My husband has had a depression problem for all of his life. He has been to different doctors: Psychologists, Psychiatrists, even our family doctor. He has been placed on Effexor (double dose) but seems okay for awhile and about every three to six months, he gets into a rage, a rage that scares me!

He feels that I don't support him, I don't care about him, I won't do things with him. He dwells on the past and can't get beyond those problems from his past. He feels he is a failure. He has become a very well known person; he works for the state in the Dept. of Corrections and has only one more year till he is eligible to retire. He is very intelligent, very friendly, very understanding when it comes to problems at work or with our four children of which are adults now. He finds himself lost without our children being around. I thought our lives would be easier since all of the children are married except for one. He make things difficult and doesn't like for anyone to "tell" him he is wrong. We have been married for 20 years now and have children from different marriages, two are his and two are mine. All of our married life, I feel like I can't approach him or talk to him without him exploding!!! He has good days and a lot of bad days. He had made our children lives miserable while growing up and would turn his rage toward them!

What else can we do? What else can I suggest to him? How can I make our lives more normal?? Anything that you can suggest would be very appreciated. Thank you so much for reading my email.

Anne

Dear Anne,

Your husband sounds like he has a lot of pent up rage from some experiences from his past. It would be very important to find a group therapy format where he could learn to express his anger in a way that was not so explosive and harmful to himself and your family. We all carry anger internally and some people let it build for a period of time and then an experience happens which triggers them and they are unable to contain their built up rage any longer. These anger management groups teach them, usually through a cognitive-behavioral approach, how to recognize outside stimulus that triggers their rage and then how to develop new thought and behavior techniques to cope with what is happening. These groups do not usually address, however, events that happened in their family of origin, events which have contributed to the creation of their anger. So I would suggest that your husband also keep looking for a therapist that is skilled in the area of working with past experiences(traumas) so that he can go back to each of these and work through them.

Some advice for you Anne would be to look at how your husband is needing to carry the anger for both of you. My experience in working with couples is that if one member of the partnership is very angry, then the other partner may be unwilling to express(in a non-aggressive way) how angry they maybe. This may be the result of growing up in a family environment where one was expected to be a good girl who does not express her 'negative' feelings or perhaps there was a parent who was very angry and so one becomes frightened of expressing their true feelings. It would be helpful for you to work with someone around this, either individually or I would suggest in couple counselling.

I have just purchased a very good book called Anger-Boundaries and Safety by Joann S. Peterson. You can purchase the book at a Canadian website: www.pdseminars.com

Good Luck Anne