‘I remember one time my mother and I were arguing about something, and I slammed my bedroom door in anger, which accidentally slammed on her hand.’

David Morgan, Stony Brook

“I had a hard time in school when I was a kid. At one point, I actually went to the guidance counselor to see if I could be put into special education classes. My grades were bad, but standardized testing showed I had a high average IQ. It turned out I had an attention deficit disorder, but that really wasn’t something kids were diagnosed with back then.

“I was also a very angry kid, which was caused by my attention issues. I got into some fights. Although I didn’t really seek them out, it was more about being tough and not being someone that you’d want to mess with.

“I remember one time my mother and I were arguing about something, and I slammed my bedroom door in anger, which accidentally slammed on her hand. I still feel terrible about that today.

“Most of my anger went toward my parents, but I also played football and lacrosse, which was an outlet for some of that anger. Coaches would say ‘Get angry’ to motivate players, which, looking back, wasn’t probably the best thing to tell a kid like me. My parents did have me see a therapist, who ended up telling me I was just lazy, which is wrong. Aside from sports, I did jobs like delivering Newsday, mowing lawns and things like that.

“I started at Suffolk Community College, where I figured, after two years, I’d finish and become a cop. However, I started getting good grades, probably because of the different style of teaching you get in college, and after taking a psychology class, found myself going in a new direction. I then went to [SUNY] Oswego, and then to Stony Brook [University], where I got my master’s degree.

“Soon after, I started working at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital, where I often worked with kids, mostly boys, in the psychiatric emergency room. Maybe it was because of my experiences growing up, but I felt like I was connecting with a lot of the patients.

“I also worked in my own practice as a psychotherapist. It was during this work I began to get an idea of how anger was a factor in some psychiatric situations and also how it was impacting people’s lives — but also based on what I went through as a kid.”

We try and teach people to not let things lead to anger. If your boss is giving you a hard time, leave it at work.

“Anger is a secondary emotion. It comes from a primitive part of our brain called the amygdala. At one time, anger was more of an important function we used to protect ourselves, but today it can cause us a lot of problems. It’s like if there’s a triangle, anger is at the peak. Below that is an initial emotional response, and at the bottom there’s an unresolved issue. If we can’t resolve something with our first emotional response, we get angry.

“Today I’m the director of operations of Anger Management U, a company that teaches anger management skills to people of all ages. A lot of people come to us because of how their anger issues are affecting their relationships, but anger is important to address for other reasons. It can lead to unhappiness and depression, whether it’s because someone is acting out or pointing it inward. It can be harder to spot in someone who isn’t clearly angry, but maybe instead is acting in a passive-aggressive way.

“It can also be caused by frustration, like what I went through as a kid. We try and teach people to not let things lead to anger. If your boss is giving you a hard time, leave it at work instead of coming home and yelling at your spouse. If you’re driving, try to think of the consequences of what getting angry can be.

“A lot of times anger is associated with being a man, and a scary man can be more obvious and intimidating when a man is larger, but women can have anger issues too, and while sometimes a male is told things like ‘Man up’ and ‘Act like a man’ when it comes to their emotions, women may be told to be more ‘ladylike.’ Anger can interfere with a woman’s life, too, so really anyone can benefit from learning how to deal with their anger. I personally think they should teach anger management in school. I wish when I was a kid someone recognized what I was dealing with; it would have helped a lot.”

Interviewed by Ian Stark