MSI Press Blog

  Some families live with anger the way fish live in water — so surrounded by it that no one even notices it anymore. The raised voices, the sharp tones, the slammed doors, the long silences, the brittle edges… they become the emotional wallpaper of the home. But anger is rarely the real problem. It is almost always the signal of something deeper. If we want to heal angry families — including our own — we must learn to read the signal instead of reacting to the noise. Anger is a secondary emotion. The real story is underneath. In families, anger often hides: fear shame exhaustion grief insecurity unmet needs feeling unheard or unseen Children express these emotions with outbursts. Adults express them with irritation, sarcasm, withdrawal, or control. When we treat the anger as the problem, we miss the wound beneath it. The Four Hidden Sources of Family Anger 1. Fear of losing control Parents fear losing authority. Children fear losing autonomy. Partners fear losing stability. Fear...

  Their children's precocity can often disconcert parents. These children not only do unpredictable things, but the things they do are also often unimaginable to their parents--and how to deal with them perplexing. After all, when do you reward creativity and when do you punish it? Shane setting the house on fire with a science experiment clearly belonged in the latter category though one still wants to laud the creativity and scientific depth behind it. But what about when those unpredictable things go beyond the home? When Shane was 12, I picked up the phone--landlines back then and anyone could answer. The voice at the other end sounded like a man in his 30s, and it turned out in reality to be a man in his 30s.  "May I speak to Shane?" asked the voice. "Well, I don't know," I responded. "Shane is a 12-year-old boy." The voice hesitated, then said, "Ok, but I think I still need to talk to him." I put Shane on the line, and he immediatel...