-lived advantages into long-term ones; in fact, she has a tendency to run them into the ground more quickly than a self-respecting non-sufferer would. This unhappy tendency on her part has the effect of exasperating and discouraging those who are trying to “help” her, and they give up on her.  They do not understand her paradoxical, self-destructive behavior.  The sufferer is obliged to seek out replacement Fairy God-Persons at increasingly frequent intervals.

Actually, this “self-destructive” tendency is not paradoxical at all.  It is entirely consistent with the attitudes she has picked up along the way.  Cinderella has learned that she doesn’t deserve to enjoy her happiness.  She tends to feel “guilty” after she has succeeded in obtaining the advantage that she sought through her suffering.  To relieve her guilt, she must find a way to get rid of this “undeserved happiness” before she gets caught and the clock strikes twelve.

            Moreover, Cinderella suffers from a childhood lesson that makes it impossible for her to enjoy happiness the way others do.  She has learned that, even if she does wangle an invitation to the Ball, her happiness will be temporary and it will end in disaster!  This conviction, below the level of conscious awareness, sets up a terribly painful, irresolvable conflict.  On the one hand she would like to be as happy as everyone else; on the other hand, she doesn’t “deserve” it and therefore, she “knows” that any happiness of hers will end in disaster sooner or later.  She tends to compare herself unfavorably to those whose happiness seems to be more secure and gratifying than her own, and she resents the “unfairness” of the discrepancy between their state and hers.  She acquires the attitude that is for her, “Happiness is only temporary and it ends in disaster.”   The only power that she seems to have is the power to end the painful suspense (anxiety).  Instead of waiting passively for the clock to strike 12, she actively brings about the destruction of her own happiness.  She prefers to do it herself rather than waiting for others to do it to her.  She prefers to get it over with sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, her attitudes predispose her to live in fear of future disaster; this sets her up to suffer anxiety, which also sabotages any happiness in her life.

            The Sufferer from this syndrome tends to be depressed, even at the Ball, because of her pessimistic, unconscious expectation of disaster, but even more so because of her pervasive belief in the unfairness of life.  And it is unfair.  She did nothing to deserve this negativity in her life, but she has it anyway.  In counseling, we reveal to these sufferers that the negativity is often a response to their vulnerability to being abused or neglected by their family members.  As a pleaser, she is a safe target for her siblings and her parents.  She may even take on the Scapegoat role in her family.  The Scapegoat or Cinderella may appear to be weak and passive on the surface, but her victimizers sense her strength.  They trust her to take their abuse without cracking. And she does.  They relieve the pain of their own self doubt by dumping their anger on her and she takes it.  She is a safe target for them.  As an adult, she will find herself compatible with people who will play negative roles in her scenario, who will give her opportunities to prove her ability to take it.  This is how she maintains the continuity of her particular constellation of attitudes and expectations forever.

            When these people come in for counseling, we identify their unresolved anger at their childhood tormenters, anger that pleasing Cinderellas aren’t supposed to have.  We identify their anger at themselves for “allowing” the abuse to happen, as if they had the power as a child to prevent it.  We show them how to replace their self doubt with self-respect on a mature basis.  This is how they come replace their unhappy role with an independent identity as a self-respecting human being.

            One client I met with who played the part of Cinderella was a 30 year old woman. She was in a relationship with a Prince Charming who takes her to “fun places” but who cannot or will not, offer security in their relationship.  After every date with him, she feels as if the Ball is over and that she is never going to see him again.  She prophesies an endlessly boring life of drudgery for herself without him.  In the meantime, she finds herself unable to relate to mature, responsible men who could and would give her the material and personal happiness that she says she wants out of life.  She sees the absurdity of this paradox, which is a good sign that she will respond to treatment.  She just can’t change herself without knowing what she must change to.

I began one session by asking Rachel when she felt secure. She replied,”At age six my older sister Grace used to play alone with her dolls.  She used to change her dress in the afternoon.  I asked my mother, ‘Why can’t I change my dress in the afternoon like Grace does?’  Mother said, ‘Because Grace sits still.  She doesn’t climb trees the way you do.’  I said, ‘I can do that!’ And she changed my dress.  I was happy.”

The fact that this woman remembered this incident for 25 years tells us that it has some significance for her in the present.  It tells us that she is very sensitive to comparing herself with others who seem to be enjoying advantages that she does not have. That it is important for her to find out how to obtain these advantages for herself.  She is mindful that there are some behaviors that are acceptable and others that are not.  She remembers depending on the resources of others to make her wishes come true. 

Many people remember being independent and taking pride in this accomplishment.  Cinderellas usually do not.  She is concerned with external appearances, (clothing), and the roles that go with them.  This recollection tells us that for her, Life is pleasant when she gets her own way, when she is secure when she is able to do what the Big Kids are doing at the Ball.  The implied meaning of this conviction is that life is very unpleasant for her when she can’t find a way to get what she wants, when she can’t have the kind of fun that other people are having.  When that happens, it confirms her feelings that she is at a disadvantage. That she is “left out,” and she doesn’t belong at the Ball with the “big kids.”  She feels like she is worthless.

Like many people, Rachel was never encouraged to perceive herself as a worthwhile human being in her own right.  She has subtly been encouraged to define herself in terms of her external behavior, some of which is “right” and “good,” the rest of which is “bad” and “wrong,” There was no middle ground for her while she was growing up.  Since she has never acquired an identity that is her own, she is forced to play roles.  The two main roles that were available to her were the “Good Princess” and the “Bad Cinderella.”  The first one was taken by Grace before she got there.  Neither of these fictitious roles allows the adult woman to prepare for a real healthy relationship. Both of these women have no choice but to gravitate to a phony Crown Prince Charming, who has no more self-respect than they do.  They are compatible, but it is a negative compatibility.

 While immersed in her “Bad Cinderella” role, people like Rachel may be inclined to seek relief from their unhappy feelings of inferiority by dreaming of their moment in the sun, which comes when they fantasize about finally getting the brass ring. When they are “high,” they dread the imminent destruction of their happiness.  They are not able to live in the present moment and enjoy it freely.  The time between these peaks and valleys is filled, not with a gratifying existence in the middle ground, but with anxiety, depression and suppressed anger.  As a consequence, real life tends to pass them by and they may end their days wondering why their life never really began.

   To replace her unhappy constellation of attitudes and expectations, Rachael has to do her Homework.  To break her dependency on others for her happiness, she must choose to behave independently, on her own mature, appropriate terms.

     For example, Rachael can catch herself comparing herself unfavorably to other women who seem “luckier” than she is.  She can realize that this attitude only perpetuates her feelings of anger at the unfairness of life and her own inferiority and inadequacy.  Also, she can catch herself paying the role of the Special Princess at the Ball.  She can stop feeling like a bored, resentful scullery maid when the music stops.  Instead of playing these unrealistic roles, she can choose to perceive herself as a worthwhile human being in spite of her faults and imperfections.  She can choose to live in the real middle ground between these unreal highs and lows.

 Life soon provided her an opportunity to do a Homework.  Prince Bob called to cancel their date that night.  He was going out with the boys instead.  Instead of pretending to be understanding, as usual, (she didn’t understand at all, she was hurt and angry) she made a conscious choice in her own behalf.  She chose to tell the truth about her unpleasant emotion: “I’m very angry at you.  I was looking forward to seeing you and now I’m not going to.  That hurts my feelings.  Don’t plan on seeing me tomorrow.  In going out with the girls.  They’re so much more mature.”

            Bob heard her talking like an independent person in her own right.  He respected her courage in standing up for herself on an appropriate basis.  She hadn’t overreacted, she hadn’t suppressed her anger, and she wasn’t controlling him or guilt tripping him.  She made a cutting remark which she wouldn’t have had the courage to do before.  She was behaving like a mature human being with a legitimate grievance against him.  He couldn’t respect her pleasing role, but he could respect someone who spoke to him like an equal member of the human race.  As Rachael continued to maintain her independence on her own appropriate terms, she felt stronger each time in her self-respect.  She was going to know what it felt like to be a worthwhile human being in her own right.  Bob grew up with her without even realizing that he was doing so.  Their negatively compatible roles from the past were replaced by an atmosphere in which mutual respect was possible.

            On this new, more realistic basis, Rachael is finding that her life is more fun than it ever was before, and that she can enjoy her happiness more than she ever did.  When the Ball ends, it doesn’t end in disaster.  It just ends.  She can go to sleep.  She is free to go on to something else tomorrow.

            This is an attitude that is often an important facet of the Cinderella Complex.  It manifests itself as a reluctance to form a permanent relationship with an “ordinary” member of the opposite sex for fear that it will preclude a more gratifying liaison with a “Prince” later on.  Compared to this idealized image, flesh and blood human beings seem mediocre and undesirable.

            The sufferer never stops to ask herself, “If a perfect male were to come along, what would he want with me?”  She is so busy living in the future that life in the present passes her by.This attitude is understood as the individual’s way of overcompensating for her feelings of inadequacy.  It is her imaginary solution to her painful feelings of inferiority and “worthlessness” as a female.  In her scenario her Prince’s love for her will vindicate her worth as a person in the eyes of all those who scorn her now; it will prove that she has been a “princess,” i.e., worthwhile, all along.  This seldom happens.

  In the meantime, this fictitious resolution of her painful self-doubts absolves her of any “guilt” she may have felt regarding her present state of inaction.  She is not responsible for her own well-being:  “It’s not my fault that I am still feeling inferior; it’s just that no one has come along to realize me yet.”

 This fantasy serves to exempt the sufferer from any responsibility for relieving her present distress by finding out about her mistaken attitudes and expectations and replacing them with more realistic ones.

      Rachael   isn’t making any of these mistakes now.  She is doing little Homeworks every day.  She is finding that these successes give her happiness in the present, which is so much more enjoyable than happiness a year from Tuesday.

Anger comes in many forms, all of them unpleasant. That is why we are so quick to deny it out of existence. That way, the problem is “solved;” we are off the hook. It’s a good thing that we don’t have to solve it because we don’t know how to solve such problems. We’d only fail if we tried. We didn’t go to school to learn anger management. We feel inadequately prepared to cope with it. We deny the problem in order to prevent the humiliating expose of our inadequate preparation.

In the meantime, our angry employees are walking around with unresolved anger problems in their hearts. They become discouraged and depressed. We wonder, “What happened to the morale around here? Why is production falling off? Why is turnover so high? Why are they taking so much sick leave?” When our employees’ energy is bound up in unresolved anger, there isn’t much left over to do the work that needs to be done. They keep on getting their paychecks just the same.

Anger doesn’t have to erupt into violence to take a chunk out of our bottom line. Suppressed, subterranean anger poisons our corporate atmosphere and does its silent damage day after day, year after year. “Denial”, therefore, is a very costly “solution” to the problem of employee anger. It is a luxury that no business can afford. Why do managers “deny” that their “happy” troops might possibly have unresolved anger in their bosoms?

They deny that there is anger in the ranks because they have attitudes about anger, attitudes that they acquired a long time ago and never outgrew:

“Anger is scary and dangerous. I don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole.”

“Anger is a problem that might take up too much of my valuable time and attention. Why don’t we just fire him and save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

“Anger isn’t ‘nice,’ and angry people aren’t ‘nice’. I don’t want to talk to people.”

“An angry person is a threat, and I have never learned how to cope with threats in the right way, only the wrong way with counter threats.”

In addition to our attitudes about this nasty emotion, we have attitudes about ourselves as problem solvers:

“Life is very pleasant when I solve problems.”

“Life is very unpleasant when I don’t!”

“I feel out of control when I have a problem that I cannot solve.

“That makes me angry! I don’t want to be angry because anger is painful and scary.”

“If I pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, maybe it will go away.”

That’s no way to manage our lives! We don’t realize that we have these attitudes deep down in our psyche. Neither do we realize that these attitudes are predisposing us to behave in the same counter-productive way time after time. Our behavior doesn’t change because our attitudes have never changed.

Jack is a top salesman. Out on the road he is all charm and smiles. Back at the ranch, he has anger attitudes. For one, he is predisposed to get angry whenever he doesn’t get his way, right now! Jack is angry at Nancy for not typing his sales reports fast enough. He wants them “now!” He doesn’t see why she shouldn’t do what he wants, when he wants it. To him, it’s a perfectly reasonable request.

When Jack is angry, everyone in the unit knows it. He slams drawers, he barks at everyone in sight, he clams up, he sulks and pouts. In other words, he is manifesting his anger just as he did when he was four years old. He hasn’t learned a thing about anger in forty years. We all get angry from time to time. Most of us are able to get through these painful periods without making our co-workers miserable with our inappropriate behavior. Jack never had an anger problem until he became Section Chief. It seems that his promotion gave him a license to abuse his fellow citizens that he did not seem to have before. Jack is displaying several main characteristics of the angry employee:

He is angrier than he needs to be,

He isn’t aware that his anger is out of proportion to the provocation.

He makes no effort to manage his anger like a mature, responsible human being.

He doesn’t see why he should learn how.

To Jack, his request for instant service is reasonable or rational. The rest of us see that his anger is not rational or under conscious control. The more Steve, his Department Head, tries to make Jack “understand the inappropriateness of his behavior,” the angrier Jack gets. Jack doesn’t want to understand, he wants his report and, as far as he can see, Steve is doing nothing to speed up the process. He is angry at Steve for letting Nancy “slack off.”

What Steve didn’t know was that Jack had come to define his worth as a person in terms of getting what he wants. He acquired this attitude toward himself during the formative stages of his personality. Jack has plenty of attitudes:

“It is my right to get my way. If I don’t get it. I am nothing! I cannot allow that to happen It’s too scary. It is unacceptable!”

“I am special. I am entitled to special consideration. It makes me angry when I do not get what I am entitled to.”

“When I have to wait to get what I want, I feel out of control. That feeling is painful. I want to get relief from my pain as fast as I can.”

“When I am kept waiting, it forces me to waste time. Waste is irresponsible. It makes me feel guilty of a crime. That is painful, too.”

“Wasting time and irresponsibility are wrong. Wrongness makes me angry. I must be right and never wrong. I must be perfect.”

Jack never outgrew these attitudes; he carried them into adulthood where they are determining his behavior to this day. Each time we react to Jack on the basis of these immature attitudes, we confirm him in his fictitious role. He is so busy defending his “specialness” that he never has a chance to question the basis of his inappropriate behavior.

Steve is learning that many people have these anger attitudes and that they can not be reasoned out of them. He has also learned that the issue here is not Nancy’s typing speed, or her work schedule. The issue is not even “getting my way.” The real problem to be addressed is Jack’s anger when he doesn’t get what he wants when he wants it. The most important thing that Steve learned was that he had the power of choice: to respond to Jack’s anger the old way, which never worked, or to manage his anger in a way that makes things better instead of worse.

He chose not to defend Nancy, (Nancy isn’t doing anything wrong, she does not require defending).

He chose not to defend himself. He didn’t say, “You can’t talk to me that way,” because ‘manner of speech’ is not the issue. It is a distraction from the real issue. It would have poured kerosene on Jack’s fire.

He chose not to take Jack’s demands as a reflection on his competence as a manager.

He chose not to take Jack’s negative, unpleasant behavior personally, as if it were a reflection on his worth as a person.

He chose to retain his self-respect on an appropriate basis.

He was able to remind himself of the definition of self-respect: it is the feeling that I am a worthwhile human being in spite of my faults and imperfections. Jack cannot take that away from him with his posturings.

He identified Jack’s imperious behavior as mere mischief, which means, “that which does not need to be done.” Steve was able to put this mischief in its proper perspective. “It’s only Jack being Jack again.”

He did not overreact to Jack’s provocation.

He did not try to make Jack “understand.”

He identified his own anger at Jack for causing him and Nancy this grievance, but he had learned how to manage his anger. He put it in perspective. Jack’s anger wasn’t the end of the world, it was only a nuisance.

He did not “solve” the anger problem by firing Jack on the spot.

He did not get personal revenge by depriving the firm of the talents of an imperfect, sometimes unpleasant employee.

He did not give up in discouragement.

He did not stand in moral judgment on Jack for his disruptive behavior. Jack is not “wrong,” he is merely imperfect and his imperfections can be unpleasant.

He did not hang on to his anger. It was in his way. He chose to “let it go.”

He was able to sort it out. He was in control of himself. He didn’t try to “control” Jack.

He was able to make a rational choice in a non-rational, regrettable situation.

Steve was able to take himself through this process in a matter of seconds. He had learned the drill. He knew how to find the meaning of Jack’s mischief by identifying the hidden purpose of the behavior. Jack was making him feel powerless and out of control. That feeling told him that he was in a power struggle with Jack over who could make Nancy do what and how fast. This insight gave Steve a new choice to make: he could pull back in a tug of war, or he could drop the rope and end the power struggle on his terms. He chose to drop the rope. He let it go. It was only mischief on Jack’s part. It didn’t need to be done. What really needed to be done was to resolve Jack’s anger problem in the right way so everyone could go back to work.

Steve had learned to spot employee mischief a block away. He had also learned how to disengage himself emotionally, not from the employee, but from his unacceptable, provocative behavior:

He did not take Jack’s behavior personally, as a wipeout of his self-respect.

He reminded himself that “I am a worthwhile human being in spite of Jack’s negative comments.” This technique is called ‘self talk.’ It keeps him on an even keel.

He did not take Jacks words literally, as if he really meant what he said. Jack is only “firing for Effect,” trying to use Steve’s own vulnerabilities against him.

He disengaged from his own predisposition to make counter mischief:

Steve didn’t make any of these mistakes from the old days. He made a new choice using his adult judgment on an informed basis. He knew that Jack’s anger was painful and out of control. It was his appropriate responsibility to deal effectively with his employee’s psychic pain as he would the physical pain of a cut finger. Just as he was prepared to perform the Heimlich maneuver if someone were choking, so is he prepared to give “emotional first aid” when it became necessary. It was necessary now. Steve made the right choice. He cut to the chase. He chose to address the issue of Jack’s anger.

Steve chose to say, “It makes you angry when Nancy takes so long, doesn’t it.” In making this choice, Steve was using an anger management technique called validate. Steve knew that Jack’s accusation was not a valid one. He knew it wasn’t rational, it was based on self-serving attitudes. He did not make the mistake of correcting Jack’s thinking, which would have made things worse for everyone. He knew that he could not relieve this pain by invalidating it. In calling Jack’s anger by its rightful name, Steve was giving Jack “permission” to have this unpleasant, disruptive emotion. He did not “fight the feeling.” He validated the anger, “I don’t blame you for feeling that way.”

Jack heard his anger being validated, perhaps for the first time in his life. He felt that he had been heard and understood by someone who knew what he was talking about. He felt that he was being validated as a person. The pain of his grievance was relieved. The second validate is for Jack. He heard himself being treated with respect in spite of his unpleasant behavior. He respected Steve for doing that. If he doesn’t respect his superior, he will not cooperate with him. He will make destructive mischief instead.

The third validation is for Steve. He had the courage to address the scary problem of Jack’s anger instead of defending Nancy. He had used good judgment. He replaced his good intentions with real intentions. He had earned the right to respect himself as a worthwhile human being with an identity of his own, not merely a role opposite Jack’s immature role.

There are two sides to this anger coin: Jack is one and Nancy is the other. Nancy needs to know what to do with Jack’s anger when it hits. As part of the Anger Management Process, Steve prepared Nancy to cope with Jack’s anger on a new basis. He broke the problem down into its components so she could see what she was up against.

Do not take it personally. It is not a reflection on you.

Do not defend – you are not guilty of a crime and you require no defense.

Do not become counter-angry. That just prolongs the problem.

Do not try to make Jack “understand” the realities of the situation. He is not interested.

Identify the real issue: the issue is that he is angry

Jack is making mischief. He wants to control so he will get his way sooner, also, he wants

revenge. He wants to hurt Nancy as she “hurt” him. These are negative purposes. They need to be identified so that they can be turned around in the right way.

Jack reminded Nancy that she could choose to keep her self respect in spite of Jack’s anger. She is a worthwhile human being whether she pleases him or not. As a self respecting, independent human being, she, too, can choose to validate Jack’s anger, which is the real issue. She, too, can say, “I’m sorry you are so angry, but I’ll have it done by 4:30 today.”

When Jack came by to voice his complaint about the “service,” Nancy did her anger Homework: She disengaged from the mischief, not from Jack. She was able to “Consider the Source”; she reminded herself that it’s only Jack sounding off again. She didn’t hang on to her protestations of innocence, she chose to let them go. When she made that choice, she felt relief from the pressure, tension and stress that these anger situations had been causing her. In letting go, she didn’t feel out of control, she felt in control. She was making this happen in the present. She was choosing to live on her terms, not reacting to someone else’s. She had her own independent identity.

As Jack went on and on, Nancy rode it out. She didn’t prolong the process with explanations of the situation that Jack didn’t care about anyway. She saved her breath. Nancy noticed that the storm blew over in half the time. Jack walked away talking to himself, but he settled down much sooner than he used to when people got in his way and made his anger worse.

Nancy was angry at Jack’s abusive behavior. We relieve pent up anger by giving people choices that they didn’t know they had. Steve has learned what some of those choices are. Instead of ignoring Nancy’s painful resentment, he validated it; “You must be very angry at Jack for dumping on you like that. If you keep it in, it will make you sick. One way to drain it out of your system is to write him an anger letter. It’s not for him, it’s for you.”

Nancy wrote her anger out in a letter to Jack and then tore it up. Steve asked her how she felt afterward. Nancy said that she felt “good.” In debriefing Nancy, he helped her to break this “good feeling” into its many components: feelings of relief, the power of choice, trust in her judgment, control, accomplishment, success, confidence and independence. These good feelings are all components of self respect.

Nancy had done an anger homework in her own behalf. She had earned the right to respect herself. Self respecting employees are more motivated, more productive and more free to be creative than employees who are filled with self doubts, anxieties and feelings of inadequacy to cope. Nancy was able to use an unpleasant anger situation as an opportunity to improve the way she felt about herself as a person in the world.

Even Jack benefitted from Nancy’s new way of managing her anger. He expected to be met with scorn, invalidation, criticism, excuses, denials and all the other counter-productive defenses that people use when they don’t know how to manage anger. Instead, he felt that Nancy had listened to his complaint without demeaning him as a person. She had not compounded his anger as people usually did. He didn’t feel “good” about the conversation, but he was aware that he felt “less worse.” He felt relief from the pressure, tension and stress that he had been causing himself with his unrealistic attitudes. To him, that was progress. Steve had taken the sting out of a potentially inflammatory situation. There were no cuts or bruises, no one got fired. Under this new regimen, Jack’s anger attacks came farther and farther apart, and they ended sooner each time. He remained a productive, valued employee of the firm.

Counseling is sometimes mandated by courts, typically requiring an 8 to 12 hour regimen. Many judges assign anger management therapy for first-time offenders or misdemeanors as an alternative to jail. People convicted of assault, battery, child abuse or neglect, domestic disputes, juvenile violence, or road rage incidents often must complete classes as part of probation. Some facing criminal charges enroll before appearing in court, having been advised by an attorney that successful completion might merit a shorter sentence. Therapy may involve one-on-one sessions with a counselor, monitored discussions including family members, and group meetings attended by others dealing with similar issues. There is nothing to fear — no one is going to demand electric shock treatment!

In order to benefit from counseling, all one needs is an open mind and a willingness to listen and communicate honestly. Anger is a part of life, a part of  being human, but one should not react with violence and intimidation; counseling helps develop better behavior patterns which avoid the negative consequences of such reactions. Some of the techniques most widely used are very simple and include deep breathing, slowly repeating a word or phrase, counting to 10 before reacting, or imagery and visualization (thinking about a calming person or place). As basic as they are, these strategies should be practiced daily until they become habits, because your life, and the lives of those closest to you, will drastically improve when your natural reactions to stressful circumstances are not destructive.

Throughout our lives, we improve our skills by taking “courses” and practicing what we learn; if you played sports, you were coached in the basics and practiced them until they became rote; at work, you were shown how to perform tasks, then got better and better as you repeated the process; to learn cooking or outdoor grilling, you followed recipes or observed someone with known abilities, then added your personal touches. Controlling one’s emotions is another skill, one that gets little or no attention until failure to do so results in trouble. Anger management counseling can be a valuable tool for improving lives for people of all ages.

Recognize that we have little or no control over the actions of others, but how we react is 100% ours to determine. If your temper sometimes causes you to do things you later regret, consider one of the many counseling options available.